Sage Blog

It’s that time of the year again when we publish our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report and it always reminds me just how much we’ve achieved and what great activities happened last year across the business. It’s been another hectic twelve months for the CSR team but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Leigh Thompson, Sage's CSR Consultant

Here at Sage, we believe that being a responsible business and committing to Corporate Social Responsibility isn’t just about giving money away and getting involved in loads of stuff (although we know this helps sometimes).

Actually, what we really care about is doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way, and that acting responsibly isn’t something we just talk about or do from time to time, it’s a way of life.

Our CSR activity covers our approach to getting greener, engaging our people and treating them in the right way, learning and development, our focus on customers and suppliers as well as community commitment and charitable donations, so there’s a lot going on!

As part of my role, I get out into the community and speak to businesses, small and large, about their own CSR activity, so we can learn from them, and hopefully help them by sharing what we know too.

As well as spreading the CSR word externally, it’s really important  to engage our people. In many organisations, like ours, they’re the power behind your CSR efforts. All you need to do is involve them in decisions where you can, let them know what you’re doing, and how they can get involved.

So whether they’re helping us to support charitable events, volunteering in the community, coming up with new ways to be ‘greener’ or living and breathing our guiding principles of simplicity, agility, innovation, trust and integrity, it’s our people who put our responsibilities into action.

Leigh Thompson, Sage CSR Consultant

To do our bit for Sport Relief we turn our call centre over to become a Sport Relief Call Centre run by our very own team of Sage volunteers. It’s great fun and totally hectic!

Sport Relief

When it comes to being part of the Sport Relief Call Centre, our mailbox goes into overdrive trying to keep up with responses from volunteers.  It’s great for them and for us, and now in our fifth year we knew it was going to be a tough challenge to top previous years.

A live performance from a solo singer kick started the night with a real bang, followed with ‘survival’ packs, a magician and a buffet which all went down a treat for our team of 103 volunteers who took a staggering £100,379.04

Sage’s very own magician / balloon artist kept us entertained with rope and card tricks and made sure no-one went home empty handed, whether it was with a sword a dog, a palm tree or a hat.

Prizes were dished out left right and centre from, bottles of wine, meals for two,  basket ball and football tickets and plenty boxes of chocolates which went down a storm.

A few celebrity guests popped in to say Hi, and chatted to volunteers, Joey Barton, Steve Harmison, Neil Killeen and Phil Mustard, at one point we thought Joey was here for the night after he pulled up a chair to chat to a couple of volunteers.

After enough food to feed the five thousand, our traditional pizza fest arrived right in the middle of our busiest time of night again! But all was in good hands, out went our refreshment’s team with their hostess trolley’s whizzing in and out making sure everyone got a hot slice. With a lot of laughs and one or two green faces through eating too much it was yet another spectacular night.

Written by  Gemma Booth; by day a Sage Sales Administrator, by night a lean mean Sport Relief organising machine.

On Wednesday we had some of the team from the Carbon Trust in our Newcastle office. They are launching the Best Advice campaign and, calling on local businesses to cut their energy costs by between 20% – 30%, by signing-up for a free Carbon Survey.

Paul Stobart, our UK CEO, launched the Best Advice campaign in Newcastle by speaking to the media and the campaign is also backed by leading business groups, politicians and a range of successful companies across the country.

Since 2006, the Carbon Trust has delivered over £180m in energy savings to British businesses through its Carbon Surveys.  The Carbon Trust estimates that British businesses currently spending between £50,000 and £3m on their annual energy bills, could reduce their collective energy spend by more than £3bn by implementing energy saving actions of the type specified in Carbon Trust surveys.  

How can your business be more energy efficient? 

Now and in the future businesses need to consider three key steps in addressing energy efficiency:

• Changing behaviour (e.g. encouraging staff to switch off lighting, heating and machinery when not in use)
• Installing energy efficiency controls and settings (to automatically turn off machinery and equipment when it’s not in use)
• Upgrading old, energy intensive equipment with new energy efficient models (e.g. replacing old boilers, and lighting)

 What tips and tricks could you use?

 Switch lights off in empty rooms

• You could cut your lighting costs by as much as 15%, just by making sure you turn lights off in rooms and corridors that aren’t being used

Don’t turn up the heating unless you really need to

• Try to keep your thermostat at 19°C. Your heating costs will go up by 8% each time you increase the temperature by just one degree

Maintain your equipment properly

• If you don’t regularly check your heating equipment, you could be adding as much as 10% to your heating bill without knowing it

Vending machines v kettles

• It is cheaper to provide a kettle for staff who work outside normal business hours than to continue to run a drinks vending machine during these times

Standby

• A single computer and monitor left on 24 hours a day will cost over £50 a year. Switching them off out of hours and enabling standby features could reduce this to £15 a year each and prolong the lifespan of equipment

Lighten up

• Replacing high wattage filament lamps or tungsten halogen lamps with compact fluorescent lamps or metal halide lamps will give energy savings of 65-75%

Find and fix compressed air leaks

• Compressed air leaking through a single 3mm hole could cost you nearly £700 per year in energy costs

Motors and drives

• Swapping a single 10kW motor running at 25% loading for a 2.5kW motor running at full load can save around £300/year
• Leaving electric motors running over weekends across the year could cost over £2,000 per motor
• Lowering the speed of a motor by just 20% can produce an energy saving of up to 50%.

Leigh Thompson, Corporate Social Responsibility team