The last year has seen Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) become an ever more integral part of our culture at MAXIS. I’m very proud of the work that has been done to keep this important topic at the top of our agenda and am grateful to the entire MAXIS team for their engagement and involvement in helping us work towards our CSR goals.

I can see CSR – through our MAXIS for Good initiatives – working its way into everything that we do, from the way we work with our suppliers and partners around the world, to the way we make a difference in both our own communities, and the communities we visit as a team.

At our all-staff MeetUp in Rotterdam last September, we organised and took part in a number of group volunteering activities alongside NL Cares, from a school sports day and a city clean up, to gardening, cooking for the elderly and fixing up a community centre. These activities were extremely rewarding for the whole team, and I’m delighted that we got a chance to give back to the city that hosted us.

I am very aware that while much has been done, we still have a long way to go. Throughout 2024 and beyond, it’s crucial that we continue to prioritise CSR and ESG for our own business strategy but also when working with our external partners – clients, local insurers and suppliers – helping them to achieve their ESG objectives.

Increasingly we are asked about our commitment to CSR in global RFPs, as well as our policies, activities and sustainability credentials. This is an ever more important strategic area and I welcome the opportunity to become even more able to show what we do and plan to do going forward.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our global team again for their engagement and commitment as we continue to develop our MAXIS for Good initiatives.

Regards,
Mattieu

In 2023, we ran a number of campaigns both internally and on our social media channels, celebrating diversity and ensuring that we’re supporting the causes that matter most to our people.

These included campaigns for International Women’s Day, where we supported CARE’s campaign ‘A woman’s right to lead’ with a donation towards women leading their families and communities through crises, Pride Month and Juneteenth. For International Men’s Day and World Mental Health Day we held an internal Spotlight session on men’s mental health, helping our global teams better understand mental health in general and that of our male friends, colleagues and loved ones specifically.

We also ran internal Spotlight sessions on mindfulness and sleep health and launched our partnership with HUMANOO, a health & wellness vendor whose app gamifies and incentivises physical activity and mental wellbeing, motivating employees to really take care of themselves. As part of this launch, we promoted a company-wide MAXIS step challenge, encouraging physical activity and some friendly competition between our global teams.

We have also added a ‘culture corner’ section to the agenda for our quarterly Town Halls, giving everyone the chance to share what they love about their individual cultures, as well as a chance for us to learn more about our colleagues from around the world.

Before the end of the year, we plan to launch a DE&I committee which ensures the best possible representation of our people at all levels of the business. We will continue to run internal Spotlight sessions for our staff, focusing on topics around personal development and wellness as well as sharing resources from our provider on topics such as embracing life as a new parent and mental health.

Community is a key pillar of our commitment to CSR. Throughout 2023 the MAXIS team undertook a number of volunteering activities.

During our all-staff MeetUp in Rotterdam last September, 140+ members of staff took part in volunteering activities, organised alongside NL Cares. This gave us a great opportunity to give back to the city that hosted us for three days and was really rewarding for everyone involved. Collectively, we donated over 500 hours to these activities, which included:

• sports activities at an after-school club for under-privileged kids
• cooking for the elderly
• fixing up a local community centre
• gardening in some local community gardens
• a city clean-up.

As well as our collective efforts in Rotterdam, other volunteering efforts and contributions to charity included:

• joining a walk for International Women’s Day
• donating artwork to the community centre in Rotterdam where we volunteered
• helping to pack welfare packages for people fighting breast cancer and donating to a local hygiene bank alongside our Shareholder AXA
• donating clothes to Smartworks
• giving our time and talents in the US to take part in a series of comedy events, raising money for victims of the Lewiston shootings and their families with donations going to the Maine Community Foundation
• dressing up for Christmas Jumper Day in the London office, with donations going to Save the Children
• partnering with Demelza, a charity offering hospice care for children in the UK with serious or life-limiting conditions, with staff in our London and Paris offices donating Christmas gifts to the children that Demelza cares for.

We also made further donations to charity partners CARE –– helping them deliver change for some of the world's poorest communities, and to Fauna & Flora –– to support their efforts in protecting the diversity of life on earth.

As part of our commitment to continuing our positive work in our local communities, the Community pillar of MAXIS for Good has decided to choose three broad themes for volunteering and charity work in 2024: alleviating poverty, environmental action and promoting health equity. These themes inform the planning of all community activities throughout the year, and we have already been very active.

• We’ve set up a bottle top collection point in our Paris office so that our people can contribute to AXA’s campaign with Bouchons d’Amour. Bouchons d’Amour sells the bottle tops with money from these sales helping to pay for wheelchairs and other equipment to help people with disabilities.
• Once again, we were delighted to donate to CARE’s International Women’s day ‘Changemakers’ campaign
• We supported some of the MAXIS team in London when they took part in a football tournament raising money for Chamos, a charity working to improve the health and education of underprivileged children and young people in Venezuela.
• The MAXIS Legal team has recently taken part in the London Legal Walk, raising money for the London Legal Trust who help to fund free legal advice and services for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it.

We also ran a blood/plasma donation campaign in the run up to World Blood Donor Day on 14 June, educating our teams on the benefits of, and need for, donations, and encouraging them to get involved in donating blood or plasma.

Throughout the rest of 2024, we will continue to show our commitment to our local communities, organising charity and volunteering activities in line with our chosen themes.

In April this year we ran another Earth Day campaign, encouraging staff to make small changes on Earth Day and continue them throughout the rest of the year and beyond.  

We are also looking into ways in which we can donate redundant IT and other digital equipment to local communities and hope to make our first donations by the end of the summer.

A key strategic project this year is a comprehensive digital migration project. We are using this opportunity to reduce our digital footprint and are also looking into creating digital business cards for all staff replacing the need for printed versions.