Corporate Social
Responsibility Policy
Introduction
Welcome to Reuben Digital's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Policy covering our offices in Highworth, Wiltshire and Jakarta, Indonesia.
We are proud to publish our commitment to being a socially-responsible and ethical business. We believe that it is crucial for SME businesses like Reuben to take positive action in a range of areas to foster excellent working relationships with our clients and suppliers, and advance the wider digital sector in which we operate.
Our CSR Policy (first published in December 2022) sets out the Principles and Values by which we do business at Reuben, and details the four Programmes of Action, on which we report our progress each quarter.
This website is a low carbon website. Learn more...
These are the
principles and values
we hold at Reuben:
Respect
Reuben Digital, and its employees, work within a robust environment of mutual trust and respect. This includes, but is not limited to, respect for colleagues, contractors, suppliers, clients and importantly, the planet.
Integrity
We will conduct our business with openness and integrity. We will not make promises above those which we reasonably foresee we can deliver. Our prices and our work ethics are transparent and we pride ourselves on our collaborative working approach with clients.
Honesty & Accountability
We will communicate our working practices and performance openly and honestly to our employees, clients and suppliers. We place accountability, and the trust that our clients place in us to find the best technological solutions and deliver them, at the core of what we do here at Reuben.
Loyalty
We pride ourselves on our long and close working relationships with our existing clients. The happiness of our clients (through delivery of projects with exceptional communication and project management) is our top priority. Retention of their custom is very important to us at Reuben. We always value being an integral part of our clients’ digital team and continue to offer amazing support as required, after a project is delivered.
Compliance
We conduct business complying with the GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 and conform to the 7 golden principles of information sharing – as defined by the ICO – that information collected or shared is
1) lawful, fair and transparent;
2) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes;
3) that data processing is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary;
4) accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date;
5) stored appropriately;
6) that the security of data is assured; and
7) that we shall be accountable for the data we store.
We work hard to comply with our client’s requests for data privacy and data sharing policies.
Agility
We are proud of the agile way in which Reuben’s team of specialist developers can deliver highly complex solutions within the agreed timeframe.
Sustainability
We are committed to delivering high performance and flexible solutions that don’t cost the earth by having a high carbon footprint. Reuben Digital strives to have a positive impact on the world by helping good companies do good things. We will therefore choose to partner with clients and suppliers in the future whose goals align with ours. We are identifying the principles by which we want to do business and our plans will see us setting out the direction in which we want to grow as a socially and environmentally-responsible business. This CSR Policy is updated quarterly and we publish our Carbon Report annually every Spring..
We are focusing on four Programmes of Action:
Environment
We are investing in becoming an environmentally-conscious business and want to be part of the leading edge of suppliers within the digital sector who are committing to becoming carbon net zero, in advance of the 2050 deadline set by the UK Government for all UK businesses. By reducing our carbon emissions and offsetting the remainder to become carbon net zero, we are acting responsibly and playing our part in limiting global temperature rise by 1.5 degrees to avoid the worse effects of climate change.
We started on this journey in 2022 because it aligns with the ethical ethos of the people that make up Reuben Digital. We are part of the digital sector that, almost innocuously, emits 3.7% of total greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 4.2% of global primary energy. [1] Compare this to the much-maligned global aviation industry which actually only accounts for 2.4% of carbon dioxide emissions! [2]
Reuben Digital has signed the Plant Based Treaty, a campaign to put food systems at the forefront of combating the climate crisis. Moving forward, we are committed to all future company paid-for, client entertainment to be sustainably sourced and 100% plant-based, where possible. We have also signed the Sustainable Web Manifesto which is a public declaration of a shared commitment to create a sustainable internet. In addition, we have joined Tech Zero, a group for tech companies committed to climate action, pledging to measure and publish our scope 1-3 emissions.
We have researched and measured our impact on the planet, as well as reviewed our working practices to be more environmentally-friendly using lower carbon technology. This is a long-term goal to move towards a sustainable business model. Along the way, we will challenge ourselves - on what values the company stands for, and the beliefs we are guided by, and the way we do business. Our progress is published every quarter in the updates below and our Carbon Report (first published in 2024) is updated every Spring.
