Our corporate social responsibilities
Strafe Creative's approach to CSR
We're really proud of our approach to our corporate and social responsibilities. We have had the pleasure of being involved in some really exciting projects that align with our values. You can check out what we do and why we do it below.
Our business mission
Our business mission here at Strafe Creative is based around the fact that we quintessentially believe that design can make a huge difference to our clients. And that's summed up in a sentence which is:
Client success through great design.
We take pride in every project
We believe no matter what project we're potentially going to take on, that we will be able to come into your business and transform your sales through excellent design and management of how that's going to work.
To us, this is where everything should start and following this mission ensures our work for our clients is always to the highest standards.
Here at Strafe Creative, we try to be as environmental as possible
The environment is incredibly important to us. As well as reducing our own environmental impact, we also seek out suppliers that take this seriously too. When we are using printing companies, we aim to ensure that the print and the paper is being sourced ethically and to the highest environmental standards. Here are a few other ways we are working to reduce our impact on the environment.
Rocket book
One of our favourites is rather than providing paper and notebooks for all of our team, everything is done through a system which is called a Rocket Book. This is a recycled plastic book where everything can be wiped clean, meaning they only ever need one notebook when they work for us. Imagine a whiteboard style book and that's exactly what you get.
Electronic storage
We work hard to reduce our waste to minimise our contribution to landfill. We have all different types of recycling bins within the office. In the past, like most offices, we relied heavily on printed documentation. Now, we try not to print anything, and instead focus on electronic storage. Even down to having our contract signed, rather than print, sign and store we use electronic signature software to ensure we’re always reducing our paper trail.
Electric cars
Our directors drive fully electric cars and we do all that we can to responsibly power the office. We unfortunately don't have solar panels (although we hope to in the future) but in the meantime, we pay extra to use a green energy firm to ensure that our office is powered 100% by renewable energy.
Diversity and equal opportunity
Lastly, we have an incredibly expansive diversity across the team here at Strafe Creative. We want to make sure that this is a continuous element. It's crucial that we have a diverse workforce here at Strafe to ensure our ideas, thoughts and beliefs are well rounded with the culture we live in now.
We also have a fund every single year that our team members can put towards their own personal development. If they would like to learn a new skill that doesn't necessarily tie in, as long as they can prove to us why that is important, we're more than happy to support this.
Working hard to help out charities and giving back to our community.
We work with a number of charities to make sure that we're giving back, not just by offering free design and development resource but also through funding and passing items over to make sure we're doing everything that we can.
Open Kitchens is a charity that was created right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ross and Patrick, the two directors of Strafe Creative were two of the original founding members of Open Kitchens. Open Kitchens works with restaurants that have closed because of COVID-19 to get them back open and cooking meals for the vulnerable. Even though the restaurants can't serve customers in-house, their valuable resource is used to feed the community in times of need.
Strafe Creative produced a website to introduce people to the charity and to give them the facility to donate money to their chosen restaurant. These donations would then go towards creating meals and the necessary logistics to deliver them to those in need. We partnered with multiple charities across the UK to be able to dispatch these free meals.
The reason this became so important and why we were so heavily invested in it is even though there were the food banks, there was a large portion of vulnerable people still going without a meal. Some of those in need didn't have the ability to cook for themselves anymore or the items they were getting from the food bank weren't necessarily going to fulfil their nutritional needs sufficiently. The fact that we could deliver a meal to them that was going to be substantial to fill them up and give them the energy that they needed was incredibly important.
For many of these vulnerable people it was extra important to stay healthy during the pandemic. And at the time of writing this, the scheme has raised £450,000. To create the brand, website, delivery app, members portal, CRM systems and digital assets, it was a full team effort by everyone here at Strafe Creative and one of the Charity projects we’re most proud of. We have plans on how this can be transformed into an ongoing process, to keep helping the vulnerable with decent meals beyond the end of the pandemic.
the nottingham city business club
Social responsibility to Nottingham
The Club
The Nottingham City Business Club is the UK’s oldest business club outside of London. Ross and a number of the other team members are heavily involved in the Nottingham City Business Club with Ross sitting on the council.
Charity & networking events
The reason that we do this is we know we have a social responsibility to our geographical area and our city of Nottingham to ensure that commerce continues in the area.
The Nottingham City Business Club hosts number of events each year, including charity events, networking events and sports related events too.
Nottingham College Awards
Education is incredibly important to Strafe Creative; in the early days of the business, we had the opportunity to work with a number of agencies in placement positions and this has undoubtedly helped to shape the business today. These opportunities were so beneficial to us and we want to give something back. We have had many interns within our team to give them some first-hand experience alongside their studies. But one of the main ways that we encourage the development of talent is through guest judging. We review work from an agency point of view, which provides a valuable alternative perspective to teacher’s evaluations, giving students some insight into studio life. We are involved every year in the Young Creative Awards for Nottingham, where we decide the winner of the best student for graphic design award.
Our links with universities in Nottingham & neighbouring areas
As alumni, we try to do everything we can to attract graduates to stay in Nottingham. It's an incredibly important part of Nottingham’s ecosystem as it has two excellent universities, that we try to keep these graduates in our area.
We have incredibly good links with Nottingham University and Nottingham Trent University, but we also have good links with De Montfort and Lincoln as well. This is important because we're able to then link in with these universities and set tasks for them. We also visit on their open days and we've taught multiple times at Nottingham Trent University. We visit several times a year to teach some of their business course and their design course so that they can get some real life agency experience. And we are also able to then offer jobs or internships to people who work particularly well with us.
Staff wellbeing & rewarding excellence
Our staff overall are incredibly important to us and we need to make sure that they're always being looked after. Here are a few ways we take care of our team.
Amazon wishlists
Our team members have a monthly bonus scheme which they can use to treat themselves! They have access to an Amazon wishlist to create a list of things they'd like and these can be purchased with their bonus.
Mental wellbeing
There are additional apps, especially with mental wellbeing, that are so important now. Each staff member gets access to an app which is called at Headspace. This app allows them to look at their mental wellbeing and practice some of that mindfulness that they need to do to make sure they are looking after themselves.
Gym memberships & meals out
Staff members can also use their bonuses towards gym memberships or days out. And if people work particularly well, they also get nights away with their family or restaurants.
staff training
Expanding our overall skillset, which is incredibly important.
We will not always just have the top level staff teaching more junior members but some of the newer people who may have joined from another agency will have a really great way of approaching something that we may not have thought of before. We always encourage new ideas and by using this approach, we're able to expand our repertoire and our overall skillset as a team, which is incredibly important here at Strafe.
Every month each staff member will get different types of training on how they can improve. And these will be delivered in a manner of different ways, ensuring that it's a well rounded education.
