8TH January 2015
To our stakeholders and publics:
I am pleased to confirm that Symbiotic Media Consortium Limited reaffirms its support of the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact in the areas of Human Rights, Labor, Environment and Anti-Corruption. In this annual Communication on Progress, we describe our actions to continually improve the integration of the Global Compact and its principles into our business strategy, culture and daily operations. We also commit to share this information with our stakeholders using our primary channels of communication. At its core, beyond profit business should always strive to play and work well within its environment, sanding for what is good, moral and upright.
Sincerely yours,
Mr. Mbugua Njihia | Chief Executive Officer

At Symbiotic, we recognize that the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all our staff, partners, associates and other publics is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace. Our staff is well versed with the UN Global Compact tenents and at every opportunity when interacting with publics will endeavor to make it known. We are actively working towards balancing the HR mix to ensure gender balance as there is no shortage of qualified women in technology. This effort has started at our Board of Advisors level and will trickle down as we seek to hire more resources as we expand to other countries.

There is a Swahili word that we use during orientation of new staffers – Utu. At it’s basic core it means “humaneness”. We impress the need to be like family and to look out for each other. At this point, long winded documents will not cut it, but the simple understanding of “utu” has us all on one page.

We are fortunate that we are indeed like family and everyone is in everyone’s business in a good way. We have not had any incidents where rights have been infringed. That said, out open door policy gives us the comfort that we will be able to catch and address any issues and initiate corrective action where necessary. It is made clear to staffers that a positive ruling by management on infringement is reason enough for termination of employment with escalation to authorities if deemed necessary.

As a company, we subscribe to the ILO Declaration covers that covers four fundamental principles and rights at work, namely; Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining ; Elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour , Effective abolition of child labour , Elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. We recognize the need for all our members of staff to have adequate compensation for their time and work they have done, with reasonable downtime in any given work year.

While our industry segment has no union per se, we have set in motion a process that will deliver a transparent work review and remuneration upgrade framework.

We allow our staffer to work remotely both for efficiency and to reduce our collective negative impact on the environment. Where possible we also encourage our partners and clients to hold meetings using online tools as opposed to face to face meetings. Simple things such as doing our ways of work, down to, payment processing online as opposed to going paper heavy we feel also contributes to the reduction of our carbon and pollution footprint. We will continue to employ these tactics and are actively looking for more ways to ensure an environmentally sustainable operation.

We allow our staffer to work remotely both for efficiency and to reduce our collective negative impact on the environment. Where possible we also encourage our partners and clients to hold meetings using online tools as opposed to face to face meetings. Simple things such as doing our ways of work, down to, payment processing online as opposed to going paper heavy we feel also contributes to the reduction of our carbon and pollution footprint. We will continue to employ these tactics and are actively looking for more ways to ensure an environmentally sustainable operation.

We have a strongly spoken company policy of zero-tolerance for corruption, bribery and extortion. We have suffered greatly for this in light of delayed or lost projects that require the participation of certain publics whose representatives both openly or covertly seek to be compromised to take action.

With our planned growth agenda that is heavily inclined to the enterprise we are working on written policy that will ensure alignment to our company culture and code for all our staffers, partners, associated and other publics with whom we interact and seek to do business with us. Key output of this policy will be a protocol to guide staff in situations where they are confronted with extortion or bribery and a statement requiring business partners and suppliers to adhere to the Global Compact anti-corruption principles that will be included in all contracts and statements of work going forward.

With our planned growth agenda that is heavily inclined to the enterprise we are working on written policy that will ensure alignment to our company culture and code for all our staffers, partners, associated and other publics with whom we interact and seek to do business with us. Key output of this policy will be a protocol to guide staff in situations where they are confronted with extortion or bribery and a statement requiring business partners and suppliers to adhere to the Global Compact anti-corruption principles that will be included in all contracts and statements of work going forward.