Corporate Social Responsibility Policy

Advanced Access Ltd, its Directors, managers and team are committed to ensuring that our business is conducted in all respects according to high ethical, professional and legal standards. We strive to promote a friendly, supportive, and safe working environment, seek to work where possible with local companies to support the community and reduce the impact of our working activities to help protect the environment.

Our people

We recognise that our people are our greatest asset, and we invest significantly in regular training for them to develop their skills and provide career development to help them reach their full potential to support our continued growth and success.

We keep our employees informed via regular e-newsletters and meetings. We ensure our staff are aware of our all our policies including those of equal opportunity and diversity and there is zero tolerance for bullying or harassment in the workplace.

We have regular company social activities to get to know each other and develop and build relationships across teams and have fun.

Customers

We seek to build strong relationships with our customers and be open and fair in our business dealings with them.

Develop and train staff to provide outstanding customer service standards and to deliver products at the agreed price to the right place at the right time.

We work closely with suppliers to ensure the quality and safety of the products we sell.

We work to rectify any errors quickly and accurately.

Suppliers

We seek to build strong relationships with our suppliers and be open and fair in our business dealings with them.

We pay suppliers in accordance with the agreed terms.

We have a ‘business gifts’ policy within our company handbook not to offer, pay or accept bribes or substantial favours.

We support the Modern Slavery Act of 2015.

Health and safety

We are committed to providing a working environment which is both safe and fit for purpose and we provide a rest area for employee welfare. Each employee receives specific health and safety training and it is the duty of all employees to take responsibility for preventing injury or accident to themselves and others.

Other measures that are in place to support safe working practices are:

• Our Directors and Health and Safety representative are supported by an external health and safety consultant.
• We hold regular committee meetings, and the notes are displayed on our health and safety notice boards.
• Our health and safety policy statement is displayed on notice boards around our premises.
• We ensure that all staff are suitably prepared and trained in safe working practices.
• We actively promote general health and hygiene awareness via posters and weekly eshots.
• We encourage staff to report near misses and to be proactive in reducing any risks in the workplace.
• We ensure that health and safety concerns raised are reviewed and dealt with as quickly as appropriate to the level of risk or concern.

Environment

We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint. We have doubled our recycled waste from 2015, and more than 50% of our business waste sent for disposal is now recycled.

Our warehouse seeks to package products efficiently minimising the need to buy in or use additional packaging whilst maintaining our high quality standards for safe shipment of goods.

We try to ensure that packaging and office stationery products we buy are as environmentally friendly as possible.

We seek to cut down our printing waste by better use of our IT systems for example:

• Use of projector and screens for presenting documents to internal groups to reduce printing.
• All printers set up as standard for draft black and white printing.
• Enhancing our in-house database to be able to store electric copies of documents against customer records for easy recall rather than printing and storing.
• Adding footers to our emails encouraging people to think about the environment and think before they print.
• Encouraging staff to think about day to day working practices and suggest ideas for improvements and raise awareness about not printing documents where possible.
• Emailing invoices and statements.
• E-payslips introduced in 2016.
• Bespoke ERP System deployed, significantly reducing the need for printed matter. The use of PDA devices in the warehouse removes the need for paper based picking and despatching documents.

We are committed to continue to monitor and review our working practices and activities to reduce waste where possible and recycle more of our waste product.

RoHS & WEEE compliance

We supply a wide range of products from a wide range of recognised brand manufacturer’s, the current status regarding RoHS & WEEE compliance for the product we supply is as follows:

We have compliance statements from most of our manufacturer’s, with a wide variety of responses ranging from full compliance to full exemption. The most common response is that their products are installed and become part of the fabric of the building and so are exempt, further to this most manufacturers are either compliant or working towards compliance.

Based on the statements provided by our manufacturer’s, the product distributed by Advanced Access Ltd is either compliant and marked accordingly or considered exempt under the current interpretation.

Where specific statements are required, please contact us and we will forward a copy of the relevant manufacturer’s statement.

Security and information

We aim to make security a way of life and integral to our day to day working practices.

We use access control systems to enter our building and again within the building to access specific rooms which limits access to IT/communication systems or paper filing systems.

We take the security of handling and processing business information and personal and sensitive data seriously. We have a security policy in place, which is reviewed annually, and staff are given specific training in handling and storing data and in following procedures to keep data secure.

We have settings within our IT systems for different access levels set according to the job role requirements need to access specific data.

Community

We respect the environment in which we work and do business. We hold regular fundraising activities to support charities both locally and nationally.