Our commitment as a socially responsible employer is at the core of what we do. It’s not an add-on, but a central part of our daily activities.
To us, social value means delivering services in ways that produce wider benefit to the local community and capture longer-term savings for our clients and partners.
The Group is committed to considering how the services we deliver might improve economic, social and environmental wellbeing; to the principle of social value provision as part of the procurement process and to working with our partners and clients to ensure that desired local outcomes are delivered.
Our Group-wide Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, The Norse Way, is integrated throughout our business operations. It helps us to create financial and social value by enhancing our competitive advantage and building stronger relationships with our stakeholders.
The programme is a positive and determined ethical stance that guides our principles and behaviours and applies to everyone in the organisation regardless of where we work.
Our approach is focussing on key areas we believe could have a long-term impact on our business and society such as supporting older people, wellbeing and preventing obesity, regeneration, employment and youth opportunity, skills and employee development, environmental management and building customer trust.
As part of our Norse Way commitment, our board has agreed that staff across our Group can apply to take up to eight hours a year paid time off work to volunteer for a good cause.
Our initiatives
We are passionate about strengthening local communities. As well as being there for our customers when they need us, we are committed to extending our impact and working together to tackle the challenges our communities face every day.
Our board has agreed a policy allowing our staff to take up to eight hours a year paid time off work to volunteer for a good cause subject to operational requirements. With thousands of volunteering hours on offer, we hope we can make a real difference over time.
We are also committed to improving the health of the communities we serve. Norse Catering is a Gold Food for Life provider, recognising our use of organic produce, ethical and environmental friendly environmentally friendly food, locally sourced ingredients and steps taken in providing healthy, well-balanced menus. Our school menus team and nutritionist in Norfolk have achieved a 25% reduction in in sugar content in primary school recipes.
In Devon, Norse has bought a pedal powered ‘Smoothie Bike’ to support our commitment of to the development of healthy lifestyles.
The bike has already attended events in primary schools, secondary schools, public libraries and community events clocking up more than 150 miles in the process.
The Group also works with the Theatre Royal in Norwich to provide sponsorship which gives disadvantaged children and young people access to live theatre by providing subsidised tickets and travel via local schools.
In the five years since the programme launched, almost 21,000 children and young people aged 7 to 19 years and around 1,500 teachers and support staff have attended performances.
For many of the children and young people, it has been their first visit to a theatre, and they have been able to experience some of the country’s best programme of dance, musicals, drama and pantomimes. The Norse investment has helped the theatre increase access to high quality arts and cultural experiences for nearly 130 Norfolk schools.
The Group was awarded the In Good Company Quality Mark Plus in February 2018 for its our work tackling loneliness in Norfolk. Judges gave the Norse application a Plus mark, which is only given to organisations going the extra mile beyond their day-to-day work.
We are committed to using energy and natural resources as efficiently as possible and closely monitor electricity, gas, fuel and water consumption across the Group. Energy consumption is reviewed quarterly and areas for improvement identified.
We have a strong track record of supporting local schools, tenants and businesses to save money, energy and carbon through both innovative delivery solutions and technologies, and have made a £20m investment in renewable energy projects in both the public and private sector. Our initiatives have allowed a number of schools to have renewables without the need for upfront capital and have installed over 25,000 solar panels on the roofs of council houses, providing free electricity to tenants.
Our architects have completed an environmentally sustainable housing development called Carrowbreck near Norwich built to Passivhaus standards, which exceeds requirements for air tightness five times over. Fresh filtered air is provided to the homes 24 hours a day, utilising a heat recovery system capable of achieving over 90% efficiencies, and an equivalent power requirement of 20p per day, the same as a low energy light bulb. This is just one of a number of sustainable building projects carried out within the Group.
Norse Commercial Services operates a number of electric vans in different parts of the country and is trialling hydrogen technology and fuel additives to reduce fuel consumption in its our vehicles.
NorseCare has accessed Government funding to introduce new bio mass boilers powered by wood pellets at four of its residential homes. The move will save a considerable amount of carbon over 30 years and given the cost of oil, reduce annual running costs. The new boilers not only use a renewable energy source, but also help climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A separate project has been run at almost 20 NorseCare homes, with a prize for the location that reduced electricity consumption the most over a year. The winning location received £1,000 to spend on something for residents to enjoy and NorseCare is examining ways of harnessing technology to reduce consumption further.
As part of our commitment as a socially responsible employer, we have increased the size of our community fund to £30,000 and our staff are encouraged to apply for support to a good cause that’s close to their heart.
Applicants must be actively involved with the group, organisation or individual concerned which must be a recognised, voluntary or charitable group. Grants are often in the region of £750 and successful applications can be anything from football clubs in need of a new kit or cub groups seeking new equipment. We sponsor individuals who are often talented children of parents or grandparents who work for us. Gifted musician Bethan Cole from Newport has worked with two national children’s orchestras thanks to support from the Fund, following a successful approach from her mum who works for Norse.
We are aiming to have at least one Dementia Champion at each of the main offices across our Group and we support Dementia Awareness Week in May organised each year by the Alzheimer’s Society.
Our nominated Dementia Lead has trained more than 25 members of our staff from around the country as part of our commitment to become a more dementia friendly workplace.
In Barnsley, our staff have successfully created 50 Dementia Friends – who largely work for us in front line roles such as caretakers, cleaners and porters – and are actively working with the South Yorkshire Dementia Action Alliance to support local events within the community.
All new NorseCare staff are encouraged to become a Dementia Friend when they join us as part of their learning and development plan and all our care schemes have a Dementia Lead. They not only work within our homes, but also play an important role in raising awareness of dementia and in creating dementia-friendly communities.
Our Norse Way strategy contains a commitment to supporting local suppliers and small and medium sized businesses.
Our school meals service in Norfolk buys 87% of its meat, fruit and vegetables from within East Anglia and all poultry, pork and beef we use within our catering service is traceable right back to the farm and is Red Tractor assured.
Norse Commercial Services is driving its divisions to ensure that timber is procured from sustainable sources. We encourage our tender processes to include weighted scoring for quality, corporate responsibility and Health & Safety, ensuring we work with suppliers that share our values. That way, we use controlled purchasing to benefit the local community and environment.
The company is running a number of initiatives around the country to reduce waste. A move in Devon to encourage staff to buy reusable cups at civic sites in exchange for a discount on hot drinks has saved at least 21,000 cups going to landfill.
We have made a number of environmental changes to our shop and restaurant at County Hall in Norwich, replacing all plastic bottles with can or glass bottle alternatives and ending the use of plastic sauce sachets, serving sauce in small paper pots instead. We also now serve a number of savoury snacks and cakes ‘naked’ instead of being wrapped in plastic.
Our schools in Devon are required to keep a daily record of food waste, an initiative which has achieved a 13% reduction in food waste in a year. In Norfolk, we are eliminating the use of straws within our primary schools, and we have launched a ‘Bring Your Own Lunchbox’ initiative at our catering outlets where customers receive 10p off their meal if they use their own lunchbox instead of a cardboard takeaway box.
We have a long history of working constructively with small and medium sized businesses and are building on the many positive local proactive initiatives which already exist, and exploring how we can work better together in future. We always try to fix terms of payment with our suppliers in advance and abide by the agreed terms of payment.
