A Sustainable Approach to Achieving Our Goals

Social responsibility at Transcom means:

• Taking a sustainable and ethical approach to carrying out our company’s mission to provide high quality service to our clients and customers
• Creating honest, flexible, safe and comfortable working environments where Transcom’s people can develop their careers and enjoy their working lives
• Encouraging our people’s goodwill, energy and enthusiasm to put Transcom’s Five Key Values into action by participating in community-based and international charitable activities

Transcom and the United Nations Global Compact

We have confirmed our commitment to social responsibility by becoming an official signatory of the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact, which cover aspects of corporate conduct related to human rights, labour conditions, environment, and anti-corruption. Further details on the ten principles can be viewed online at www.unglobalcompact.org.

We are proud and happy to pledge our support to the UN Global Compact and we will ensure that its basic principles of good corporate behaviour are incorporated into our operations across the world.

The following examples illustrate some of the ways that we have put our stated commitment to corporate social responsibility into action during 2008:

Integration and Inclusion

Transcom Austria
In Vienna, Transcom began an association with Institut zur Beruflichen Integration (institute for vocational integration) with the aim of providing improved working conditions for people with mental health difficulties such as psychosomatic diseases, burnout, anxiety or addictions. assistance/vocational counselling is offered on both sides – to the employee and the employer – giving both sides the support they need to help the employee cope with the issue. Following the initial success of this initiative, Transcom Austria will continue this partnership in 2009.

Transcom France
The Transcom School in Vélizy, France is a six-month in-house training programme designed to give people the necessary skills to work in a call centre environment. on completion of the state subsidised course, the students – who are drawn from different minority groups such as the long-term unemployed, young people with little or no work experience and people with disabilities – receive a diploma and join the production team as fully fledged Transcom employees. The Transcom School has given training and employment to more than 40 people since its inception in 2007; we hope that the project can be progressively integrated into our other French sites

Transcom Latvia
In Riga, Transcom continued its association with a state employment and social integration institute, offering work opportunities to candidates with disabilities. In an extension to this partnership, which gave employment to 15 people in 2008, Transcom Riga now offers a programme of practice opportunities for disabled people, giving vital first experience needed to help get established in the labour market.

Sustainable Communication

Transcom’s quarterly internal news vehicle, TransNews, continues to bring our worldwide workforce closer together by informing on company strategy, achievements and successes along with fun and charity activities from our sites across the globe… All without using a single sheet of paper! We estimate that TransNews’ innovative video format enables a saving of more than 100,000 A4 sheets per year when compared to our former printed internal magazine.

A Greener Technology Platform

In 2008 we continued to take steps toward the creation of a more energy efficient IT platform. In France, we used cutting edge virtualisation technology to reduce a large air-conditioned data room containing 59 servers into a single piece of hardware occupying just two server racks. Furthermore, we moved this new consolidated technology platform from the old high consumption in-house data room at our Paris site to a secure, purpose built, energy-efficient external data hosting facility. We estimate that this strategic change means that the IT platform, which supports our French operations and several of our global applications, now uses approximately 85% less energy than before.
In the last year we have carried out a similar virtualisation of our technology platform in Luxembourg, and in 2009 we will continue with this strategy by restructuring and externally relocating our server facilities currently hosted in Barcelona, Spain and Luxembourg.

Turning Over a New Leaf

Transcom’s own branded sustainability best practices initiative, the New Leaf, spread across the organisation during 2008, creating a buzz around issues related to sustainable business conduct and environmentally friendly behaviour among the Transcom workforce. Thanks to the New Leaf Sustainable Best Practices guidelines, waste recycling and energy efficient behaviour are now standard practice in all our contact centres. New leaf branded presentations (including posters and internal news features) encourage all Transcom staff to reuse, recycle, and switch off unused appliances whenever possible, bringing these issues to the front of everyone’s minds.

Label de Responsabilité Sociale

In France in 2008, Transcom’s operations in France were awarded the Label de Responsabilité Sociale diploma, which was specially developed by the French contact centre association. Transcom achieved the approval by an independent committee, demonstrating good practices in matters relating to human resources, training, employee data protection, labour conditions and supply chain management. We are proud to have obtained this demanding and significant certification.

Our values in action in aid of others

We warmly congratulate and encourage all our staff for the energy and effort they invest in taking part in charitable activities. There are too many great examples to mention them all here, but these are just a few highlights of the ways in which Transcom and its people have supported good causes during 2008:

Canada and USA
Once again, colleagues in North America organised an incredible variety of innovative and fun donation and fundraising activities, including dress down Fridays, a sponsored overnight relay walk and sports tournaments, helping to raise an amazing total of more than €100,000 in 2008. Recipient charities included the Canadian cancer society, the Canadian liver foundation, the multiple sclerosis society of Canada, the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals and UNICEF among others.

Norway
In January 2008, Transcom offered free-of-charge call centre support to the televised Red Cross artist gala campaign. More than 100 employees in Transcom Fredrikstad volunteered to take calls, helping the campaign to achieve its goal of recruiting more than 5,000 new child contribution mentors, with more than 3,000 calls answered in four hours!

Austria
In Vienna, Transcom people continued their involvement in a scheme supporting the city’s homeless by donating, preparing and distributing cooked meals at a local refuge.

France
In France, Transcom donated our call centre facilities to support the 2008 national charity appeal to raise money for the European Association against Leucodystrophia. 350 Transcom volunteers in Raon, Roanne, Soissons and Tulle handled more than €400,000 in telephone donations from the general public on the night of this televised event.

Croatia
Transcom employees helped to found an association for children with special needs (Vukovarske Iskrice), giving financial and material support (books, magazines, dictionaries, etc.) to help them in their education.