To our stakeholders,

I am pleased to confirm that ENSEK reaffirms its support of the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact on human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption.

In this annual communication, we express our intent to implement those principles. We are committed to making the UN Global Compact and its principles part of the strategy, culture, and day-to-day operations of our company, and to engaging in collaborative projects which advance the broader development goals of the United Nations, particularly the Sustainable Development Goals. We will make a clear statement of this commitment to our stakeholders and the general public.

We support public accountability and transparency, and therefore commit to report on progress within one year of joining the UN Global Compact, and annually thereafter according to the UN Global Compact COP policy. This includes:

• A statement signed by the chief executive expressing continued support for the UN Global Compact and renewing our ongoing commitment to the initiative and its principles. This is separate from our initial letter of commitment to join the UN Global Compact.

• A description of practical actions (i.e., disclosure of any relevant policies, procedures, activities) that the company has taken (or plans to undertake) to implement the UN Global Compact principles in each of the four issue areas (human rights, labour, environment, anti-corruption).

• A measurement of outcomes (i.e., the degree to which targets/performance indicators were met, or other qualitative or quantitative measurements of results).
Sincerely yours,

Jon Slade
Chief Executive | ENSEK

We support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and make sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses. We believe everyone has a right to a decent standard of living and support freedom, equality, and the right to a voice.

We support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and environmental protection, influencing our employees to adhere to this in our Employee Guidelines. A remediation procedure is in place for identified cases of discrimination and/or harassment, to protect all employees, but no cases have been raised over the past year.

ENSEK has a detailed health & safety risk assessment for employees in the office and work-related areas at home. In light of the pandemic and the changes this enforced on us, and many companies globally, we have taken feedback from employees and adapted our working practices to align to the preferences of the majority.
Our risk assessments have been adapted over the past year, as we work to transition to flexible working on a more permanent basis.

Should employees wish to work from the office, we have a head office in Nottingham, UK, that provides safe, sanitary work facilities, including drinking water, and kitchen and shower facilities. The office space in Beringen, Belgium, has the same setup. Employees further than 60 miles from the two main offices are encouraged to use co-working spaces, subsidised by the company, should they wish a change of scenery to meet colleagues, and/or to impact their mental health positively.

We have a Harassment Policy, defining a code of conduct that supports the dignity of an individual or a group of individuals.

We hold a bi-monthly eNPS, as well as quarterly All Hands (company-wide conference), to ensure employees have a forum to voice any concerns or issues and to re-enforce our company purpose, mission, vision, and values. Our hierarchical structure is deemed relatively flat, and all employees are encouraged to speak directly to Senior Management regularly regarding any concerns or improvements.

The company has preventative measures in place against stress and noise, as well as a team of Mental Health First Aiders that support general well-being.

During this period, we have met all government guidelines relating to Covid 19 secure working practices. We have had no workplace accidents or near misses during this period of assessment.

We established a team of Culture Champions, a group that supports the development of our working environment, culture, and sustainability practices, and helps to act as role models for the company values.

Five employees supported an ENSEK Director with the creation of Endelea Foundation, a not-for-profit that supports education and energy through digital transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa. The employees donated their time and expertise to the development of this separate venture.

We donated laptops no longer required by employees to Venture Learning, a school that supports children out of mainstream schooling.

We conducted our first CSR assessment with Ecovadis, attaining a Silver Sustainability Rating and scoring 60/100 in the Labour & Human Rights section.

ENSEK upholds the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining. We have no forms of forced or compulsive labour, and zero child labour. We try to ensure that no employee is discriminated against because of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or because they have a disability or medical condition.

We have an Equal Opportunities Statement, Dignity at Work Statement (including Diversity), Holiday Entitlement Policy, Sickness Absence Policy, Bribery and Corrupt Behaviour Policy, Grievance Procedure Policy, Health and Safety Policy, Maternity, Paternity, and Adoption Policy – which are all accessible in the Employee Guidelines.

In terms of holidays, we offer 33 days to all employees, which is inclusive of statutory and public holidays. This recognises the need for diversity in relation to leave, as individuals favour different religious holidays, festivals, bank holidays etc. Employees have the opportunity to buy and sell holiday, within the statutory rights, to provide further flexibility and a greater work life balance. Additionally, all employees are given a free day’s holiday for birthday leave. We also pay compensation for extra or atypical working hours.

Our employees’ health is of utmost importance, with is why we have continued private health care coverage for individuals, using Vitality as our provider of choice in the UK. Mental health and well-being access is available to employees in the form of talking therapies, access to medical professionals, and online support.

We offer an employee stock ownership plan that’s not restricted to board level.

Employees are trusted to work flexibly, when their hours suit their needs, or are scheduled in agreement with their line manager and according to the needs of the individual. ‘Build trust’ is a key value at ENSEK, which extends to employees’ workloads and working hours.

Employees carry out a quarterly assessment of individual performance in the form of Performance Reviews. These align to company, team, and personal goals, as well as the ENSEK Values.

The company provides training to its employees to develop their personal skills, knowledge on our products and services, security and data handling and more.

