Corporate Social Responsibility

The group launched a formal corporate responsibility initiative during the year to co‑ordinate existing activity and ensure monitoring of key metrics across its manufacturing and other operations. The aim of this initiative is to ensure the group is compliant with all relevant regulation and legislation whilst enhancing the working environment for our employees and minimising the environmental impact of our manufacturing processes.

Formal Directives and Certification

The group manufactures products in both Sweden and England and undertakes R&D in England. The group complies with all local and European legislation relevant to the respective territories. The group’s manufacturing facilities in Stockholm and Huntingdon are both ISO9001 and ISO14001 certified. It is the group’s policy to maintain this level of certification for its manufacturing facilities both current and future and to comply at all times with all relevant environmental and other legislation of the territories in which the group operates. The group is also compliant with REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) and is working towards OHSAS 18001 and CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) in both Huntingdon and Sweden.

With regard to the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances) directives, the group understands the environmental aims of these directives and, although Xaar’s product portfolio is not directly covered by these directives, will ensure its products comply wherever practicable and allow our OEM customers to fulfil these environmental policies more readily. Employee welfare It is our desire to foster and develop safe working practices across the group and to comply with all relevant health and safety (H&S) legislation. We believe that a safe environment that engages and looks after our employees leads to a stable environment and the Xaar group being a good place to work.

Health and Safety

We introduced a new H&S policy during the year which we regularly update and review. We have an ongoing commitment to H&S training for employees and a number of training courses were held in the year. We have a monitoring and reporting system in place for accidents and near misses and a regular schedule of H&S audits. Our aim is to ensure that we learn from past experiences and continually improve the safety of our employees and the working environment.

Occupational Health

During 2008 we enhanced our programme by appointing a third party advisor to provide the health surveillance service to our manufacturing facility in Huntingdon. This service has been available in our Swedish facility for some years and will be rolled out across our other sites during 2009 as appropriate.

Recognising Success

Any employee can be nominated by any other employee for a ‘spot’ award where the company will award a cash sum in recognition of work delivered in excess of normal expectations. Additionally the company makes a number of annual cash awards for employees who have best demonstrated achievement and behaviour in line with the
group’s vision and values.

Social Responsibility

We were delighted to become a sponsor of PrintIT! during the year. PrintIT! is a major initiative to encourage young people to embark on careers in the UK printing industry. Led by Proskills, PrintIT! is a joint venture between the printing industry, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and leading charity The Fairtrade Foundation. It is targeted at Year 9 and Year 10 students studying GCSE Graphic Products and Product Design. So far 1,000 schools and more than 60,000 students have benefited from PrintIT!

Two teams were entered into both the Chariots of Fire charity relay race around the Cambridge colleges and the Children in Need fun run around the Cambridge Science Park.

On a surprisingly chilly night in October 2008 the Chairman and executive team slept rough in London as part of Byte Night, the IT industry’s annual fund raising event in aid of Action for Children. Through generous sponsorship from employees, customers, suppliers and friends and family, over £11,500 was raised for Action for Children from the Xaar team alone.