- We have linked our Monday.com account to a Tree-Nation project and have started to grow a forest to offset some of Reuben Digital’s CO2 footprint. We use Monday.com to plan and schedule the team’s work. Every time, a team member marks a unit of work complete, Tree-Nation will plant a tree! So far, we have planted 160 trees in places including Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya and over their lifetime, they will capture over 5 tonnes of CO2. There are good and bad aspects of ‘gamifying’ climate action, and certainly much discussion around planting trees to offset carbon emissions in general (see our recent LinkedIn post on this very subject). However, gamifying our task management platform here at Reuben has encouraged our team to stay productive whilst knowing that their work contributes in a small way to tackling the big problem of climate change.
- Always looking ahead, we have renewed our 100% renewable electricity contract with Valda Energy – that’s green electricity sorted until 2028! Did you know that energy companies are starting to offer green gas tariffs? It’s early days with the development of producing green biomethane gas made from grass cuttings. When the gas burns, carbon will go into the atmosphere, but it will be reabsorbed when the grass grows back creating a sustainable natural cycle. Ecotricity estimate that if we grow grass on all the marginal land in Britain, we’ll be able to make enough green gas to supply the entire country. The Green Team here at Reuben Digital will certainly be keeping an eye on this innovation, since heat pump technology, as a replacement for gas boilers, isn’t suitable for all properties.
- Ray Stephens and Gill Rixon recently attended the Tech Zero Forum earlier this month, powered by Tech Nation and Octopus Energy. As members of Tech Zero, a consortium of tech companies committed to climate action, it was wonderful to hear from a great range of guest speakers and chat to other tech companies about the challenges of progressing towards carbon net zero. In fact, it was heartening to learn that we aren’t doing too badly at grappling with all the strategic and practical decisions required, along with the complicated and ever-changing considerations in measuring our carbon footprint. Turning Reuben Digital into a sustainable tech company is certainly taking us on a uniquely challenging and rewarding journey.
- Plans are now in place to upgrade our remote-working infrastructure to leverage the latest in VPN and cloud-based solutions. By removing layers of old IT infrastructure, we aim to see a significant reduction in electricity consumption at our Highworth office. First to move onto the new tech will probably be our Indonesian team, with the entire UK staff migrated by the end of December 2024.
- We are currently working on installing the Microsoft Azure Emissions Impact Dashboard to our web servers so that we can monitor the carbon impact of our cloud usage. The Dashboard allows you to track direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions relating to the websites that are hosted on their servers, and also estimates emissions we have avoided by migrating to Microsoft’s green technology. We hope to report on the key findings in the next quarter.
- Over the last couple of months, we have reviewed all of the third-party software and cloud services that we pay for and have evaluated what is essential to our working practices. We’re happy to report that there was very little wastage discovered but it was certainly a useful exercise – cancelling monthly subscriptions that are no longer needed are an easy way of reducing scope 3 carbon emissions a little, as well as saving money.
- Ray recently travelled to a European gift card conference in the Netherlands and let the ‘train take the strain’ from Swindon all the way to Amsterdam. Eurostar calculates that taking their service from London to Amsterdam emits 94% less CO2 as compared to flying – that’s 3.9kg of CO2 on the train as compared with 70.9kg per passenger on a plane. To top it off, Ray hired a bicycle to get around Amsterdam once he had arrived – altogether a great example of our sustainable travel policy in action.
- We have published our first Carbon Report which covers the years 2022 and 2023. This sets our base year as 2022 and explains our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in detail. We have also set targets for the years ahead, as we work towards carbon net zero by 2050. Read our Carbon Report here.
- The Green Team have started to conduct an office working and IT efficiency audit, researching ways to increase performance on our PCs, whilst reducing power consumption. This will be continued into the next quarter.
- We have finetuned the programming for the central heating in our Highworth office, ensuring that we don’t heat the office over the weekend.
- Thermal blinds have been bought for the office, which can be drawn overnight to retain heat in the winter, and also during the day in the summer to reflect heat from the sun and keep our office environment cooler without the need for fans or air conditioning.
