Welcome to our first Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) review.

When we sat down to write it, we asked ourselves some basic questions about what we felt CSR meant for us. We found the answers to those questions gave us a clearer idea of what we stand for and helped us to develop our policy and set out ways to measure our performance.

We've decided to publish these questions as part of the review. We've also set out how we fulfil our responsibilities at present and our plans for improvement in the future. Each year we will review progress and update our approach.

It is worth keeping in mind that we have undertaken this review against a background of rapid change in many areas of our business:

• Mobile platforms and video have really arrived
• The rise of user-generated content and Web 2.0 has wide and far reaching ramifications for online communications
• Our people have, quite rightly, high aspirations for training and development and require opportunities for personal growth
• Our clients, naturally, demand the best ideas and execution, that can be integrated with their wider communications, often with significant new technologies and audiences
• And our audiences have grown wiser fast; expectations for usability and accessibility are rising by the day

Where change is concerned, we embrace it and strive to lead. We need to operate responsibly and ethically, without losing sight of commercial reality – we need to be profitable. To achieve that we need to design and build innovative and distinctive web sites and service the needs of our clients while ensuring we have the right structures, skills and capabilities to meet our goals. 

We hope you get a feel for our values when you read this review: transparency, honesty, creative thinking, constant improvement and a strong duty of care for our clients and employees. These are the foundations of our business and have stood the test of time – we started in 1991 and our first CSR review is way overdue.

Putting this review together has been a learning experience and generated many internal conversations. Please tell me what you think of our review. We welcome your input.

Mark Hill, Managing Director
Mark.Hill@the-group.net
March 2007