At Context, Sustainability is much more than just a buzzword. It’s one of our most important values and a guiding principle in what we do. It is at the core of our activities, informing our interaction with clients and suppliers and the way we collaborate and grow as a team. Here we highlight some practical aspects of our sustainability efforts in relation to the environment, health and wellbeing and community.

Environmental Sustainability

The Context team works towards continuously reducing our environmental impact. Some of our actions and achievements to date include:

• An almost paperless office through digital invoicing and printing only when necessary
• Installation at the Context office of a solar PV system that powers all Context servers and desktops
• Switching to a provider that supplies electricity from 100% renewable energy sources
• Zoned heating at our office to reduce our carbon footprint
• Our office environment contributes to local biodiversity with one acre of native woodland and wildflowers
• Flexible hybrid work for our team members avoids long commutes and reduces our employees’ carbon footprints
• Participation in tree-planting at Hometree, Co. Clare to help restore native Irish woodlands
• Taking part in the Climate Heroes Challenge.

Climate Heroes Challenge

From 15 – 26 April, Context team members together with some of our freelance linguists, took part in the Climate Heroes Challenge organised by Global Action Plan. Two Context teams competed against each other and the other community groups taking part around Ireland to reduce their carbon footprint. Each team member logged daily activities on the Climate Heroes simple and easy to use platform, which showed encouraging real-time calculations of our carbon savings. It was a fun, enjoyable experience and helped to develop habits that will stick with us into the future. And we had some nice prizes for the winners! Across all teams, participants in the challenge saved a combined total of 43 tonnes of CO₂. To put that into perspective, if everyone in Ireland did this, it would amount to a 63% reduction in Ireland’s total annual consumption-based emissions. Context also made a donation to support community programmes in Global Action Plan’s GLAS community gardens and nature explorer programme. The next Climate Heroes Challenge will be happening in October 2024 and we’ll be looking to improve on our performance even more!

Health and Wellbeing

At Context, we know that health and wellbeing are vital for working sustainably. We have an optional and customisable health and wellbeing programme for employees. In this programme, employees form pairs of health and wellbeing buddies. Each employee chooses their own health and wellbeing goals from categories covering Eating Well, (Home) Office Ergonomics, Financial Wellbeing, Personal-Professional Development, Physical Exercise, Positive Impact, Quality Sleep, Personal Activities, Social Interaction and Workload Balancing. Once they’ve decided on their goals, employees discuss them with their buddy, who they then meet with regularly to catch up on how things are going. A great positive of the programme is that it’s completely up to the employee to decide on their goals and what they want to share with their buddy. Goals could include taking more exercise or getting better sleep, making more time for social activities or hobbies, improving work-life balance etc., but they can be anything the employee wants to achieve in terms of their health and wellbeing. Since employees can choose their own goals, they can be more realistic than is often the case in one-size-fits-all programmes. Another advantage is that the programme is motivating without being stressful, as regular catchups are intended as a fun, friendly opportunity to pause, think about, define and discuss goals and progress on an ongoing basis, aiming for continuous improvement. In addition to their personal commitment, the catchups with their buddy create an increased sense of accountability for employees. And to top it off, employees who participate in the programme take an extra annual leave day per quarter, a wellbeing day, a great opportunity to pursue their personal health and wellbeing objectives.

Community

At Context, we value the important contribution of all our freelance linguists and we support their fair and just treatment in relation to rates and working conditions. We believe that freelance translation and interpreting should be a sustainable activity. My colleague Ulrike Fuehrer’s article What is a ‘Translator’? details the important work done by our community interpreters in often very challenging situations. It highlights the need to create a robust and sustainable job profile for community interpreters. Despite the growing numbers in migrant communities in Ireland today, no coherent government approach to the training and accreditation of community interpreters exists. In light of this reality, Context provides support to community interpreters in the form of training and resources. Without the vital work of our community interpreters, equal access to public services for migrant communities would not exist. Through our work with our community interpreters and our strong working relationships with community and public sector institutions, Context supports equal access of migrant communities in Ireland to public sector services such as medical care, legal supports, asylum seeking, citizenship rights and employment. We hope that this contributes to the creation of sustainable communities in Ireland, now and into the future.

What does Sustainability mean to you?  Will you join the next Climate Heroes Challenge?