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Pictured planting a tree in aid of the O2 Sponsored National Tree Week is Helena Madden from O2 Ireland who raised €1,020 for Limerick Animal Welfare with the help of Can Do Matching – an initiative where O2 matches the amount raised by employees for individual charitable fundraising endeavours.
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| Welcome to O2 Ireland, Our CR programmes focus on five areas – our involvement in the community, our customers, our approach to diversity, our environmental impacts and the development of our people. |
| Message from CEO | Young people | Special needs | Environmental challenges | Mobile in society | Investment | Reputation | Key data |
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| A message from Danuta Gray, CEO O2 Ireland |
When you consider just how much mobile services have fundamentally changed the way people communicate – then the sense of responsibility is even greater. That's why we are determined to give back some of the benefits of mobile technology.
Our internal programmes focus on five areas – our involvement in the community, our customers, our approach to diversity, our environmental impact and the development of our people.
I believe that a company like ours should help people to fulfil their potential. We embrace the diversity and individuality of peoples' needs and are committed to developing our services to enable others to get the most from mobile technology. Seeing things differently is something which we believe can help us all achieve anything. That's why we are supporting the first ever O2 Ability Awards scheme in Ireland. By doing so we want to celebrate and raise the awareness of organisations that recognise the contribution made by people with diverse needs to Irish businesses.
As a large employer, our key asset is our people. We constantly encourage the people that work for us to develop their skills and participate in activities that will benefit the wider community. We were delighted that our efforts were recognised this year in a survey conducted by the Irish Independent newspaper in which we were named in the Top 50 Best Companies to Work for in Ireland.
Our community programmes focus on youth and education to benefit disadvantaged young people and they range from Business in the Community's (BITC) Schools' Business Partnership to the CITY project in Ballymun.
In this booklet we have highlighted a number of areas where our work has endeavoured to make a real difference – but we are by no means finished. In fact we have really only started.
We want our activities to demonstrate that we look beyond our own interests by bringing the benefits of mobile communications, our peoples' skills, our environmental practices and our community involvement to all.
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 Supporting disadvantaged young people
Our community investment theme is youth and education in areas of social disadvantage. This year's Charity of Choice is the Irish Youth Foundation (IYF) which aims to make a lasting difference to the lives of disadvantaged and young people in need.
O2 Ireland sponsors the Communications and Information Technology for Youth (CITY) project in Dublin's Ballymun area. The programme provides supervised computer access for 10-19 year olds to e-mail, internet surfing, homework and school projects.
To date our involvement has allowed the project to acquire more PCs, hire an IT trainer and provide IT skills for greater numbers of young people.
Separately, we have also sponsored Children's Hour in association with IYF. This invites employees to donate one hour of their salary to support educational and social projects for disadvantaged young people. Many of our people have also regularly volunteered for Junior Achievement, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to build a bridge between the classroom and the workplace.
In December 2003, we helped 1,500 children from charities all over Ireland to capture the spirit of Christmas at the O2 sponsored Santa's Kingdom in Punchestown.
Through our membership of BITC's Schools' Business Partnership we have linked with the Salesians Secondary School in Limerick to provide mentoring and work experience opportunities with our Customer Care centre.
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| Message from CEO | Young people | Special needs | Environmental challenges | Mobile in society | Investment | Reputation | Key data |
Supporting people with special needs
We have launched a new handset in association with the National Council for the Blind in Ireland (NCBI). The device has specially tailored 'Talk' software that converts text messages to voice and tells users what the phone is doing as they use it. We have also made our website more accessible to people with visual impairment.
Forty O2 employees were given extra holidays to volunteer for the Special Olympics. We also entertained people with special needs in our corporate box in Croke Park during the opening and closing ceremonies.
The Tiger Trust Garden Party was the most successful fundraising initiative we have supported so far, raising €111,000 for Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children to purchase a Portable Ultra Sound Unit which will assist in the prompt treatment of cancer in children.
In May 2004 we actively supported the People in Need Telethon, by donating all voting text charges from RTE's interactive celebrity show to this nationwide charity. We also offered our employees the chance to win a week off work to raise money for People in Need.
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Meeting environmental challenges
Environmental awareness in O2 Ireland is strong.
The O2 Group's drive to increase levels of energy from renewable sources has been boosted considerably by O2 Ireland's performance, where the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources is 32 per cent thanks to a supply agreement with Airtricity and the extensive use of wind generation on the island. Currently all of our shops are powered by renewable energy and we are currently negotiating a contract which would increase the use of renewable energy across our business.
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Handset recycling has been well established throughout our offices and shops during 2003/04. Revenues that are generated through this scheme will support the National Tree Council of Ireland to plant 15,000 trees each year, as well as the international charity Rainforest Concern.