- The office move around the corner to Highworth’s High Street has raised multiple opportunities to design a more efficient office environment:
- We were able to upcycle a lot of the building materials to save landfill waste. This included moving and reusing the existing kitchen from one floor to another, reusing existing toilets and sinks, water heater, cabling and reclaimed timber.
- Energy-efficient LED lighting was installed in all areas of the new office. The new lights are motion sensitive, automatically switching on and off depending on whether the room is in use or not.
- Our new office has a much newer and more efficient gas boiler, with fully programmable timer and thermostat. As winter draws on, we will be evaluating the need for thermal blinds to retain heat overnight and have subsequently installed them on all main windows of the office. Over the winter we will be comparing the new office’s energy consumption with last year’s consumption at the old office.
- We are on a 100% renewables electricity tariff with Valda Energy.
- We have formed a Green Team, a dedicated and multidisciplinary group of employees who work together on climate action and, more broadly, sustainability initiatives in a company. The group will meet every 2 months.
- Reuben Digital has started working with Ecologi, a B-Corp certified environmental organisation that helps companies and individuals measure their carbon emissions and facilitates the funding of carbon offset projects and tree planting around the world. Integrated with our Xero accounts system, it means that we should be able to publish our 2022 and 2023 scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions early in the New Year and subsequently start to set targets to reduce these. We were also able to purchase our first carbon credits, 12 tonnes of Co2e in fact, to offset Ray and Mark's flights out to our Indonesian office (see more under Investment in Employees).
- We have written a Sustainable Transport Policy – read it here.
- We have reorganised and republicised the office recycling and waste procedures so that bins are clearly labelled and the Highworth Team know exactly what can be recycled.
Technological innovation
At Reuben, bespoke technical innovation is integral to every client project. We also pledge to develop solutions which conform to the following sustainable and ethical principles:
Building accessible websites
Published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WCAG is the consensus standard for digital accessibility and how we measure the accessibility standards of the systems we build. Using tools such as Google Lighthouse to measure the design and structure of the sites we build, our target is produce high scoring new websites and we will work with existing clients to assess the accessibility score for existing sites.
Building secure solutions
Our Microsoft Azure Cloud Hosting solutions are using state of the art Cloud and Virtualisation technologies, based in UK data centres, to provide fully backed up and secure hosting. We install SSLs on all websites and regularly review security risk in conjunction with our clients utilising external penetration testing services for both websites and infrastructure.
We are currently finalising our Cyber Essentials Plus Certification.
We develop software utilising the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) framework.
Building green solutions
The Internet consumes a lot of electricity, from the data centres and transmission networks to the devices that we use to connect to websites. The average web page tested produces approximately 0.5 grams CO2 per page view [3]. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that's 60 kg CO2 per year. We use a carbon calculator to measure the amount of CO2 emitted by the websites we develop. By fine-tuning our future technology stack, design principles, use accessible fonts and agile content, we aim to produce new websites that have a lower carbon footprint the industry average.
Bringing this intentionality into our design and build protocol doesn’t just affect the energy usage – it'll also make a site perform better, make it more user-friendly, more accessible and better optimised for search engines. It’s a win-win for client and planet!
Our websites are hosted by Azure who, as a part of Microsoft, has been 100% carbon neutral since 2012. They’ve committed to being powered by 100% renewable energy by 2025, carbon negative by 2030, and by 2050, they plan to remove all of the carbon from the environment that the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975. We are therefore proud to display the Green Web Foundation’s logo on our own website to show the world that the hosting we have chosen is green.
Another of our major suppliers is Fasthosts – our domain registrar and email provider – and their UK data centres run on 100% renewable energy from offshore wind and biofuel.
We evaluate all of our suppliers on an ongoing basis to see where they are on their sustainable future journey, and pledge to change suppliers if their principles do not align with ours.
