We hold ourselves accountable in everything that we do. This means the highest level of integrity across all areas of our business and services that we offer.
GMCS believes in the importance of having a well-defined and structured approach to corporate responsibility. We centre our approach across four areas, which we believe are important for a world-class international consultancy.
These are ‘ethics and integrity, ‘corporate governance, ‘diverse and inclusive culture’, and ‘helping societies and communities positively’.
Ethics and Integrity
Our business ethic and how the business is run over the long-term is intrinsically associated. As such, we recognise that a business that damages its practices will ultimately be one that becomes unsustainable.
As the business environment evolves with increased demand from statutory bodies for detailed information about corporate standards and accreditations, it has become more important to maintain client and stakeholder confidence. Through our corporate responsibility approach, we have been able to maintain and develop our reputation in the market, sustain our employee retention and increase our client satisfaction.
Our corporate responsibility strategy goes beyond the legal obligations and requirements to operate our business. We are constantly reviewing the ethical dimensions of our business decisions.
To further validate this, GMCS was awarded ISO 9001:2015 Certification. ISO 9001:2015 is a globally recognised Quality Management System.
We view this accreditation as being very important to our strategic business plans, as we expand our efforts to compete in a more globalised and international market.
The ISO 9001:2015 certification represents our responsibility and commitment to set up necessary engagements with clients and suppliers. It also supports our continual improvement processes through client feedback and audits.
Achieving and maintaining the ISO certification reassures and strengthens our teams to perform more efficiently and professionally in their work and everything they do. Our quality processes, working procedures and documentation has helped profoundly in keeping this certification since 2016.
The ISO 9001:2015 Certification is in line with our core company values; we will uphold the highest standards of integrity and strive for excellent professional performance in everything that we do.
Corporate Governance
GMCS views corporate governance as integral to the commercial success of business in the long-term. We believe that effective management of governance leads to enhanced client relationships and maintenance of business integrity. We do this by implementing a robust corporate structure, good practice, embracing regulation, and encouraging both management and director input.
We hold all our management and directors at GMCS in the highest regard and expect them to be accountable while delivering the highest service levels for our client and business partners. It is therefore also important to have procedures and processes in place should this be compromised. The management and directors at GMCS are given the independence and support to effective challenge business practices which fall short of GMCS’s high standard in any situation.
Our client and business partner relationships are critical and integral to our daily business. GMCS expects its client and business partners to conduct their business in a lawful manner and in accordance with the values and principles of GMCS.
Diverse and Inclusive Culture
We believe in equal opportunities. We work with a wide variety of clients from different backgrounds and circumstances. This outlook has helped us to grow our business but more importantly, has led to developing alternate services and knowledge.
Internally we are made up of people from very different backgrounds and cultures. We believe in the contribution of all our staff members regardless of ethnicity and recognise performance no matter the cultural background, nationality, gender, and physical ability. We hire the most qualified professionals and recognise individual performance.
Cultural Equality:
Global cultural equality at the workplace is on a journey. At GMCS we make sure that our values, policies, and practices are representative of all people, whether based on race/ ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, geography, citizenship, social-economic status, religion, or any other discriminatory factors.
Our team make up is diverse, with employees from different backgrounds and locations. We find that this makeup helps us to service our clients better, helps our approach to claims and disputes, and results in deeper client relationships.
Health & Wellbeing of our People:
We care strongly about the general health and wellbeing of all our staff and in addition to raising awareness of health and safety in the workplace, we are committed to protecting the welfare of our employees.
GMCS takes all reasonably practicable measures to reduce risks to the health and safety of its employees, this includes first aiders, fire awareness, a mental health first aider and external resources.
We recognise that workplace stress is a health and safety issue and we acknowledge the importance of identifying and reducing the causes. Below are some examples of the steps that GMCS provides and implements to help employees overcome mental health issues.
- We ensure good communication between management and staff, particularly where there are organisational and procedural changes.
- We ensure staff are fully trained to carry out their job.
- We ensure staff are provided with meaningful developmental opportunities.
- We monitor workloads to ensure that people are not overloaded.
- We monitor working hours and overtime to ensure staff are not overworked.
- We attend training as requested in good management practice and health and safety.
- We ensure that bullying and harassment are not tolerated within any team.
- We are vigilant and offer additional support to members of staff who are experiencing stress outside work e.g. bereavement, separation or depression.
Helping Societies and Communities Positively
It is important that leading privately owned businesses, such as ourselves, give back to the local community and society.
We believe in raising awareness of local community causes to drive effective positive social change. Our viewpoint is that it is not good enough for a business to just have good intention, at GMCS we believe that it is important to actually get involved with the causes, which we care about through active participation. We have aligned our CSR projects around our business. This we find leads to increased employee engagement, understanding, and proactiveness. Our people care about the causes that we are engaged in and help our business to drive those agendas.
We focus in two key areas – participation in social initiatives & how we can make our business practices more sustainable.
Social Initiatives:
We support a diverse range of charities and organisations that have meaning to our business and communities in which we operate. We engage with charities and organisations to understand more about their priorities and to scope out how best we can get involved in supporting them.
We recognise that our business and people play an important role in local social community initiatives. As such we encourage and empower our employees to participate and drive awareness of charities that they feel strongly and passionate about.
Sustainable Communities:
Sustainability is very important to us. GMCS is committed to responsible and sustainable business practices. We are mindful of our business contribution to the carbon footprint. In this, we educate and make our staff aware of how as a business we can reduce our carbon footprint. We have multiple initiatives in place to help reduce our carbon footprint.
This includes installing recycling boxes at our head office in Dubai and encourage team members to reduce paper consumption, with a drive to be a paperless office. Whilst some of these initiatives can be deemed as small gestures, when added up they make a big difference and contribute to a better and more sustainable future.
In Summary
Over the years our corporate responsibility strategy has boosted our business targets through improved client service satisfaction and employee engagement levels. This overall has led to better business outcomes and will continue to do so for GMCS in the future.