More than 60 per cent of all waste from O2 Ireland's office buildings is recycled and our overall waste management programme continues to gain momentum. We are on our way to achieving our target of ISO 14001 registration by December 2004.
We constantly strive to provide our employees with a safe and pleasant working environment. We recently achieved accreditation to OHSAS 18001, the international Occupational Health and Safety management system.
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 Mobile technology and society
A key aim of our community investment programme is to integrate our technology into society for the overall benefit of the community. We were the only mobile operator to receive government funding to install a wi-fi hot spot, and donated two laptops to the civic offices in Westport to be used free of charge by the local community.
In December 2003, the mobile operators in association with the Gardai launched a handset barring database in an effort to combat mobile phone theft.
We have produced a suite of leaflets aimed at educating the general public on mobile phone issues such as safety and child protection, bullying and safe driving. This included the "what your child's mobile can do" leaflet produced with the ISPCC as part of our overall child protection work which has seen us introduce parental authorisation and barring services. We are also conducting a trial to test image filtering technology on behalf of the mobile industry in Ireland.
We have launched a new International calling tariff for post-pay customers calling Africa, Asia and Europe enabling people from these destinations to call home at competitive rates. To further our investment in diverse communities in Ireland this year, we sponsored the Chinese New Year Festival and the Festival of World Cultures.
Investment in our network
We continue to invest in our network roll-out.
We will continue to engage in stakeholder dialogue with a small number of local authorities that have introduced distance variation criteria into their county development plans. We believe that insertion of such criteria will in time prohibit certain communities from receiving adequate mobile coverage and does not coincide with the National Development Plan.
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| Message from CEO | Young people | Special needs | Environmental challenges | Mobile in society | Investment | Reputation | Key data |
Building our reputation
We aim to strike a careful balance between our ambitions as a business and our performance within the community at large. Our Chief Executive Officer Danuta Gray is a board member of BITC Ireland and a Trustee of Common Purpose, a non-profit organisation that aims to improve the way business contributes to society.
O2 Ireland is a business supporter of The Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Ireland, which works to foster mutual respect, tolerance and understanding between individuals and groups in conflict within Ireland and between Ireland and Britain and beyond.
We have sponsored the Business Woman of the Year Awards for the past three years and actively encourage women to achieve their full entrepreneurial potential in Ireland. In O2 Ireland we demonstrate the highest level of female participation in senior management within the mmO2 Group, currently 48 per cent of our senior managers are women.
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Inside O2 Ireland
O2 Ireland launched Can Do Matching in April 2003 to top-up money raised by employees through charity projects of their choice. To date, the programme has raised funds for such charities as The Alzheimers Society and St Gabriel's Special Needs School in Limerick.
Employees in our customer care centre in Limerick give monthly contributions via our Give as You Earn scheme to benefit the Chernobyl Children's Fund. During the year they also participated in our 'I'm a Manager Get Me Out of Here' initiative which raised €2,100 for the Milford Hospice.
We have made a significant investment in providing the necessary tools and resources to develop our workforce. As well as core skills and on the job training, this year we developed a comprehensive management development programme and selected 20 senior managers to participate in a specially tailored Advance Management Diploma which leads to an MBA.
As part of our commitment to customers to provide an excellent and differentiated customer experience, our Customer Care centre in Limerick was re-structured in 2003. This involved realigning skills and creating new divisions to deliver customer care in line with the needs of each of our customer segments.
Our overall commitment to our employees resulted in O2 being placed in the Top 50 Best Companies to Work for in Ireland in 2004.
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| Key data for 2003/04 |
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| General |
| Number of customers: 1.4 million |
| Environment |
CO2 emissions: 2,299 tonnes1
% electricity sourced from renewable sources: 32%
% of all waste recycled from buildings: 60% |
| Workplace |
Number of employees: 1,534
Number of women in senior management: 48% |
| Community |
Total community contribution: €521,883
Main areas of involvement: education 32%, health: 24%, sports by community group: 5%, environment: 16%, other: 23%
Type of contributions: cash: 82%, in-kind: 18% |
| O2 Ireland Awards |
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- O2's mobile ISP portal (www.o2.ie), won the 'Best Use Of Mobile Internet Technology' Award at the prestigious Golden Spider Awards
- O2 Ireland was announced the Telecoms Company of the Year at the ICT Excellence Awards 2003
- O2 Ireland made the shortlist of the 50 Best Companies of the Year to work for in 2004
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1 This figure includes CO2 emissions from buildings and networks, excluding transport related CO2 emissions.
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| Message from CEO | Young people | Special needs | Environmental challenges | Mobile in society | Investment | Reputation | Key data |