- Our first truly low-carbon website is now live and it’s the one you are currently reading! Our new Corporate Social Responsibility Policy website has not only been created on our new technology stack, it has also been designed and built with the latest sustainable web design principles in mind. Read more about these here. We are delighted that this website achieves a carbon rating of A (on a sliding scale of A+ to F, with A+ being the most ‘green’), as measured by the Website Carbon Calculator. This means that it is cleaner than 84% of web pages globally and emits just 0.23g of Co2 per page view. Our Ecograder report provides further details. We are now bringing these green coding and design principles to our clients’ web development projects, and if you are an existing client, it’s the perfect time to ask us to give your current website a ‘greening’ health check to reduce the emissions that your website produces each year. Get in touch to find out more.
- In April, we launched the first website on new technology stack…and a large website belonging to one of our oldest and most valued clients at that! The National Book Tokens website has been given a fresh new look & feel and combines several of their old sites into one exciting, multi-faceted online platform for purchasing giftcards and discovering the exciting world of books. Even before we have finished optimising the site’s performance, we have been pleased to see page size and load time speeds significantly better than the old site, which are both key areas for a low carbon score.
- In association with the project above, we’ve been experimenting with using BugHerd, a solution for our clients and our in-house testers to track amendments and record visual feedback on websites under development. We’ve been really pleased with how visual and easy it is to use, and how we can track and prioritise every comment. It’s a good example of how technology can make communications more efficient with the client.
- We continue to develop several client projects on our new technology stack, which is based upon the latest Microsoft ASP.NET Core / Blazor / C# frameworks and our adoption of DevOps to manage the projects is fast proving itself to be an excellent tool.
- Recently we conducted a performance audit for a website built by Reuben approaching 5 years ago, which was starting to show its age in terms of speed and performance. We were able to reconfigure the site with the latest image formats, carry out script and CSS optimisation to raise the website’s performance from 26% to 70% for mobile view and from 73% to 96% for desktop (PageSpeed Insights test, March 2023) – not a bad little MOT and a useful exercise we would like to extend to more of our long-serving clients.
- We have started developing the first client project on our new technology stack. This is based upon the latest Microsoft ASP.NET Core / Blazor / C# frameworks, and should give greater efficiencies on energy consumption, both server side, and client side, since there is less data exchange, and more computing is done at the server end of a user sessions, making browser usage lighter.
- We are in the early days of adopting DevOps as a methodology in our software development and management of software projects. It aims to increase our ability to deliver applications and services faster than traditional software development processes by automating and unifying processes.
- The Green Team (mentioned above) will initially start by measuring the green credentials of the new technology stack against our old offering, ensuring all that we’ve adopted the cleanest/greenest coding practices to roll out on future projects. It will also be reviewing all of the services we provide to clients with a view to reducing the carbon emissions of the finished “product”.
- We are researching how Artificial Intelligence (AI) might be incorporated into our technology in the near future.
Investment in people
We have been a local employer in Wiltshire for over 20 years and are proud to have opened our first overseas office in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2022
Our employees are our greatest asset. We strive to be a responsible employer by creating an environment that gives employees the desire and ability to flourish. We place great importance on professional and personal development and we are eager to provide employees with the tools to succeed.
We observe fair labour practices in both the UK and Indonesia, and provide flexibility in working arrangements, including part-time hours, flexible working days, dog-friendly offices and regular working from home arrangements.
We are an equal opportunities employer and seek to employ an ethically-diverse workforce. We also positively encourage all genders to apply for job opportunities within Reuben Digital and would like to see more women in programming roles.
Reuben Digital has collaborated with Cirencester College since 2015 to offer an apprenticeship scheme for young people wishing to work in the digital sector. Four employees are working on or have completed their apprenticeships with us and are now full-time, permanent members of staff, qualified in either a Digital Marketing or Web Developer Level 3 BTEC.
We also support the annual work experience week operated by our local schools, and each year have a young person spend a week at Reuben experiencing what it is like to work in a busy tech agency.
As we work on the detail of our CSR Policy, we will continue to offer employee benefits that empower, upskill and reward our staff.
- Congratulations to Louis Stephens who started a new position as Director of Business at Reuben Digital this month!
- Gill, our Sustainability Lead, is progressing through her Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Environmental Sustainability course – it’s a very intensive course with a lot of content squeezed into 12 short weeks but she is enjoying learning about sustainable development theory, for example ‘The Triple Bottom Line’ where true sustainability depends on a balance of ‘People, Planet and Profit’.
