Fred Shaw, CSR Manager, Service Birmingham

Service Birmingham wishes to reinforce the view that everyone should embrace CSR for the good of the company, the employees and their families and importantly for the good of the community we serve.

As a successful company, we have a strong commitment to helping and assisting in community cohesion and capacity building. We focus on sharing our expertise, skills and resources and making a positive impact on the wider Local Community.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is at the heart of everything we do as a business and integral to our brand identity. Our commitment to CSR is practical, organisation-wide and encompasses a number of different themes and activities.

It is also in-built to the company's ownership structure. A proportion of our annual profits go to our Staff Benefit Scheme (SBS) which is designed to allow our 1100 employees to nominate worthy individuals or charitable organisations in Birmingham for financial support.

As a result, many of our CSR priorities are established by our employees themselves. This bottom-up approach means CSR is something that is ingrained right through our organisation; with every staff member able to play a part in the decision-making process.

Our CSR mission statement says: 'Service Birmingham is committed to sharing our expertise, skills and resources and making a positive impact on the wider local community'.

Approach and Solution

To us, CSR is not merely about distributing grants, it is founded on developing genuine partnerships offering practical involvement with the organisations we support.

During 2010, we awarded grants to 43 local charities and groups across Birmingham. Our approach also means that our employees are entitled to up to 20 working hours a year paid time-off for approved volunteering activities. Our employees have a great track record of getting actively involved in the work of our partners. This commitment encompasses everyone from the CEO to new starters.

Results and Benefits

Since 2006, we have invested £1.6 million in charitable causes via our Staff Benefit Scheme and our employees had completed 2,425 hours of volunteering by the end of 2010. In early 2011 we had 32 live CSR projects. Below is a snapshot of some of our key themes and activities:

Tackling social exclusion

In 2008 we began an ICT apprenticeship scheme recruiting 16 to 18 yr olds from underachieving or disadvantaged backgrounds, but who nevertheless had latent potential. We currently have 14 apprentices on-board gaining the skills and experience needed to pursue careers in ICT.

Promoting sustainability

Through our community computers project we have donated 260 former council PCs and laptops to 91 charitable organisations across Birmingham in the last two years. This not only helps improve the capacity and capability of small volunteer-led organisations, but provides a practical solution to the growing problem of dealing with electronic waste.

Mentoring young people

Service Birmingham is one of the core partners behind the new King Edward VI Sheldon Heath Academy. Some of our employees also work in the school as mentors, helping young people taking their GCSE in ICT. We have also begun a project to promote citizenship, working with four junior schools in deprived parts of the city.

Citizenship project

Working in partnership with the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre and Rotary International we work with local school children from the age of nine to develop new life skills through community service, social experience, creative skills and physical recreation to become young leaders within their communities.

Community engagement

We have been working with a local community to help transform the Dolphin Centre in Ward End Park into a modern community facility. Prime Minister David Cameron joined Service Birmingham employees last October to lend a hand.

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