Community

Performance
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We encourage all employees to participate in the community and in civic and charitable causes. We believe that involvement is valuable to both the community and the individual as it can assist in personal development.

Charitable giving

Our charitable giving is focused on employee choice, with the Group ‘matching’ employee donations and sponsorship up to £2,000 per annum. In 2010, donations increased to £1.1 million (2009: £0.6 million). This reflected the improvement in our financial performance and an increase in the number of discretionary donations. The discretionary donations, largely given in memory of deceased employees, were to charities with which they were closely involved, including St Paul’s Way School and St Martin-in-the-Fields.

In addition to our successful matched giving scheme, we expect to make further discretionary donations in 2011 which will be focused on charities that operate in the area of Social Welfare.

A number of our offices operate payroll giving schemes, of which the UK scheme is the largest, with 22 per cent. (2009: 21 per cent.) of employees participating. Charitable donations by the firm of £220,000 were made through this scheme (2009: £202,000) and we again received the Payroll Giving Quality Mark Gold Award in 2010, which recognises that over 20 per cent. of employees donated money to charity via payroll.

Volunteering

We encourage employees to spend time working in the community. Employees globally are able to take up to 15 hours paid leave per year for volunteering services.

In London, we are a corporate sponsor of the Hackney Schools Mentoring Programme, established by the East London Business Alliance and Hackney Learning Partnerships. Our employees help to mentor 14 and 15 year old students in the London Borough of Hackney to increase students’ self confidence, whilst allowing them to gain experience of the working environment and broaden their aspirations. Overseas, our employees also participate in local volunteering schemes.

Our charitable giving is focused on employee choice, with the Group ‘matching’
employee donations and sponsorship.