Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – a high performance company working to build a sustainable future

Premier Farnell takes seriously its role as a responsible corporate citizen and seeks to take account of the economic, social and environmental impacts of its operations. It is our belief that acting in this way is a source of business opportunity, improved competitiveness and sound business practice.

We have defined Corporate Social Responsibility as the sustainable development of our business – balancing our responsibilities to our stakeholders, the environment and society. We believe that by releasing the power of individuals within Premier Farnell, we can have a positive impact on society and reduce our impact on the environment.

As an organisation with strong core values, we are driven to deliver results by being totally reliable, resourceful, customer focused and by conducting ourselves with integrity. These values translate into every aspect of our business. We are a forward thinking, innovative company that cares – cares about our people, our industry and our communities.

This includes the industry-leading guidance and support we provide on legislation that will affect both our customers and suppliers, and the confidence that our products are sourced from reputable manufacturers who meet appropriate workplace standards; for employees it means giving everyone the opportunity to have their voice heard in the way that the business is run, listening to their ideas and communicating openly and, for the communities in which we operate, the Company is a trusted and valued long-term partner in addressing social issues.

By bringing our CSR activities together with a number of other internal initiatives, including the creation of our eCommunity, our work to improve further employee engagement around the business and our customers support programmes, we have built a solid core of good corporate governance and a highly ethical approach. We are calling this our “Trust Agenda” and it serves as a framework for everything we do as a business. During the coming year the “Trust Agenda” will become much more visible and further differentiate Premier Farnell.

Our CSR programme is focused on our environmental impacts; the communities in which we operate; our people; trading ethically with our customers and suppliers and the health and safety of our employees.

We have been a member of the FTSE4Good Index of Corporate and Social Responsibility since its launch in July 2001 and the Group is also a member of Business in the Community (BiTC), a movement of over 850 of the UK’s top companies committed to improving their impact on society.

Our programme and reporting follow the framework used in the BiTC Corporate Responsibility (CR) Index, facilitating the external validation of our programme. We use the feedback from our BiTC CR Index submission to assist us in identifying those areas where we should focus our efforts.

Every year we identify, publish and report against specific improvement targets in our CSR report and have been doing so since 2002.

The Board has overall responsibility for establishing the Group’s CSR policies and the Chief Executive Officer is accountable for ensuring that the Group operates in accordance with these policies and reviews progress on a monthly basis. Reporting of our performance is led by the Company Secretary and the Board receives a report on the Group’s CSR performance at least every six months. Periodic updates are provided on the premierfarnell.com website.

A copy of our Corporate Social Responsibility Policy can be obtained on our website at www.premierfarnell.com/premier_farnell/csr or by contacting Steven Webb, Group Company Secretary and Counsel on +44 (0)870 129 8608.

Note

References to years throughout the CSR Report are to calendar years, rather than the Company’s financial year.

Highlights of the year

Our major achievements this year have been:

• Achieved the Gold level of the BiTC CR Index;
• The inclusion of environmental impacts into the internal quarterly business performance reporting process;
• The further development of our approach to sustainable procurement;
• The implementation of carbon reduction plans in the Company’s larger facilities; and
• A 6% improvement in the positive feedback scores from employees about our CSR approach. This was again the highest-scoring category in our all-employee engagement survey.