Corporate ethics, social responsibility, and ethics as a whole is something we feel strongly about, and is built into our culture and practice. While we appreciate different companies and entities make take alternate views on this, it is something that is part of who we are. In a practical sense, it is just part of who we are, but we'll do our best to jot some notes about it here.
Contribute
We are keen and active members of the Open Source community. We endeavor to contribute positively in many ways, from code, to helping with events, speaking and training others. We have volunteered at Open Source Events in the UK, Czech Republic and Zambia. We try to contribute positively to Open Source projects in terms of code and testing. In a more general sense, we also endeavor to help via mediums such as forums, stackoverflow, github and in person.
Good Business
I terms of driving towards diversity and open-ness in the developer community, we are strong advocates, and signatories to the Code Manifesto. Many elements of this may seem like common sense, but many are not applied.
Regarding financial transactions, invoices will be paid in a timely manner.
Charity
We have standing commitments with several charities, and believe this should be the norm. This is fairly traditional corporate philanthropy, but it all helps.
Fair Trade
Where possible, we choose fair trade products. In practice this is mostly coffee and tea, but we do get through a lot of that, particularly coffee.
Environmental Responsibility
Transport
We pride ourselves on sustainable transport choices. This can be loosely characterised in walking, cycling, going by train, or flying, depending on the distance of the journey. Typically journeys of less than 1 mile, we walk, less than 10 miles we'll cycle, less than 300 miles we will use the train, and further than that we will usually fly.
Energy Use
We choose low-energy hardware, where possible, using this and a key part of the purchasing process. We work to extend hardware life-cycle, from and industry norm of 2-3 years, to a more sustainable 6-7 years. We also try to minimise the use of office consumables. For server provision we choose virtual hosting, which reduces energy and hardware use, when compared to dedicated servers.
Further reading