Corporate Responsibility

   

Aware of our responsibilities as a global corporate citizen

OVERVIEW
Dimension Data operates globally, spanning five continents and over 47 countries. The Group is aware of its responsibilities as a global corporate citizen not only to deliver value and profit to shareholders, but also to adhere to a code of ethical conduct; to provide a fair and unprejudiced employment framework for its employees; to deliver solutions that answer the environmental requirements of our clients, and to ensure that we operate as sustainably as is practical.

During the year ended 30 September 2008 the Board has reviewed our corporate responsibility programme, including the long and short term risks to the value of the Group associated with ethical, environmental and social issues. Following this review our efforts were refocused with the appointment of an executive as Global Lead, Sustainability. Our corporate responsibility programme now covers three main areas: environmental issues, social issues (including our own employees as well as community engagement); and ethics and governance.

Dimension Data aims to integrate its Corporate Responsibility programme into the Group’s values, operations and business decisions at all levels, promoting an ethical and sustainable corporate culture. This report focuses on the progress made during the year in our environmental and social programmes. Further details on ethics and governance can be found in the Business Review and Corporate Governance Report.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMME
Dimension Data has a relatively low environmental impact compared to similar sized organisations in different industry sectors. However we acknowledge that climate change is a global problem and we are committed to responsible environmental practices throughout our business. With this in mind, our environmental strategy covers three pillars: Licence to Operate, Go-to-Market and Employee Engagement.

Licence to Operate:
This aspect of our environmental policy covers our compliance with local and international environmental legislation and our commitment to measuring, monitoring and ultimately reducing our carbon footprint. During the year we completed our first submission to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP6) and have finalised our Carbon Management Plan. Subsequent to year end, Dimension Data was placed in the Leadership Index (CDLI) for non-carbon-intensive sectors with a rating of 93. In 2009 we intend to roll out an Environmental Management System employing the ISO 14001 framework with a focus on energy consumption, business travel and waste management.

Go-to-Market:
Dimension Data offers a range of solutions and services that can significantly reduce business energy consumption and business travel for our clients. These offerings support our clients’ requirements to reduce their environmental impact and include: data centre virtualisation and consolidation, data centre power and cooling, data centre design and architecture, virtual meeting options using a variety of visual communications technologies, e-Procurement, and several bespoke services including our recently released Office Sustainability Service.

Employee Engagement:
Conservation of the environment is a cause that our employees have taken to heart. We support this interest as the only way to build a truly credible and sustainable programme for Dimension Data. During the year we deployed Greenpoint, an environmental site on our intranet, which includes topical information, white papers and presentations. We also established environmental thinktanks in most of the regions where the voluntary participants include employees from all divisions within Dimension Data and their charter is to ensure the enhancement of our environmental strategy.

SOCIAL PROGRAMMES – MAKING A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE TO THOSE IN NEED
The key themes of our social programmes are community engagement, volunteering and stakeholder engagement, with black economic empowerment (BEE) a pivotal part of the programme in South Africa.

Community engagement
This element of our policy incorporates our commitment to various regional issues and causes, community involvement, partnership with non-profit companies, charities and nongovernmental organisations and sponsorship of charitable events. In addition, in some regions we provide the structures to facilitate workplace giving – where employees can elect, with matching Group support, to make payments to charities directly from the payroll.

Some highlights from regional community engagement projects during the year include:
Asia’s regional programme, Carecraft, focuses on sponsoring children. It placed considerable focus on the Myanmar cyclone disaster and the earthquake in China’s Szechuan province, and all countries under the Datacraft brand contributed to these two causes, raising over $90,000. Employees also volunteered their services at the disaster sites and formed part of the humanitarian effort. In addition, in Korea we participated in the Love Loaf programme as a fundraising initiative; in Singapore we supported the children of the Melrose Home; in Hong Kong we were involved with the Salvation Army and St James settlements for the elderly and homeless; and in India we supported the SOS Children’s Villages and the Red Cross. Our Asian business has a relationship with WorldVision, and ‘adopted’ 142 children through WorldVision’s child sponsorship initiative.