Making a positive impact and being accountable
The idea of corporate responsibility isn’t wholly new, but it has expanded in recent years to include more than just the notion of being a fair and reasonable employer.
The modern idea of corporate responsibility doesn’t refer only to a company’s impact on its employees. It also looks outward, at the physical impact a business has on its environment, and at its social and economic impact in the local and wider community.
As an SME, Computair may not have quite the same resources as some of the software industry titans, but we are nevertheless committed to living and working responsibly and trying to make a positive local impact.
Read on for more information on what we’re doing.
Shanghai at night, photographed by one of the team attending CR Expo 2019
The community
One way in which we support the local community is through our sponsorship of sporting organisations
We are aware of the significant health benefits sport can bring and we see youth sport in particular as being a great way to develop healthy active habits for life.
Toddington Rovers Football Club
We are proud sponsors of the local junior football team Toddington Rovers, and in particular the Under 14s Dragons Team, who display the Computair logo on their team shirts.
Tring Rugby Union Football Club We are also delighted to sponsor Tring Rugby Club. Computair has supported two team players each season over a number of years and this season we also became shirt sponors for the M & J tour shirts.
Pitch Finder app for the Milton Keynes and district development league
Computair is proud to announce it has recently become a sponsor of an exciting project helping youth football in our local Milton Keynes and District Development League. CSP UK offers an app, the CSP UK Pitch Finder, as well as a website and accompanying handbook helping parents navigate their way to match fixtures around the country.
Sponsorship of Cardiff Met Women’s Rugby
For the past two seasons, Computair has been sponsoring Cardiff Met Women’s Rugby Club, a competitive sports club run by the Students Union at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Cardiff Met Women’s team is a highly successful university sports club with their 1st and 2nd teams playing in the competitive Women’s National League and Western 1A League respectively. Our sponsorship has gone towards the cost of strapping, new game balls and other equipment, and importantly, a team physio.
Volunteering and fundraising
We encourage engagement with local charities and we have staff who volunteer in a variety of settings. Our MD, Richard Phelan, is involved with a children’s circus skills group which really is as exciting as it sounds, teaching unicycle riding, stilt-walking, juggling and aerial silks, to name a few!
One of our original founders, Nigel Taffs, is a skilled player of the mandolin and the ukulele and his band, Last of the Summer Ukuleles, organises frequent musical events to fund-raise for local charities, as well as playing in residential care homes for the elderly.
Other voluntary work undertaken by the team include a ‘helping hands’ group offering lifts to the elderly, assisting a competitive swimming club at the local leisure centre and helping TADS Teens, the local theatre group for young people, with anything from set design to generating publicity.
The environment
We are fortunate that the nature of our business is such that no physical product is manufactured and therefore no chemical byproducts are created, but, as we consider the climate and sustainability, it is clear there are other things which can be done.
Our carbon footprint
It is fair to say that the pandemic changed the rules of working for everyone, with home-working becoming more widespread. Although that’s thankfully a memory now, team members continue to combine days in the office with working from home, thereby reducing our carbon footprint by cutting down on the distances travelled by car.
We also participate in the government Cycle to Work scheme and team members living locally both cycle and walk to the office.
Renewable energy
In 2021 we changed our electricity supplier to one which produces energy from 100% renewable sources. Depending on the carbon intensity of the time of day, it means our office CO2 emissions can be as little as 31g per kWh of electricity, compared with a UK average of 233g. Long-term, we will be considering the feasibility of self-generated renewable energy. Solar panels are one possibility we will be investigating in more detail as part of this objective.
Recycling
It may be obvious, but recycling is still an important cornerstone of caring for the environment and we do our best by recycling plastics, tins, paper, cardboard, batteries and ink cartridges, collecting those items here in the office.
Being a software company we do end up with outdated computer hardware. We collect this and when there is a large enough quantity it is transported to a local waste and recycling centre.