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Oxygen Lives and Breathes Social Value
We understand how hard it can be for companies to make a meaningful difference in the community.
That’s why we have committed to publicly share our own impact, which we update each quarter.
Hannah Joyce
Client Success Manager
and Social Value Lead
paid early to small businesses for free through FreePay
£ 1 bn
suppliers routinely receiving Early Payment
0
Amount paid to Local and Micro Suppliers via FreePay in last 12 mths
£ 0 million
of volunteering time by our people last year
0 hours
Social Value for our Colleagues
- Healthcare & Benefits packages to support colleague wellbeing and personal finances.
- Volunteering days are available to all our colleagues (up to 2 days per year).
Social Value for the Community
- Time & funding to local authority initiatives to improve air quality and sequester carbon.
- Charity fund matching for sponsored activities (up to £250 per colleague per year).
Social Value for Stakeholders
- Our FreePay product supports cashflow for small, local businesses via prompt payments.
- Clients invited to Oxygen’s forums to facilitate best practice and greater savings.
Our staff have volunteered for 173 hours over the last year
Our staff have volunteered their time and energy over the last year, with around half of our people taking part. The participation from our employees has allowed Oxygen to make a bigger impact on both our local community, and the communities we serve across the UK.
Over the last year Oxygen’s employees have supported the following projects and charities: Birmingham Children’s Hospital, The Commonwealth Games, SIFA Fireside, Gateshead Warm Spaces, Bury Foundation FC, Our Derbyshire Awards, and St Luke’s Hospice.
Our Social Value Highlights for FY 2023
One of the key parts of our approach to Social Value is how we look after our colleagues, and how we contribute to our local communities as a team. 2023 saw us undertake a host of activities that benefit local charities, the environment and our people:
| Insights Carbon opened up to all councils for free | Oxygen launched Insights Carbon as a completely free-of-charge service for local authorities, saving them £000’s and allowing councils to assess and direct their Scope 3 carbon reduction planning. |
| Increasing supplier tender participation through BidStats and TendAlert | Acquired the UK’s #1 public tender portal BidStats, with a free plan for suppliers to find relevant tenders for them to bid on. In addition, released Tendalert, a free tool for public sector suppliers to receive public sector tender alerts by email from +1,000 buying organisations. |
| National GO Awards Finalists | Named a finalist in the ‘Social Value Award (Private Sector)’ category due to the transformative impact of FreePay accelerating well over £1 billion in payments to small and micro suppliers. |
| Encouraging local technical talent | Oxygen have partnered with Birmingham City University’s Big Data and AI Masters programmes on several data analysis and machine learning projects, providing several students access to Oxygen Insights data. |
| Supporting the Gateshead Warm Spaces project | Working with NEPO, Oxygen Finance donated both multi-chargers and USB plugs to their network of 100+ community warm spaces. This follows a donation to a warm spaces project by Newcastle United Foundation. |
| Our 5-aside team raises money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital | Staff competed in the Business Fives Birmingham, where teamwork and generous colleagues, friends and family led to impressive fundraising for the Birmingham Children’s Hospital charity. |
| Oxygen becomes kit sponsors for grassroots Bury Foundation FC Under 16s | Oxygen Finance’s commitment to social value extends to sponsoring a community-driven youth initiative, providing young players in Bury and the surrounding area with the opportunity to thrive through football. |
| Donation to SIFA Fireside | For the second year running our team donated clothing, food, and essential items to SIFA Fireside, a Birmingham-based charity serving people in need whilst they rebuild their lives with safety and dignity. |
| Achieve Silver Award for Payroll Giving | Oxygen Finance is honoured to receive the Payroll Giving Silver Award 2023 by enabling employees to make a difference together through Payroll Giving, generating sustainable income for UK charities. |
| Sponsoring the Our Derbyshire Awards | Oxygen sponsored the Our Derbyshire Awards, which celebrates and formally recognises the achievements of those working for Derbyshire County Council across eight award categories. |
| Our first cross-company Sustainability Workshop | We held our first Sustainability Workshop open to all employees to share advice on reducing energy bills, re-purposing household items and reducing food and plastic waste. |
| Team Oxygen took on Movember | Staff from Oxygen joined the ranks of over 6 million individuals by taking up the Movember challenge to raise awareness and funds for men’s health. |
| Spreading holiday cheer at Brushstrokes | Eight individuals from Oxygen eagerly volunteered for the second consecutive year, devoting their time to wrap donated Christmas gifts for refugee children in Birmingham at Brushstrokes, a local charity. |
| Oxygen’s first Open Data release | As part of Oxygen Finance’s commitment to open data, we published the topline third-party spend data for the UK public sector organisations we currently track to provide insights into the size and structure of the public sector, and in doing so help public and private organisations do better business with each other. |
| Helping our people live their best lives | We’ve introduced several staff initiatives, from an Electric Car Scheme to help our team switch to electric, a Payroll Giving scheme, and a Cycle to Work Scheme to help more of our people get to work in a more sustainable way. |
