Our meaningful connections plan

Better Business

We’re committed to running our business in a truly responsible way, just as our people and customers would expect. That means looking beyond our proactive environmental and social impact programmes and focusing on how we do business, every day.

Supported Wellbeing

We want our people to thrive and an essential part of that is being comfortable, healthy and happy. That’s where Thrive comes in - our wellbeing programme. Thrive focusses on physical, social, mental and financial wellbeing, with a range of policies, tools and resources supporting each area.

Highlights include;

• Bupa – we provide our people with a range of services from Bupa including Healthy Minds, Anytime Healthline and Family Mental Healthline
• Awareness days and Thrive moments – we mark key dates throughout the year including Mental Health Awareness Week, World Menopause Day and Alcohol Awareness Week. We’ve also been encouraging our people to share their Thrive moments, from how they’ve changed their lifestyle to how they coped with addiction and grief
• Time to change pledge – in 2018 we signed the Time to Change Pledge, we committed to raising awareness of mental health in our workplaces and for our people
• Salary finance – we’ve implemented a range of financial tools to support financial wellbeing, including access to affordable loans, savings accounts direct from salary and lots of tips on keep finances in check
• Unmind – we’ve partnered with wellbeing experts Unmind to give all of our people access to the Unmind workplace mental health platform. The platform helps our people to measure, understand and improve their mental wellbeing
• Onsite health checks – we’re rolling out onsite health check-ups supported by qualified health assessors
• Online self check-ups – we provide this for all of our people and it’s available all year round. The check up reviews lifestyle factors and provides an instant report with areas to focus on from exercise and nutrition to sleep and stress

Sustainable supply chain

A transparent and responsible supply chain means both minimising risk and leveraging relationships to drive positive environmental and social performance.

We manage risk by;

· Being clear about our expectations of our suppliers – we do this through our Supplier Code of Conduct which all new suppliers must sign as part of their onboarding process

· Assessing performance – we use the EcoVadis platform to assess and benchmark our suppliers against 21 environmental, social and ethical criteria based on a number of international standards including the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), ISO 26000 standard and Ceres principles. As part of this assessment, our suppliers are required to provide evidence of their environmental, social and ethical activities.

We drive positive environmental and social performance by working in partnership with suppliers on key issues such as accessibility of products, single use plastic in catering and product packaging, and best practice safety approaches with our field and network expansion partners.

We also publish an annual modern slavery statement as required by the Modern Slavery Act 2015 – our latest statement can be found here

Secure data

In an increasingly digital world, the value of information is rising. This places ever greater responsibility on businesses like Virgin Media to ensure we safeguard customer, employee and partner information, and proactively provide tools to keep safe and secure online.

You can find out more about our approach to privacy here

And guidance and tools for our customers on fraud and data security can be found in our Security Hub here

Safer online experiences

At Virgin Media we’re building connections that really matter and we’re committed to helping people to access technology safely so they can do more, be more and have more fun.

We know people overwhelmingly believe digital technology can have an exciting, positive impact on all of our lives. We’ve also heard that people want better technology and clearer guidance from providers, like us, to help keep children safe when online, using their mobiles, or watching television. So, to make sure we’re helping families get the best from digital technology, while keeping children safe, we’ve introduced a range of initiatives:

• Child Safe: a parental controls tool that blocks access to websites that might be unsuitable for children. Child Safe helps to protect any device that’s connected to a Virgin Media home network and it’s included with all Virgin Media broadband packages at no extra cost.
• F-Secure SAFE: Virgin Mobile offers a year’s free protection, followed by 70% off F-Secure, an award winning tool that helps to shield children from unsuitable content on websites and apps and allows parents to manage the times their kids can go online.
• Internet Matters: together with a host of major companies, including BT, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, Google and the BBC, we’re helping parents and carers make informed and timely decisions on what kids get up to online, at every stage of their development.
• Switched On Families: practical, honest, useful support for parents, through an interactive guide and online hub with loads of advice for families, by families.
• Parental controls for live TV: these include PIN protection for movies and adult content, as well as content hiding and channel locking. We also comply with the scheduling rules associated with the 9pm watershed and use PIN technology for video-on-demand and recorded content. In addition, we’ve built parental controls into our TV Go app where the account holder can choose which accounts have access to the service.