Awards

We submit applications for selected corporate responsibility awards. The comments of judges can be a useful external benchmark of how we are doing. Winning awards and being shortlisted can also be very motivational for our team, who work very hard to achieve real corporate responsibility improvements right across our business.

We have received several notable corporate responsibility awards during the last 12 months.

General

• DJSI Silver award
• BitC Gold award
• Retail Week CSR award finalist 2007

Environment

Homebase won in the ‘Supply Chain Innovation’ category at the 2008 European Supply Chain Excellence Awards for its work in smoothing stock flow with Far Eastern suppliers.

Argos was a finalist in the ‘High Street Recycling Champion’ category at the 2007 Letsrecycle.com Awards for Excellence.

Our people

Home Retail Group received a Gold Award from the Institute of Fundraising for our payroll giving scheme. The Gold Award is a symbol of excellence and is awarded to employers that have succeeded in generating sustainable incomes sources for UK charities through Payroll Giving. Gold is awarded to those organisations with 10% or more donors within their workforce. At 12% Home Retail Group is one of the leaders for payroll giving within the retail sector.

Paul Hill, the new manager of the Homebase store at Weston-super-Mare, won the prestigious Retail Week ‘Store Manager of the Year’ award for 2008 in recognition of his all-round management skills. The judges commended Paul for his commitment to people development and for being a dedicated, popular and inspirational store manager.

Highlighting the quality of store managers across the Group, Homebase was successful at all of the major competitions in 2007/08:

• Rob Dent at Banbury was joint winner of Retail Week’s ‘Rising Stars Store Manager of the Year’ award for 2008 for the Midlands, Wales and South West
• Adrian Page at Huntingdon was named Retail Bulletin’s ‘Store Manager of the Year (South)’
• Alan McCourt of Edinburgh Straiton was named ‘Britain’s Best DIY Superstore Manager’.

Community

Home Retail Group was awarded ‘Most Innovative Promotion’ at the National Payroll Giving Awards in 2007. The judges commented: "Home Retail Group came up with the brilliant idea of inflation-proofing donations with their ‘Xtra Factor’. The ‘Xtra Factor’ allowed employees, on joining the scheme, to choose to add 3% annually to donations - a very innovative and effective approach towards a fundamental issue for payroll giving. The judges felt that this will significantly boost donations in future and ought to be considered by other employers."

Homebase received a Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medal at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in 2007. A team of 120 Homebase colleagues from across the UK and Ireland worked tirelessly to complete the garden, which was donated to Marie Curie Cancer Care after the event.