Introduction

Sans Souci Consulting Limited (SSC) is a small consultancy firm based in Belfast and has always been keen to give back and pay it forward at every opportunity.  Sometimes this is a challenge for us, but we are committed to making a difference to our community, environment, and the people that we work with as we also grow our business. 

We do endorse Equality of Opportunity and Sustainable Development within our daily work and have committed proactively to these policies. 

We are also committed to continually keeping up to date on current advice relating to fairness at work, insouciance, and social value and have contacts at the Institute of Directors, Federation of Small Businesses, NI Chamber, and Diversity Mark that help in that regard.

It is our philosophy that we are our actions, and we intend to live by that in work and life.

Scope

The SSC team is regularly involved in activities to support our community, environment, and each other.  Daily we are mindful of the team’s well-being and work-life balance, which can sometimes be overlooked due to the micro-organisation working model. 

We are always transparent with our communication and maintain a supportive view of everyone and that we all have a say in the workload to ensure everyone’s wellbeing.  Health and Safety training is given when required to ensure social considerations are adhered to when visiting client sites.

One of our key targets is to minimise our carbon footprint and emissions by challenging ourselves to introduce low carbon practices e.g., switching to use more renewable energy sources such as solar panels and renewables mix (completed), improving energy efficiency (in flight), offsetting emissions (planned for 2024-2025) and changing transportation practices (EV and cycling).  We have a Cycle to Work scheme and are in the process of creating an EV scheme for employees.

As we work predominantly within the digital transformation sector and work with clients to develop applications, we have initiated a working practice of green software engineering.  We are mindful of the impact on the environment that we create through software and constantly keep in mind digital waste when making decisions in collaboration with our client base. One of the key drivers of this waste is data (we know we want to collect it all but rarely use more than half of what is stored). So, with this approach, we can think about being lean as we contribute to the product design of the next version of the application – is it efficient in terms of data, can we elongate the lifespan of the hardware purchased, and are low carbon energy alert.

We are currently working on several business development opportunities and if successful with these, we will be:

• Creating employment and proactively supporting re-training, return to work, and apprenticeship opportunities.

• Creating training opportunities in the IT industry including training schemes (with the hope that employees can gain qualifications).

• Be vocal and drive opportunities for entrepreneurship and help other micro-organisations grow (our aim is to create partnerships and consortiums capable of applying for larger CPD contracts).  This is being actively worked on.

We have also initiated further collaboration with networking groups across Ireland to leverage our skill set and experience to support others.

We have had the privilege of mentoring young people, delivering training, fundraising, and supporting events, and we hope to be the primary sponsor for our volunteer efforts in the future.

The team here at SSC is Security Cleared as they have been engaged with Defra, DWP, NICS, HMRC and multiple GOV.uk departments for over a decade.