Exception’s journey to support its people and charities started with a single footstep

Exception is committed to supporting charities and benevolent causes so they can pursue their best path forwards. Especially in these tough economic times. We get behind charities, our staff and organisations that work hard at what they do best – and work equally hard to stay afloat.

It’s no easy task for everyone.    

Exception has backed many great causes over the years, including Young Scot, Help for Heroes, Crohn's and Colitis UK, Social Bite, Children 1st, Children in Need and, more recently, Tree Nation. 

Becoming a Net Zero and Tree Nation hero! 

Our Net Zero plan was developed by a working group inside Exception that covers all our business areas and geographies. It appreciates the business impact, opportunities and ideas to tackle climate change.  

Nearly a year has passed since we started supporting Tree Nation, a non-profit organisation. It allows citizens and companies to plant trees all around the world, offsetting their CO2 emissions.  

Via Tree Nation, Exception has planted over 600 trees that have offset over 242 tonnes of Co2. We have planted trees in countries as far flung as Nepal, India and Brazil, more locally in the UK, and plan to be Net Zero by 2030. 

Investing in Social Value for our colleagues and the environment 

Under our Social Value for our staff, our Environmental Policy ensures our actions and behaviours achieve our net zero ambitions, which include:  

• Reducing the number of flights and vehicle journeys by promoting of the use of virtual meetings and using public transport (buses, trains and trams), cycling and walking  
• Sourcing candidates locally to minimise travel to our offices and/or client sites   
• Operating a flexible working policy, supporting working from home to minimise unnecessary journeys
• Bring Your Own Device policy, reducing the need for unnecessary multiple handsets and helping to reduce waste
• Office selection is restricted to ultra-efficient and environmentally advanced buildings with electric car-charging facilities.  

Since part of our business is delivering innovative cloud technologies, Exception has invested in solutions to ensure our own IT operational efficiency. Our business systems are in a cloud native environment, and we deploy technologies such as MS Teams and OneDrive to reduce travel so all our meetings and documents can be accessed anytime, anyplace.   

Putting our people's wellbeing first 

At Exception, we don’t just support worthy causes outside our organisation, we also support our employee’s health and wellbeing. For all colleagues who work with us, we provide full contracts of employment, and we will not use zero-hours contracts or work with suppliers in our supply chain who do.  

Here are a few of the brilliant benefits we offer our staff:  

• Charity and community days either as a volunteer or board member, plus enhanced leave options to pursue interests  
• An extra day’s leave for birthdays 
• Private Medical Healthcare which can also cover family  
• Enhanced parental pay 
• Life Insurance 
• Opportunities to learn, develop and gain accreditations  
• A culture that promotes respect, creativity, openness and is inclusive for all 
• A Cycle to Work scheme

We don’t just support charities, our work is benevolent too

The nature of Exception’s work with its customers is benevolent too, not just in our ethical ethos to our staff and external charities. We have worked with Capability Scotland, an organisation that delivers high quality care, support and education for disabled children.  

As a UK cloud and digital transformation specialist, Exception has provided Capability Scotland with the right data solutions and technology, especially Office 365 to 're-engineer' and digitise its processes. This has reduced the precious time staff spent on innumerable handwritten tasks and re-entering of data. A full digital rollout will eventually enable all staff to work from anywhere, easily and securely, with more time to focus on providing care.  

And the result? Office 365 has now been successfully rolled out to all staff. Having this in place allows the team to work from anywhere easily and securely.  

Help Exception help Children in Need this autumn!

Exception has supported Children in Need for several years now. The exciting news is that, in autumn 2022, our fundraising initiatives will embody the many great values talked about in this blog. 

Fun (and maybe fast!) out of the blocks will be an “all-staff” fundraising challenge. We are encouraging as many people as possible to travel the equivalent miles from Bristol to Edinburgh (our offices), vice versa or both ways. Or beyond! 

Colleagues will record their miles, using the Strava sports App. There is no limit on the number of miles they can clock up by any means of travel: Walk, amble, stagger, jog, cycle, paddle - it's their choice! Friends, family and colleagues can then donate via our Just Giving page.  

Our Children in Need Strava Challenge proves that Exception is fully committed to supporting:  

• Our staff’s health, wellbeing and sense of community  
• A brilliant UK children’s charity  
• Our drive to fostering Social Value and Net Zero in our offices
• A fun and fitter approach to working from home, enabling colleagues to get out and about and socialise with each other
• A cleaner and greener way to commute to work
• Staff’s entitlement to two company volunteering days a year! 

Want to support our Children in Need efforts? 

Please donate what you can here

And help us lift people up...