Centric wants to be — and remain — successful for its clients, employees and partners. That is why sustainability comes first in everything we do, and why we do business without ever losing sight of our environment. To Centric, corporate social responsibility (CRS) means more than using clean energy and having a sustainable mobility policy.
Inclusive employer
A thriving business community is not possible without a thriving society. That is why Centric also prioritises people outside the business world. This includes offering new opportunities to people with poor job prospects through additional training or temporary jobs. It also means offering internships that allow students to gain work experience at the start of their career and, this way, increase their chances on the job market.
Technology contributes towards sustainability
On the road to sustainability, IT has a clear role to play as a means to making processes and whole industries more sustainable. We have three starting points in this respect:
- IT as enabler: where clients can use our software to increase their own social impact
- Greening by IT: where IT contributes to sustainability, and
- Greening of IT: making IT itself more sustainable.
For example, our own research has shown that software has an impact on the energy consumption of hardware, which is why, at Centric, we work on “sustainable software”, that’s to say efficient software that allows hardware to use less energy. Furthermore, when developing software we use reusable standard components wherever possible. We also create dynamic IT infrastructures for our clients using server virtualisation: in our green, certified data centres in the Netherlands, multiple facilities run on one server, and the servers are set up to run with optimum energy efficiency.
Sustainable business operations
Centric wants to contribute to shaping a better world. This aspiration applies to our products and services, as well as our own business operations. To this end, Centric is working towards reducing its carbon emissions, managing its waste, and creating a sustainable supply chain. Reducing energy consumption is also a consideration for us when it comes to our sites and offices. We buy energy from sustainable sources, and since 2011 we have had an environmental management system that has been certified according to the ISO14001 standard. This system is managed by a special environmental team.
In addition to the facility, mobility and energy-related activities of our support services, our environmental management system encompasses all Centric business units. This certification demonstrates that Centric always stays focussed on its environmental performance, and it guarantees our compliance with environmental laws and regulations.