- In May Reuben Digital welcomed a new apprentice, confusingly called Reuben! Part of the Stephens family (son of Ray, brother of Louis), Reuben will be working towards his Level 3 Marketing apprenticeship qualifications over the next couple of years, and working primarily on social media content. This is the fourth apprentice here at Reuben Digital – we passionately believe that the combination of studying for a formal qualification whilst gaining practical work experience produces skilled young people with excellent prospects to succeed within the company.
- Gill has recently registered on a Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Environmental Sustainability course, that will be completed online over the next 8-12 weeks. This will increase her knowledge in this area as she continues to tackle Reuben Digital’s carbon footprint and is a great example of the company’s encouragement for staff to continue their professional development and study for new qualifications.
- In January, we welcomed Winda Hidayat to the Indonesian developer team and therefore cracked one of our biggest challenges we had set ourselves – to recruit a women into a programming role finally! Not only is Winda a fun and warm team player but a really talented developer too, and she has taken every complicated programming job in her stride, so much so that she has passed her probationary period one whole month early. We hope that Winda will be the first of many women employed by Reuben in future years, ensuring that Gill (over in the Highworth office) is short of feminine company no more!
- We are proud to have joined the Climate Perks network helping staff choose clean travel by offering paid journey days for flight-free holidays. Since January, if our staff travel by coach, train or ferry instead of flying on holiday, we are giving them paid journey days, on top of their annual leave. This will encourage our employees to consider greener travel choices in their leisure time. Flying is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions globally so for those who love travelling, flying less is one of the most powerful actions we can take to protect the planet. We understand that annual leave is limited, making it difficult to choose slower transport modes - so we want to help staff live their values by ensuring flight-free travel doesn’t eat into leisure time. Find out more about Climate Perks.
- Founder Ray Stephens and Technical Director Mark Vincent visited our Jakarta overseas office in October. The trip incorporated training and mentoring opportunities, as well as sessions on the implementation of DevOps and our new technology stack. It was also a great time for some team bonding…over an occasional beer too!
- Reuben Digital continued 2022’s successful wellbeing initiative by offering 3 “Welfare Fridays” to each employee to take in June, July and August. Not to be used in conjunction with annual leave, these Fridays aimed to give team members a long weekend to indulge in favourite sports or hobbies…or simply to rest up and relax!
Community and charitable work
Giving back to the local community and supporting talent through company sponsorship has been at the heart of Reuben's philanthropic principles from the company’s start. Some examples of our support are highlighted here:
- One of the local business sponsors and supporters of the first ever Highworth Jazz Festival that took place in June 2024. It was a fantastic community event, spread across 5 venues centred around the Highworth High Street, with 20 Artists from across the UK performing Live jazz (read more in our June 2024 updates below)
- Proud supporter of Luke ‘The Duke’ Watkins, professional cruiserweight boxer from 2015-2024, supporting Luke with the design, building, hosting and ongoing management of his website
- Proud sponsor of 17 year old Domonic Newbury, one of the young rising stars of British Motocross, currently competing in the British Championships
- Built and hosted the original website for the Keep Highworth Green project, when the old Council-owned golf course was earmarked for housing development until the decision was overturned in 2022
- Complimentary hosting services for local Swindon voluntary organisation, Dial a Ride, which has been providing door-to-door transport services to provide a lifeline to help people get out more and be more independent.
- Ray's lifelong passion for Jazz has led to a meeting of minds and a new friendship with the very talented and award-winning jazz saxophonist and author Simon Spillett. Reuben Digital has donated the creation of a formal blog and fresh new website to become a fitting permanent digital home to Simon's historically and culturally-significant writings, pictures and archive material. Ray has also provided financial support (in addition to a crowd funding project), to enable the first new Big Band recordings of the arrangements and compositions of one of the UK’s most important modern jazz musicians, Tubby Hayes, to be made in 50 years. Acting in the capacity of “executive producer”, Ray was privileged to attend the recording session at the fabulous studios at the Trinity School, Croydon.
