Corporate Social Responsibility

In conducting business we recognise our responsibility to deliver quality to customers, recruit and reward people on merit alone, minimise health and safety risks, maintain stringent environmental protection standards, and honour agreements with partners and suppliers. Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Steering Committee meets three times a year and is chaired by the Chief Executive Officer.

We revised our CSR Vision and Strategy in February 2011 and it is centred around five key elements:-

• Our People
• Health and Safety
• Community
• Sustainability
• Customer

Our People
People are our most valued resource and, despite the difficult economic conditions, the company is committed to providing training and development opportunities which equip all employees with the necessary skills to help them perform to the best of their ability.

2011 was a difficult  year for the employees of TMG as the business accelerated its restructuring activities as part of the online transition. The success of this transition is to the huge credit of all past and present employees, and the continued success of TMG and its brands is something of which everyone associated with the business can be enormously proud.

As a business we know that employees who are committed to their organisation will perform better. To help ensure our employees are engaged and supported we are committed to requesting feedback via regular employee opinion surveys. Our last scheduled survey took place in October 2011; the next survey will be in October 2012.

Health and Safety
Our policy of ensuring safe and pleasant working conditions for all employees has continued to operate, as far as possible within the constraints imposed by the working environment. A full time Health, Safety and Environment Lead is employed by the business and is managed through the CSR Steering Committee. We regularly benchmark our health and safety performance against similar organisations in order to help maintain an environment that continues to promote a healthy and safe workplace.

In April 2011, we were awarded two gold awards by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA): Occupational Health and Safety and Managing Occupational Road Risk (MORR), for the fourth and second years respectively.

Our achievement in relation to Occupational Health and Safety is testimony not only to the commitment of TMG Management to high standards in Health and Safety but also to the commitment of all TMG employees.

In addition, ‘On Road Risk’ is an area of great focus for the business. Our MORR achievement award is recognition of continued improvement to our occupational road risk policy and Fleet Management processes.

Community
Over the last three years, we have developed our Community policy by supporting three charities: Help the Hospices, Samaritans and Brake - The Road Safety Charity. These three charities have been supported through corporate donations, fundraising initiatives at our centres and staff volunteering efforts.

We encourage our employees to get involved and support various charitable initiatives that are important to them and are within the communities in which we operate. We have also endorsed a Community Involvement Policy which supports Trader Media Group employees wishing to work with communities across the UK, both as private individuals and also as employees of TMG. Beyond these initiatives TMG supports other national and local charities through our corporate match funding bursary, available to employees for individual charitable commitments and fundraising.

In 2011, our charity partner was Help the Hospices. The partnership gives staff the benefit of working with a national charity with national resources while directly supporting hospices in the communities where employees live and work. TMG was proud to sponsor around fifty employees taking part in a Coast to Coast cycle challenge in June 2011. The ride covered 172 miles from the Lake District to the North Yorkshire dales and the team raised £43,865 for Help the Hospices through a combination of corporate donation and personal fundraising.

Sustainability
In 2008 TMG extended its environmental remit group-wide, with a primary focus on carbon management. Our Fleet Management processes have been improved significantly, culminating in the provision of monthly fuel data for review by our Executive Team.

Over the next year it is intended that fuel efficiency data will help bring both carbon emission reduction and improvements from a health and safety perspective, as we work with our drivers to review their driving habits.

In 2009/10 TMG emitted a total of 10,549 tonnes of carbon from our premises’ use of electricity, gas and car fleet fuel. During 2010/11, we saw a significant reduction in emissions to a total of 5,909 tonnes of carbon.  It is our intention to extend the scope of our carbon footprint calculation, working with the Carbon Trust to identify energy efficiency measures that can be implemented at our office locations.

Customer
We are working to ensure we become a customer orientated business - our ambition is to put our customers at the heart of our business. Our starting point was simple: some in depth customer research to ask our customers what is important to them and what they expect from us.  Customers told us what they expect from TMG and as a result of this feedback, we have launched ‘Our promise to you’ - five pledges we have promised to deliver our dealers:

• We’ll deliver a premium service, seven days a week
• We’ll offer you more training and advice
• We’ll make all our tools user friendly
• We’ll make sure only good dealers stand out
• We’ll act on your feedback

This is not just a pledge on a piece of paper; it is core to how we design our business - our products, services and technology - and work with our customers. It will evolve as our customers’ expectations do.