Social Responsibility
To give coherence to our corporate responsibility initiatives across the group, we have adopted the theme of 'employability'. This is inspiring initiatives inside the organisation as well as outside, because we have included our own people as one of the three principal target groups alongside the long term unemployed and people with disabilities.
Since 1994, Serco has had the "Enabling People to Excel" initiative. Every contract has a toolkit outlining what employability means to Serco, the thinking behind our commitment to employee volunteering, a host of core initiatives centred on employability, and recommended organisations that can support would-be volunteers.
Around the world, Serco people are actively involved in a rich diversity of community-based initiatives that add up to far more than the sum of their parts. The nature of our business activities also places us at the very heart of those communities, often in very profound and sometimes unexpected ways.
Through our flourishing relationship with the housing charity Habitat for Humanity, our volunteers have helped to build decent homes for hundreds of families in India and Sri Lanka. As part of our business activities in America, Serco counsellors on the Army Wounded Warriors (AW2) programme are caring for seriously injured servicemen returning from the Iraq conflict while providing crucial support to their families. In cyberspace, Serco expertise is protecting children from online abuse through the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. Through our partnership with Oxfam, Serco staff qualifying for a long-service award can now choose to donate a life-changing gift to some of the world's poorest people. These are just some examples of how Serco is winning the trust and confidence of communities worldwide.