Having moved offices back to Highworth High Street in 2023, Reuben Digital is looking forward to contributing to this vibrant market town and participating in some of the local events and initiatives.
- In July, Reuben Digital started working with a charity called Friends of Angel’s Orphanage, set up by Highworth residents Drs Rosa and Ian Matheson in 2009. The charity supports a group of 22 orphaned and abandoned children in Kathmandu, Nepal who were living in desperately circumstances and poor health. Over the years, the Friends charity has supported the children with healthcare, education, housing and emotional support, to see them develop into healthy and confident young adults. Reuben Digital will be providing this extraordinary charity with a new website to help them reach more supporters to further their important work out in Nepal.
- We shall shortly be commencing on a new website development project for a Dakota airplane restoration project based at RAF Brize Norton. The Douglas C-47 Dakota, a powerful symbol of history, stands outside 47 Air Despatch Squadron at RAF Brize Norton as a poignant tribute to the heroic role Air Despatchers played during WWII. RAF Ground Engineers have already restored the broken tail rudder, and now, with the help of a dedicated team of volunteers—including former dispatchers, local businesses and members of the public—fundraising has started to fund a full-body repaint. The website, built at our special charitable rate, will help the fundraising efforts and will follow the Dakota’s restoration journey. The team here at Reuben Digital is looking forward to getting involved with this historic project.
- Underpinning our principles of purpose before profit, Reuben Digital had the opportunity, along with other great local businesses to be the main sponsor and supporter of the first ever Highworth Jazz Festival that took place on 1st June 2024. It was a fantastic community event, spread across 5 venues centred around the Highworth High Street, with 20 Artists from across the UK performing Live jazz.
The headline acts were staged in the 14th century St Michael’s Church, with other performances being held in the Wine Bar, The Highworth Hotel, The United Reformed Chapel and of course the centre of the town / community, the Podium in the market square.
Not only providing financial support to the festival, Reuben Digital also created the event website, and supported the festival with digital marketing, including social media content, publishing and paid advertising. The event was a huge success, co-event organiser and managing director of Reuben Digital, Ray Stephens commenting that there was 100% positive feedback from all that attended the invent, including the musicians themselves, and also local business expressing what a fantastic day they had, with the local chip shop stating it was their best Saturday ever!
Congratulations to all involved in the event, and we look forward to being able to support you again next year.
- We will shortly be going live with an all-new website for Brighter Futures, the charity for Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Working in partnership with design agency Jazzbones, we have built this website at a special charitable rate.
Thank you for reading Reuben Digital's CSR Policy.
This Policy was last updated 26 September 2024. The next update is due at the end of December 2024.
References
[1] 4 pitfalls to avoid for an effective CSR policy by Greenly.earth
[2] Aviation Sustainability: Facts and figures
This is a low-carbon website
Reuben Digital's CSR website is a good example of sustainable web design. It respects the principles of the Sustainable Web Manifesto - of being clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative and resilient.
Learn about Website Carbon's rating system.
Our Ecograder report provides more details.
In addition, it is hosted on a green hosting provider - Microsoft Azure, as certified by the Green Web Foundation.
When DESIGNING this website, we considered the following:
- Writing in an accessible, easy to understand format with no content 'bloat'
- Clean design - not cluttered by unnecessary images and assets that make page loading slower
- Simple and intuitive navigation
- Use of simple fonts, already installed by default on most computers, so avoiding unnecessary HTTP requests
- Limited colours and background styles, also chosen with accessibility principles in mind
When BUILDING this website, we considered the following:
- Reduced reliance on third-party plugins to limit unnecessary code bloat
- Implemented lazy loading for images, ensuring off-screen images only load when needed
- Replaced JPG and PNG images with scalable vector illustrations and icons to reduce file size
- Switched to vector-based backgrounds to minimize large image downloads
- Further reduced vector images file size with optimisation tools
- Chose a lightweight, efficient web framework to reduce network request sizes
- Minified CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to speed up page load times
- Enabled browser caching for static assets to reduce server requests
- Optimized font loading to prevent layout shifts during page rendering
- Use of a single variable font across the site to reduce number and size of requests