Social responsibility at Smaply

You barely find someone from the Smaply team who does not invest their spare time into helping others, either in an informal way, or as part of initiatives, programs, or social organizations. Being socially-oriented personalities, we also bring this spirit into the company.

We are a small and highly ambitious team. We are not perfect, but we want to be transparent about what we do. That’s why here comes an overview of our activities for social engagement and responsibility.

A note on Ukraine war

With horror we’re witnessing yet another war in Europe. We are deeply concerned about the war of aggression from Russia against Ukraine. We are standing with Ukraine and offer our support.

This is what we do on a company level, and as individuals:

• As a team, we support humanitarian help in Ukraine financially and with material supplies. We strive to coordinate and constantly share information.
• We are offering a free work space in our office to a displaced Ukrainian software developer, allowing a professional work environment in such a desperate situation.
• A colleague organized accommodation for an Ukrainian family and after spending hour calling all schools in the area, finally even organized a high school place in an Austrian high school for a teenager
• An Ukrainian-speaking colleague helped arriving refugees.

We have seen our team taking action in other situations before, like helping refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, or taking actions and raising awareness of the climate crisis. We are immensely grateful and proud of all the efforts our team members have made.

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We #StandWithUkraine

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We commit to our company values

Our company values are tenfold and include, amongst others: transparency, respectfulness, and responsibility. These values have been worked out together with the entire Smaply team. We are highly committed to sticking to them, having discussions around them, taking action to follow them, and proving our conviction.

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We follow the principles of the UN Global Compact Network

By signing the Global Compact Network, an initiative by the United Nations, our company commits to following 10 principles of corporate sustainability and to meeting responsibilities in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption.

It’s not a signature only. Every year, we report on our activities and our progress. That requires us to reflect on the past year, discuss what we did well, and in what areas we can improve.

Here’s our listing*
^{* please note we’re listed with the company name More than Metrics, the company brand of Smaply}

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We commit to the Austrian Diversity Charter (“Charta der Vielfalt”)

This initiative is to raise appreciation for all members of our society, independent from their gender, age, nationality, skin color, sexual orientation, religion, or physical or intellectual disability.

Signing the Diversity charter acknowledges our awareness on this important topic, and that we are doing our best to support diversity in all its facets.

Here’s our listing

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Signing this Charter is also supposed to highlight our appreciation and support of the #pride movement. We are proud of our team members, partners and friends who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, or empathize with its members.

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Part of this is also our recruiting approach: We ask every individual of every color, ethnicity, national origin, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, height, weight, physical or mental ability, and family status to apply for our vacancies. As a result, today we are enormously proud of our our diverse team that really teaches us a lot about other cultures, languages, traditions, realities, mindsets, and much more.

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We invest in accessibility

As described in our accessibility statement, we train our team and build our software based on the needs of people with disabilities. Product development and design, feedback and testing, team and hiring culture – we look at all these aspects through the lens of sustainability and are taking measures to be as inclusive as possible. As a SaaS company, we put special attention to digital accessibility to provide inclusive web experiences (#A11Y).

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We also believe in the small things

It’s not only the big steps that are meaningful. Also the sum of all the small things have a great impact on our society. These are a few of our everyday contributions for social responsibility:

• We support NGOs and educational institutions with discounts or free accounts for our software Smaply.
• We think, write, and talk about what our field can contribute to a more sustainable society (how to shape the future with service design, or how to do planet-centered design).
• We publically take a stand on human rights.
• We hold open team discussions and decisions on company-related ethical topics.
• We support maternity and paternity leave.
• We aim to reduce traveling and use more environmentally friendly alternatives to traveling, such as the train. In most cases we get to the office by bike or walking.
• We use 100% eco electricity in our office.
• We buy recycled printer paper and re-use misprint paper.
• We increasingly buy secondhand products for our office and upcycle some pieces of furniture
• … and many more.

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Today’s only the foundation of tomorrow.

We’re still a small company and doing our best to contribute to a more tolerant, respectful, appreciative, sustainable communal life. Obviously, there are still many actions for us left in the future and we strive to take them as soon as we can.

We also warmly invite all our stakeholders – team members, customers, users, providers, partners, and friends – to raise our own awareness for any topic if they see the potential for improvement or an opportunity for us to help.

We’ll be grateful for any feedback, tip, or inspiration.