Community - "those who live around our sites and wider society as a whole"

Overview

Our community and charity work addresses a number of risks and opportunities. At the most basic level, healthy communities make for healthy businesses so we aim to play our part in them. There are also clear benefits from improvements to our public profile and reputation. But perhaps the strongest motivator is internal; taking part in community activities is popular with our staff. In a competitive environment for recruitment and retention, this kind of positive experience can make an important difference to our performance.

Last year, we invested over £800,000 in community initiatives (including £336,000 from the GUS Charitable Trust), but this is increased to over £2m when account is taken of the money raised through the fundraising efforts of our colleagues and the generosity of our customers. Details are shown in the table below.

Our community work is focused on two Charity Partnerships: one working with Argos and one with Homebase. Each is selected for a period of two years: Argos is just reaching the end of a very successful two-year partnership with Help the Hospices whilst Homebase is half way through a two year partnership with Marie Curie Cancer Care. Each charity partner is selected from a shortlist by a staff vote, and then becomes the focus for fundraising and giving for stores.

In recognition of the importance community giving plays in Home Retail Group, we were short listed for the prestigious Retail Week Corporate Social Responsibility Award in early 2007. While the shortlist place was for our CR practices as a whole, the judges made special mention of our community giving programme as being a leader in this field. For us, this is a reflection of the importance to our colleagues of community giving and how successful they have been at engaging with and fundraising for our charitable partners.

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