Answer is committed to the achievement of outstanding social value performance in everything we do. This commitment sits at the core of our business activities and decision-making to ensure correct organisational governance and to promote a common understanding of social responsibility that is needed to safeguard the future for a more sustainable world. We all have a responsibility to embed social value principles into our work and Answer is fully committed to embracing this in everything we do.

Our Approach

• We strive to work collaboratively, always providing a high level of professional conduct and to always maintain integrity for ourselves and our clients.
• We actively promote respect between our staff members in their dealings with each other, with clients and other third parties.

Our Workplace

• We strive to be equal, inclusive and diverse in our workforce.
• We actively create a positive healthy working environment for our team and our clients.
• We ensure our people have rewarding careers and job satisfaction – we invest in people and our people invest in us through our employee ownership scheme.
• We have created specific policies and approaches to tackling inequalities to ensure sustainability can be weaved into everything we do
• We proactively ensure all staff have access to the training they need both for their own development and to enable them to deliver a high-quality service to our clients.
• We consider all our team to be equal and we aim to create a working environment which is free of unlawful discrimination. In this regard, we maintain an Equality and Diversity Policy.

Our Strategy

We launched our Social Value Strategy in November 2023, with the use of annual reporting, and we are committed to track our impact and progress year on year. We maintain a Social Value Policy that reflects our core values and our role within society.

In our community

• We support local charities and community initiatives by sharing knowledge with professionals within our networks, delivering free training, presentations, and interactive workshops.
• We deliver talks at a variety of events throughout the year to share our knowledge and support in the development and growth of the local community.
• We also have a group of dedicated individuals proactively seeking ways in which we can expand our social reach further, including community project support.

With our clients

• We deliver exceptional service to our clients and are committed to delivering a professional service with collaboration and teamwork at its core.

With our suppliers

• We support local suppliers in our community.
• Our arrangements with our suppliers are balanced and fair.
• We are a good customer as well as a good supplier: we pay our invoices on time and we treat our suppliers with respect and courtesy.

In the environment

• Climate change is a clear and urgent threat, and we are fully committed minimising our impact and supporting environmental protection.
• We are committed to behaving responsibly by:
  • Minimising waste
  • Recycling wherever possible
  • Not using disposable plastics
  • Working remotely where possible
  • Promoting green travel via an electric vehicle incentive scheme and a cycle to work scheme
  • Ensuring that heating and electrical equipment is turned off when not in use.
• We are committed to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2040: read our Carbon Reduction Plan.

Tracking our impact and progress

We are committed to tracking our progress and minimising our impact on the environment through the following initiatives:

Business travel

1. Number of staff subscribed to the Cycle to Work Scheme.
2. Number of staff not working locally.
3. Number of Staff signed up to our green car scheme.
4. Local office provision.

Energy usage

1. Number of kilowatts consumed in an office environment.
2. Energy saving lights – percentage upgraded.
3. Paperless office objective – reduction in print outputs.

Staff contributing to the strategy

1. Number of staff opting to support community and environmental projects/initiatives.

Use of Technology

1. Asset lifespan/replacement timeframes.
2. Percentage of assets recycled/re-used rather than disposed of.
3. Percentage of services which move SaaS and cloud services to reduce carbon footprint.

Information, training and communication

1. Action plan for further improvements on discussion with external experts and Leadership team.