Technically Write IT in partnership with Cork Simon and Pieta House
Business Type: Technical Writing
Location: West Building, Carrigaline Business Park, Carrigaline, P43 HK76, Co. Cork
Mission Statement: It’s all about people.
No. of Employees: 33
Overview of CSR Initiative
Partnership with Cork Simon and Pieta House
Resources required: Employees donated their time and money.
Challenges: Recruiting charities, including all employees, regardless of location.
Benefits: Strong relationships between TWi and their charity partners.
Outcome: Charities received financial donations and other benefits such as assistance with flag days and bag packing days.
How was/is this initiative promoted? Events are listed on an internal tracker. Employees receive emails reminding them of events.
Do you report on CSR in the Annual Report?
TWi do not publish an Annual Report but that they do inform the employees of our ongoing CSR work and contributions at company-wide meetings.
CSR Dimension:
Towards Responsible Business’ Ireland’s National Plan on CSR 2017-2020 identifies 4 core dimensions of CSR – Environment, Community, Workplace and Marketplace.
• Environment - minimising negative environmental impacts
• Community - interaction with your local community partners and organisations
• Workplace - supporting and engaging with your employees
• Marketplace - interaction with your local community partners and organisations.
Please select the dimension(s) that you apply to your CSR Initiative and why?
Community:
TWi have interacted with Cork Simon and Pieta House. Our employees have donated their time to various events such as flag days and bag packing days. We have also hosted internal events such as cake sales and Christmas jumper days. The money raised at these events was donated to our charities. Our partnership with Cork Simon focuses on No poverty, Zero Hunger, and Quality Education. We use our technical writing skills to assist people in writing CVs, reports, and funding applications. Since 2015, TWi has contributed over 200 working hours and over 80 thousand euro in donations.
Above: Christmas Jumper Day
Workplace:
Our charity involvement required massive engagement from our employees. We developed a Charity and Community Involvement (CCI) committee to identify areas in which employees wished to donate their time and money to. The CCI committee circulated a company-wide survey and from the responses, identified Cork Simon and Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland (2015-2017) and Cork Simon and Pieta House (2016-present) as ideal charities to which we could lend our services, including the following:
• Supporting Cork Simon service users with advice around job placement
• Provide effective writing training to help staff with funding applications
• Participate in events such as bag packing, flag days, and coffee mornings
• Participate in the Darkness into Light event
• Generate funds to support the Pieta House Resilience Academy.
Above: Presentation of cheque to Cork Simon
Business Impact:
How has the CSR initiative benefitted your business and demonstrated a win:win in the short-term and/or long-term?
The compliments TWi received from our charity partners signify a measure of success regarding our involvement.
Sinead Naughton from Cork Simon attended our Effective Writing training free of charge to help her with writing applications for funding and was very complimentary of the content and trainers:
“I was delighted to be offered a place on TWi’s Effective Writing Skills course. The course taught me so many practical and easy ways to make improvements to my writing, and this has been hugely beneficial to me in my role at Cork Simon.”
Helen Hughes, Resilience Academy Coordinator welcomes the benefits the collaboration brings to the organization:
"The Resilience Academy is the response of Pieta House to a nationally recognised requirement for mental health awareness in schools and the need for reputable and skilled agents to facilitate the course for second year students. TWi have liaised with Pieta House about the Resilience Academy for many months now and worked very hard to identify schools that they feel might benefit from such a programme. Pieta House welcome this demonstration of the business community coming together in support of these students and their well-being".
The positive feedback we received created great team morale and a huge sense of satisfaction among our employees.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Please identify which SDG goal(s) apply to your CSR initiative.
The following SDG goals apply to our partnership with Cork Simon:
• SDG 1: No Poverty
• SDG 2: Zero Hunger
• SDG 4: Quality Education
Cork Simon received financial donations and other benefits such as assistance with flag days and bag packing days. We used our technical writing skills to assist people in writing CVs, reports, and funding applications.
The following SDG goals apply to our partnership with Pieta House:
• SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing
• SDG 4: Quality Education
Pieta House received financial donations to run the resilience programme in four schools promoting good health and wellbeing, and quality education.
Learning
What did you learn from your experience of creating and implementing a CSR initiative?
CSR initiatives are very rewarding in many ways. Firstly, employees who get involved receive major satisfaction from helping others. This sense of achievement and pride among employees is quite evident at TWi and employees are always willing to get involved in events. Also, charity involvement creates a feel-good factor in the workplace. Many events, such as cake sales and Christmas jumper days have a major fun element and employees enjoy their involvement at such events. Therefore, we learned that our CSR initiative was very rewarding.
Nonetheless, like all areas of our business, we discovered that our charity involvement required management.
Our CCI committee were vital in identifying and communicating events to employees.
What advice would you give a business starting on their CSR Journey?
We advise that you should develop a committee who will manage your charity involvement. We also advise that you survey your employees to identify areas in which they would like to donate their time and money.
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