Introduction to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
CSR refers to the way in which businesses regulate themselves in order to ensure that all of their activities positively affect society as a whole. CSR policies aim to guarantee that companies work ethically, considering human rights as well as the social, economic and environmental impacts of what they do as a business. Businesses should meet, and aim to exceed, any relevant legislation, and if legislation does not exist in a particular area, the company should ensure they carry out best practices anyway.
Simply By Nature are committed to ensuring that any business undertakings are conducted as ethically as possible by following the below policy.
Who we are and what we do
Simply By Nature is a small family run business with between 8-20 employees focusing primarily on bringing organic, best in class Ayurveda inspired supplements to the world. The most important thing for us is our customers’ health as our Ethos states: Our World, Your Health! Our True Veda brand consists of Organic Ashwagandha, Organic Triphala, Organic Amla, Organic Turmeric, Organic Green Tea Extract, Organic Bacopa, Organic Holy Basil, Organic Boswellia Serrata, Organic MenoHarmony, Organic Turmeric, Organic Moringa and Organic Pomegranate Extract. Our Stakeholders consist of the consumers who purchase our products across our website, Amazon store and all other ecommerce platforms where we sell our products worldwide.
Looking after Employees
As an ethical family run business who are big health and wellness advocates, we provide a great deal of care towards our employees,
- All our employees are working remotely so we have a lone working policy in place to ensure all work is carried out effectively and to make the employees aware of what the business expects from them.
- All employees are required to complete a work from home risk assessment to assess the safety of their working environment.
- For personal and professional development, appropriate training material is provided upon induction and during their employment contract. If the employees feel the need to carry out training to aid their daily tasks, 2 hours per week of training is provided and the training must be recorded and carried out appropriately.
- Employees are offered Yearly salary review on anniversary, Yearly discretionary birthday bonus and Yearly discretionary performance based Christmas bonus. Employees are also qualified for 1 week paid holiday after one year of service.
- All employees' daily productivity is recorded through an activity monitoring system which allows the employer to view the most and least productive employees and award employees with high productivity True Veda stars to boost self-worth and positive motivation. These True Veda stars can be turned into gift cards or be used in the employee buying programme to be applied as discounts.
- Furthermore, employees are given the access to an employee buying program where they are offered the opportunity to purchase True Veda products at cost price.
- All business related recording keeping and communication is done through a project management tool. Urgent communication is done via chat. All employees are encouraged to respond to their colleagues as soon as they are available.
- The working hours and payments are recorded in the time-tracking application and this is used for transparency with the employees.
- All employees are required to participate in the monthly team meetings where the status of ongoing projects and wins and loses achieved together are discussed. Each employee is encouraged to speak about their individual wins and lessons learnt throughout the prior month. The team meetings are also used as a place to share and exchange advice and life experiences as learning material between the employees
Looking after Customers
- Our products are Certified Organic by Soil Association, USDA and EU so they contain ZERO chemicals or preservatives and 100% pure products with no binders, fillers or any additives. There are higher UK and EU regulatory standards we have to meet to attain certification but we do this to guarantee you get a safe, high quality and effective supplement.
- We use an innovative process called “Natural Fusion Extract®” where the best elements of the plants are taken to create a well concentrated form to give our consumers the most benefit. This technique locks in the goodness while keeping out the nasty solvents that are typically used. By coupling this process with the best organic ingredients we could find, we have been able to produce some amazing supplements.
- Our products are tested for Heavy Metals and Microbiology contaminants by a 3rd party independent lab to ensure safety of consumption.
- Our products are manufactured in GMP/ BRC certified facilities to ensure all regulatory compliance requirements are met and so products are manufactured to high safety standards
- Our dedicated customer service representatives communicate with our customers on a daily basis. They monitor and track our customers' queries and issues and respond to them and keep in contact with them until their issues are resolved.
- We follow the Amazon Terms and Conditions and their customer service policies when dealing with customers who have purchased our products throughout our Amazon store.
- We follow and publish our own Terms and Conditions on our website at: https://www.trueveda.com/terms-conditions/
- We publish our own Privacy Policy on our website at: https://www.trueveda.com/privacy-policy/
Suppliers’ Standards
- We as a purchaser have Purchase Order terms and conditions put in place with all our suppliers which clearly states the correct requirements and rules that should be followed by both the suppliers and buyer.
- We source many of our ingredients from India and we have appropriate Purchase Order Terms and Conditions that have been agreed upon by both parties in place.
- We carry out an extremely detailed Botanical Preparation Questionnaire for all our suppliers to assess supplier credentials and suitability in producing the raw ingredients we require for our products. The questionnaire conducts a comprehensive background check on the suppliers ethical and sustainable practices in their farming, harvesting, extracting and manufacturing processes, specifying any allegiance information and analytical data with attached documentation for evidence purposes.
- When selecting a supplier for our raw materials, we ensure that the supplier is certified and approved by the Soil Association before proceeding further. If the supplier is not approved by the Soil Association, we reach out to the suppliers to request their most recent organic certificates in order to get the approval from the Soil Association. Moreover, we annually request for the most recent organic certification from the suppliers to ensure the information is up to date and accurate to the best of our knowledge.
- To ensure that each batch of ingredients meets the required quality standards, we request a Certificate of Analysis (COA) from the supplier with each ordered batch. Each COA is meticulously checked on each shipment against safe published levels and any anomalies reported to our suppliers.
- When selecting suppliers, we prioritise the suppliers that source raw ingredients from local farms in India to give back to the local communities.
- We communicate with our suppliers via emails or phone calls if necessary.
Protecting the Environment
- We as a company use recycled cardboard for our product packing and we have further delayed the launch of our mailer boxes to ensure that the packing we use is sustainable and is ethically sourced.
- We always encourage our customers to recycle our packaging.
- Furthermore, we are planning to implement an eco-friendly shopping experience for our customers by including an option to make their shopping carbon neutral. Through EcoCart partner* we will calculate the emissions created from each online order and donate the exact amount required to reduce those emissions directly to multiple sustainability projects to combat climate change. *https://ecocart.io/
- Our customers are advised to recycle or reuse the bottles as they are made of 100% recyclable glass when they are empty and recycle the packaging accordingly.
- If our customer is unhappy with a product and they wish to terminate their use, they are advised to correctly dispose of the remaining capsules so that they do not inadvertently be consumed by any animal or children.
- Additionally, we rarely request the customers to return their products back to us to further reduce our carbon footprint.
Community Engagement
We are an ethical family run business who are big health and wellness advocates. A portion of our profits are donated to good causes such as,
- The Akshaya Patra Foundation where we are committed to a 1 for 1 arrangement which consists of feeding a lunch to a child in India for every True Veda product purchased.
- Moreover, as part of the The Akshaya Patra Foundation, we sponsor an entire school in India where we provide lunch for everyone at the school everyday of the school calendar.
Measurement
We are committed to assess and review our current working practices regularly to make sure that our business is continuing to operate in relation to our set ethical values and goals. If we are required to implement any changes to either further improve our sustainability or shape our business according to newer policies that are put in place by external bodies, we are willing to adapt our working practices to best suit these needs. We constantly monitor feedback from customers and implement suggestions that are meant to improve customer experience.
Currently, we monitor our ordering processes with the suppliers at the end of each reordering process to ensure that we have carried out each step of the process as efficiently and ethically as possible. This allows us to make any necessary changes if required to the next reordering processes so that we constantly streamline the reorder process.