We introduced our well-being partner, Heath Assured, to employees – an Employee Assistance program. The program is designed to help employees with the personal and professional support they may need, including life support, legal information, medical information, bereavement support, medical information, and online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

A Learning and Development team was hired, in turn deploying a Learning Management System, offering employees a large variety of courses to improve personal skills. We also established The ENSEK Academy, up-skilling and cross-skilling employees wanting to move into Software Development and Software Engineering roles.

A Culture Champion team was established, representing functions across the business, to help build and maintain an environment we want to work in. This has been particularly crucial as we have continued our growth trajectory, including becoming an international company during the Covid 19 pandemic. Part of this process involved redesigning and implementing our company values, giving direction to those recruiting new employees, and day-to-day interactions between individuals, partners, and customers.

The company has a newly formed Gender Equality group of employees, who meet to discuss and support gender equality in the workplace and in day-to-day society. Some of these individuals are key within the Nottingham Tech and Women in Tech communities.

The level of female members at the executive level increased, making up 25% of the Executive Leadership Team.

The company has a newly formed group of employees who meet to discuss the Menopause – ‘Pause for T’, along with the recent addition of a Menopause Policy to support employees who the change may directly or indirectly impact.

We conducted our first CSR assessment with Ecovadis, attaining a silver sustainability rating and scoring 60/100 in the Labour & Human Rights section.

We support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges and undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility. We encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.

We are a technology-based organisation, so do not have a large environmental impact. However, being a Software as a Service company in the energy industry, we try to always operate with CSR and sustainability at the forefront of our minds. Our purpose is to accelerate the energy transition, which means supporting our customers by putting consumers at the heart of a low-cost IT platform that enables effortless, ethical choices.

Our technology enables energy suppliers to transition from monolithic, legacy tech platforms to a simplified SaaS platform, operating model, and accompanying processes. In turn, this allows energy suppliers to reduce costs, provide consumers with an improved customer service, innovate for the energy transition, and concentrate on net-zero goals.

We host our SaaS platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which reduces our energy consumption of IT infrastructure, and provides customers with 100% cloud-native technology. AWS aligns to our purpose to accelerate the digital energy transition, as they continue their path to power operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. This in turns supports our sustainability goals.

During the Covid 19 pandemic, all meetings were conducted online. Our intention is to continue in this way wherever possible to reduce our environmental impact and keep it as low as possible.

We performed an energy audit in 2019, with the total emissions resulting in 21,077kgCO2e. Since then, we have moved to a larger office, but our current emissions sit at a lower range of 7,045kgCO2e.

In terms of recycling, measures were implemented over the last year to recycle toners and ink cartridges in the office. Measures are also in place to recycle paper waste.

Internal purchasing processes for data hosting services integrate sustainability, as well as internal purchasing processes for stationery and related items.
We have continued our membership in local public transport schemes for employees, such as bus services with Trent Barton Super Commuter, Robin Hood Travel Card, NCT Easy Rider, and the tram network, Tram2Work.

As we gear up to offer flexible working permanently, we’ve added another transport scheme with East Midlands Railway. As a small percentage of the company live over 60 miles away from our Nottingham HQ and Beringen offices, giving sustainable transport options is important to us as a company and aligns with our purpose.

We’ve implemented specific measures to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions related to business travel, working towards a flexible working scheme for employees. With a huge reduction in commuting, individuals are reducing their CO2 output.

For the year ending March 2021, 16% of ENSEK UK’s core supplier list was local and small businesses.

We conducted our first CSR assessment with Ecovadis, scoring 60/100 in the Environmental section and 50/100 in the Sustainable Procurement section.

We adhere to working against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery. As a company that works with large corporate companies, globally, through to start-up companies, it’s important that we have good practices for our employees, as well as for our customers and partners.

We are certified with both ISO 27001 and ISO 27701. As a technology company that works with huge amounts of data globally, it’s important to us to establish, implement, maintain, and continually improve our information security and privacy. It also helps us assess and treat information security risks, keeping our customers, partners, and employees safe.

An incident response procedure (IRP) is in place to manage breaches of confidential information. Awareness training is mandatory for all employees on an annual basis, to maintain high standards for data handling, GDPR, security, anti-corruption, and bribery. Disciplinary sanctions are in place to deal with policy violations. These types of procedures are also audited, to prevent corruption.

All employees must read and sign their acknowledgment of the company’s business ethics policies in the Employee Guidelines.

We have implemented a systematic compliance and due-diligence measure when dealing with third-party intermediaries when acting on our behalf.

We have implemented a records retention schedule, to maintain best-practice with data.

There have been no instances of bribery, corruption, or fraud identified in any of our operations.

Ecovadis deems ENSEK’s formal ethics issues policy as exceptional, integrating commitments, and qualitative and quantitative objectives on business ethics issues. In response to the completion of our first Ecovadis assessment, we attained a silver ranking and scored 80/100 for ethics.

We have completed several process audits and are working towards SOC 1 Type 1, SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 1, and SOC ROBC since January 2021.