Our corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy supports our work through:

• Providing oversight on our sustainability for stakeholders
• Minimising our impact on the environment, both directly and through what we do for our stakeholders
• Providing support for the wellbeing and development of employees
• Securing our own financial independence
• Improving the positive impact on the communities we live and work in
• Developing our partnerships with suppliers
• Continuous development of our governance and transparency

The following commitments underpin our strategy.

Modern Slavery

Modern slavery takes many forms, but commonly encompasses slavery, servitude, and compulsory labour. Human trafficking is the travel of another person for the purposes of exploiting them. Modern slavery and human trafficking often include the use of violence or coercion to transport, recruit, or harbour people to exploit them for forced and compulsory labour, bonded labour, and some forms of child labour. Victims of modern slavery are commonly in a position whereby they have no real opportunity or possibility of freeing themselves from their situation. Modern slavery and human trafficking are crimes and a serious violation of human rights.

Vypr is committed to maintaining practices to combat modern slavery and human trafficking. This includes our own operations and those of our suppliers. Our work to tackle modern slavery isan evolving process, where we continue to engage with and assess our suppliers and business partners. We are also committed to sharing best practice across our business network to promote this issue and harness opportunities to bring about positive change as well as reduce risk.

The Environment and Sustainability

With employees across the UK and Europe, Vypr is placing a renewed focus on its wider business operations as well as social and environmental impact. Our product has been created in a socially responsible way, designed to minimise impact on the environment by allowing for intelligent new product development (NPD) to occur. This reduces waste by helping companies narrow down their products at early stages and prevent unsuccessful products launching to market.

Vypr is committed to ensuring sustainability is a key focus across all its activities which affect the environment and the communities in which we operate. We have a responsibility to identify, monitor and manage effectively what may constitute an impact. We continually review our environmental performance ensuring that we look to improve on this wherever possible and move towards better working practices. We have an overarching framework, namely:

Effective management of the environment, our energy use, carbon reduction, and responsible sourcing is of key importance to the sustained success of our business.

To ensure continuous business and product innovation, we engage with our stakeholders to encourage innovative development of our products and services to continually improve our sustainability performance.  

We are committed to fulfilling our share of the responsibility to keep the global temperature rise below 2° Celsius and we will continue to reduce our impact on the environment by:

• Committing to the protection of the environment. This includes the prevention of pollution by utilising a shared workspace with strong green credentials, including certified 100% energy from renewable
• Minimising the environmental impacts of our existing operations and ensuring that the environmental impacts of any new operations are fully assessed and minimised prior to their introduction.
• Encouraging employees who work from home to adopt better ways of being environmentally responsible.
• Seeking to reduce the need for business travel by hosting meetings online.
• Re-using equipment where possible, increasing recycling and promoting the use of recycled materials in all operations.
• Using resources appropriately and sustainably, and where possible, substitute primary resources with alternative materials.
• Committing to waste prevention (including being paperless as much as possible), reuse of materials and recycling to minimise waste disposal.
• Disposing of waste in a responsible manner.
• Developing products that improve the quality and sustainability of the environment, to help to reduce and/or eliminate all non-conforming products.
• Increasing awareness of environmental issues amongst employees and ensuring all employees complete Environmental Awareness training on our e-learning platform.

Vypr work within the service sector and there are no major environmental risks associated within our business. We identify, monitor, record and minimise all key aspects of our operations that could result in an adverse impact on the environment.

Ethics

Vypr maintains a culture of honesty, integrity and openness. Vypr is dedicated to protecting its employees, suppliers and customers from damaging or illegal incidents and as such, takes a proactive approach to preventing such actions.

Vypr recognises the importance of maintaining a good reputation amongst customers, consumers and suppliers.

Vypr promotes a culture of honesty and integrity and therefore encourages employees to be vigilant and report any cases of wrongdoing or any action that breaks our company policies. This policy applies to all employees and contractors.

Vypr does not tolerate any behaviour that is considered a breach of our People policies.

Vypr is committed to:

• Protecting our employees’ mental and physical health and safety
• Providing employees with the equipment and tools they require to carry out their work effectively and in a timely manner
• Treating employees fairly and with respect and integrity
• Providing relevant training and support

Anti-Bribery and Corruption

Vypr conducts business in an honest way, and without the use of corrupt practices or acts of bribery to obtain an unfair advantage. We are committed to ensuring adherence to the highest legal and ethical standards. This is reflected in every aspect of the way in which we operate. 

Vypr, its employees and agents must not solicit, offer or accept any gift or inducement which may influence their independence or business judgment, or which could create a conflict with any duty owed to the company or its customers and other stakeholders.

Compliance with this process is carefully monitored, and we have processes in place to highlight any deviation from agreed practices.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity

Vypr prohibits discrimination on any of the protected grounds in the Equality Act 2010.

We are committed to providing equal opportunities to all current and prospective employees regardless of age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, or marriage and civil partnership.

We aspire to attract and retain a diverse workforce because, in our view, diversity enables better business outcomes. We also believe that a more inclusive workplace, where people of different backgrounds work together, ensures better outcomes for all employees. From application to interview, we place inclusion at the heart of all we do.

We strongly encourage suitably qualified applicants from a wide range of backgrounds to apply and join Vypr.

We take positive steps to ensure that our employees, stakeholders, contractors and customers can enjoy an experience that is fair, equitable and free from discrimination in their dealings with us.

Supplier Management

Vypr conducts due diligence checks on all suppliers, to ensure their philosophy and practices are aligned with ours.

We give preference to suppliers with good Corporate Social Responsibility credentials.

The Community and Charity Work

At Vypr, we aspire to go above and beyond our charitable mission and to make positive contributions to the communities we are in while ensuring this does not detract from our core purpose.

In 2022, we created our first People Committee made up of representatives across the business, who will help organise fundraising activities. We have appointed a local charity, St Ann’s Hospice (sah.org.uk) and are holding fundraising events throughout the year to raise money as well as encouraging the People Committee to participate in volunteering days. In addition, we also fundraise for other causes like the war in Ukraine through ad-hoc charitable events.