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Cyprus 4.0: CSR advances in Cyprus — Amdocs

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“In 2019, we participated in the science-based targets, which is an initiative of the Paris Climate Agreement. And we have committed to reducing absolute scope Scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 21 per cent and for scope three emissions by 13 per cent by 2024, using 2019 as a base year, says Maria Christofide,  Corporate Social Responsibility Manager for the EMEA region, based at Amdocs Cyprus.

For Maria Christofide, CSR manager for EMEA at Amdocs in Cyprus, CSR has a long history at Amdocs.

“Corporate Social Responsibility programmes (CSR) at Amdocs, or at least the volunteering aspect, has started in 2002 from Israel, which is a major centre for our company. And from there it has expanded to all our sites. Globally, we are a company that has presence in over 85 countries, and more than 27,000 employees, including a large presence in Cyprus.

“In Cyprus, in particular, we started 20 years ago by supporting the Theotokos Foundation, which is an organisation for people with severe mental, physical and learning disabilities, and we still support them financially and with volunteering. We also work with the Dancing Queen Foundation which helps children with mental health challenges.”

From there, it became a process driven by employees, Christofide says.

“This is because they saw that our employees wanted to engage in volunteer activities, and we wanted to give back to the community as a company. The actual focus of our CSR strategy, was chosen by our employees. So our employees were asked at the time, what our main priority in CSR should be, and they chose children and youth at risk.”

That was even before the CSR department was formally established, she notes.

“Now our focuses are mainly on digital inclusion and bridging the digital divide. We are a company that works in the telecommunications sector. And with Covid, we saw that this is where the real needs of the society are at this time. So we have various initiatives across the world when it comes to digital inclusion, and also diversity and inclusion, of course, and environmental sustainability, and they are localised in Cyprus as in all our sites.”

Selection of programmes for the local sites is driven by Amdocs global strategy, Christofide continues.

“We have a strategy that we follow the for the entire CSR team. But we also get feedback from our community, and we take into account the local skill set we have for volunteering.

“Then, our strategy is digital inclusion. We try to see what the needs of the of the local community are, and how to respond to them with the local talent on our workforce. So for years now, we’ve been donating computers to schools in the community. We have a lot of partnerships with local schools in Limassol and we promote careers in technology for students there. And also recently with our amazing recruitment team, we presented a webinar to young people on how to build their CVS and LinkedIn profile and prepare for online interviews.

This is done because we have a very strong HR team in Cyprus, and we want to give back to the community based on what we know best. we focus more on skills-based volunteering, rather than the direct donations.”

There is also a CSR programme for employees.

“Employees are our most important resource, and Covid has even incited us to increase our protection of employees.

Back in February last year, the company very quickly switched to a full working from home mode. And you can understand the complexities of having such a big workforce rapidly making this change, dealing with things like preparing the laptops and all the equipment and making sure that everyone had what they needed to work from home safely.

“We have ramped up our operations and our efforts to support our employees as much as we can, especially in India, providing medical, psychological and vaccination support.

At the beginning of the covid pandemic last March, we had over 1,000 employees in business trips around the world. Bringing them safely back home is part of our job and our travel department worked round the clock to make that happen. We have many initiatives for employees, and we have a specific concern with employee well-being, making sure that they are safe and they have an environment that can foster growth,” Christofides points out.

Protecting the environment is also a priority for Amdocs, Christofides insists.

“Being such a big company, that we are we we have a responsibility to protect the environment and to make sure that our operations are as environmentally sustainable as possible. We constantly monitor our emissions, and we have a third-party auditor for this as well.

“In 2019, we participated in the science-based targets, which is an initiative of the Paris Climate Agreement. And we have committed to reducing absolute scope Scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 21 per cent and for scope three emissions by 13 per cent by 2024, using 2019 as a base year.

“We have been recognised for our environmental sustainability efforts and for our sustainability efforts in general. For two years in a row, we made it into the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and also got a gold rating from Ecovadis and A- on CDP. We focus on this not only when it comes to measuring our operations, and making sure that we’re doing what it takes to improve our performance. At the same time we act through volunteering at beach cleanups and by participating in various awareness raising initiatives. We  want to do everything it takes to take this forward.”

Community partnerships are important to Amdocs, Christofide notes.

And we are generally very open to partnerships, that this is the way that we work. We have community partners, so it’s the non-governmental organizations with whom we work together. We have long-term relationships with them, and, and our volunteers actually know these organisations very well. And we  create together with them. Amdocs has a network of hundreds of NGOs around the world that we that we support. But we’re also flexible in working with other partners as well.”

Diversity and inclusion is also a strategic focus for Amdocs Cyprus, Christofide says.

“This makes sense for us, we are not just ticking boxes, we’re not only counting heads, it’s a cause that we are very much committed to as an organisation. Because we believe that talent is distributed equally. So if you only hire from a specific gender or socioeconomic background, then you only hear from that specific group and you miss a lot.

We have a multi-year program on women in technology very data driven, and we have data and gender dashboard. So each manager whenever they are hiring or making a promotion decision, they have to consider the gender composition of their teams.

This is taken into account in all the processes of the of the company. And also we have employee networking groups for women, for LGBT persons and for ethnic diversity as well. We have specific unconscious bias trainings for management and for and for employees.

So we aim to foster an inclusive culture We committed in 2019 to increase women in the company by 20 per cent by 2022.”

“Amdocs has a boot camp for persons with disabilities in Israel. They have a very rigorous training, including mentorship with management, and we want to make them ready to become Amdocs employees. They still of course, have to go through the interviews and all their normal recruitment process. But we want to prepare them to be part of our company, because we do believe in in diversity.”

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