Responsible
Business

Business in the Community

We’re a member of Business in the Community (BITC) – the largest and longest-established, business-led membership organisation dedicated to responsible business. We work closely with BITC to ensure that we drive and inspire action in our communities and achieve greater social and environmental impact.

In November 2022, BHP engaged in the BITC Responsible Business Tracker, a comprehensive diagnostic tool designed to evaluate a company’s responsible business practices. This tracker evaluated BHP’s performance as a responsible business by tracking our progress against the UN’s sustainable goals. Conducting a materiality assessment is a cornerstone in shaping a responsible business strategy. BHP has identified the key material issues and will look to improve our score when we retake the assessment.

What we do

Fundraising and charitable giving

We recognise that all our people have personal reasons for supporting their favourite charities, which is why we support many different charitable organisations that our staff care passionately about. Instead, we support many charitable organisations our staff care passionately about.

Some of the activities we get involved with include supporting national charity days such as the Macmillan Coffee Morning, Wear it Pink Day for Breast Cancer Now, and Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children, and we organise regular food and gift donations to food banks, charities and hospitals.

We also arrange an annual Big BHP Fundraising Challenge. In recent years, our team has tackled the Yorkshire Three Peaks and a 19.3 mile hike around three reservoirs in the Peak District National Park, raising more than £26,000. In 2022/23, we were delighted to have collectively raised more than £37,000 for important causes across the UK. You can read our CSR Review of the year here.

Volunteering

We encourage our people to make a positive contribution to the communities we live and work in. As well as the numerous fundraising activities we get involved in, everyone has the opportunity to take one paid day per year to carry out voluntary work for any charitable organisation they want to support.

With the help of Ark, we also organise team volunteering days. Ark is a not-for-profit organisation connecting environmental programmes to businesses. Moving away from the traditional ‘away days’, working on an Ark project enables our colleagues to get together outside of the office. We’re able to see the challenges up close, use Ark’s expertise to provide solutions and contribute to a long-term plan.

In 2023, we held eight separate events across the Yorkshire region, completing a total of 840 hours’ voluntary work with 119 members of staff taking part. Read more about our volunteering here.

Green Initiatives

Plant a tree initiative

From 1 October 2023, we were pleased to announce our commitment to planting four trees for every new client we take on. This is part of our ongoing pledge to pursue sustainable business practices.

Reducing our emissions

As a firm, we have undertaken an annual assessment for a number of years to enable us to understand our carbon footprint. This has led to a reduction in our emissions and the introduction of a number of initiatives to encourage our employees to be more aware of their own carbon footprint. Some examples of how we’ve worked towards reducing our emissions over the last few years include:

• Encouraging virtual meetings where possible
• Offering employees a cycle-to-work scheme
• Encouraging car sharing wherever possible
• Setting printers to print double-sided as default
• Reducing the number of printers in our offices
• Encouraging electronic sharing of information/documents rather than printing
• Introducing Adobe Sign for the approval of documents electronically
• Sending electronic delegate packs for seminars rather than paper copies
• When replacing light fittings, replace with LEDs and motion sensors
• Introducing recycling bins in our kitchens
• Buying responsibly sourced coffee and tea, and ensure that our tea bags do not contain plastic

Giving back to the charity sector

Trustee training

As part of our commitment to the charity sector, we have trained over 1,000 trustees over the last five years through our free-of-charge trustee training sessions. These webinars usually cover the financial and governance responsibilities of trustees, as well as providing a network for trustees to share information with others and develop new insights into the running of charities.

Charity Conference

Our free annual charity conference is now in its 15th year. It provides updates on a variety of current issues affecting the sector as well as invaluable networking opportunities. The conference is delivered by representatives from BHP, and external speakers who are specialists in their field. In 2023, we welcomed more than 120 guests from charities across the North of England to the conference in Sheffield. Click here to view a short highlights video about the BHP charity conference.