Our 8 promises
These are the promises I make to society, clients and the environment
You have my word, my personal guarantee that Guildhawk will do everything in our power to create a society and environment that is fair, safe, healthy and sustainable now and for future generations. I make this pledge as the founder of Guildhawk, and as a female leader and mother because I want to inspire others now to take less from nature and give more to improve life on earth.
Jurga Zilinskiene MBE
Owner & Founder of Guildhawk
1. Our ESG promise to you
Guildhawk is a Queen’s Award winning woman-owned company with employees, linguists and clients in over 102 countries. We promise to always operate in socially responsible way that increases your trust in us. We guarantee you will enjoy the highest professional standards from Guildhawk and these will be certified and independently verified compliant with ISO:9001 and ISO:27001.
Guildhawk certifies and verifies our offer. We do this because they show you we are committed to quality and protecting our planet, society, employees, customers, suppliers and the data they entrust us with. Our CSR Policy creates the following promises to you, our clients, society and the environment.
2. Our promise to put responsibilities before profit
People create cultures that inspire and promote improvement. For this reason, all Guildhawk people work to the same core values – Trust, Dynamism and Collaboration. These powerful forces help guide our staff in their conduct and business relationships. They form the foundation for all policies, procedures, staff and client development. Corporate profit is not a sole driver. We put responsibility before profit because Guildhawk people know the best balance sheet and best results comes from a healthy, honest culture.
The values offer all Guildhawk people a compass that helps them to do more as people and teams and create extraordinary results for you, our clients and society. This in turn wins the trust of our clients that result in long, healthy business relationships.
3. Our promise to help women and young people learn and improve
Our promise to help women and young people is powered from the heart of the company. The founder and owner of Guildhawk, Jurga Zilinskiene is an inspirational leader and the first Lithuanian woman to be honoured by Queen Elizabeth II for her services to promoting international trade. She created the UK’s first official collaboration between the British Parliament and the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce (GHWCC) to help women to learn and improve as entrepreneurs and coders.
Our clients, suppliers, people and communities we help like the GHWCC, trust us. They become our partners because Guildhawk creates remarkable results that help people to keep improving their lives. The Guildhawk CSR policy is to recruit and train people to be the best they can in life. We do this by promoting our guiding values of always being Trusted, Dynamic and Collaborative in your life.
To help young people learn new skills for a lifetime in the language industry, Guildhawk created an academy that has taught over 100 post-graduate, mostly young women, with 100% securing paid employment. Today, some of those inspirational women are leaders at Guildhawk.
As an equal opportunities employer Guildhawk ensures that our people remain healthy and safe from discrimination and harassment in the workplace. During the COVID-19 pandemic Guildhawk introduced powerful new AI technologies to help people work in a safe, healthy way and these form part of our tested procedures. We invest in the professional learning for our people to help them and Guildhawk succeed including courses at Harvard Business School.
4. Our promise to help military veterans
Guildhawk knows the challenges that many military veterans suddenly face when they leave service. Because of this, in 2018 officially signed the Armed Forces Covenant. Through this enduring pledge, Guildhawk promises to help military veterans to learn and discover new, rewarding careers. Our policy includes helping military linguists to transition into civilian life. We also create charity fundraisers to help servicemen and women injured in service.
5. Our promise to protect wildlife and the environment
Guildhawk promises to do all in our power to protect wildlife and the environment. We do this because without immediate action by everyone, the future of life on earth as we know it will become extinct.
In 2008, Guildhawk pledged to become one of the first companies in the world to create a near paperless environment. This was caused by wanting to reduce carbon and to create safer, healthier workplaces. Today, our big investment into new AI-powered workflows and the latest secure machine translation technologies has created the results we wanted. The most revolutionary improvement is created by our powerful workflow software called QCS+. This allows all project and client management, finance functions, reporting and customer satisfaction surveys to be undertaken digitally. Any printed paper is shredded after use and recycled.
To help clients improve their carbon footprint by travelling less. In 2020, Guildhawk introduced a remarkable new product called Guildhawk Voice that creates multilingual videos. As a result of this product, clients increase their global reach and save carbon by not flying.
Guildhawk people understand how to create more improvements and learn our environmental policy upon joining the firm.
6. Our promise to help protect society
Guildhawk wants people to participate in voluntary activities. These support the society and the environment and promote our CSR policy and values. Guildhawk people regularly volunteer their own time to help other people in society. They can take work time each year to inspire more action. This volunteering helps Guildhawk and our partners increase the CSR results we achieve and inspires others to become involved.
During the COVID-19 pandemic Guildhawk people instantly volunteered to help protect society by volunteering on the front line. Many Guildhawk people are immediately recognized on TV and in the community. Chairman Ian Miller MBE is one of the best-known police reserve commanders in the UK. He protects the community every week on the streets with the City of London Special Constabulary. Director David Clarke created and led the UK’s COVID-19 Fraud Watch task force. He united the UK Government and over 70 trusted international organisations to protect society against Fraud. Guildhawk Board Member Sir Timothy Ackroyd founded the Tusk Trust for the protection of wildlife in Africa.
7. Our promise to create the best culture for equality, diversity and opportunity
Guildhawk knows that it is committed to providing equal opportunities. We advise staff that they have a duty, both morally and legally, not to discriminate against individuals. This means that there shall be no discrimination on account of disability, race, colour, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or marital status. All managerial staff undertake annual training in Unconscious Bias to avoid bias in recruitment and selection processes.
Guildhawk conforms to a defined process for procurement of all goods and services as stated within our Quality Manual. We also search for new ways to improve our performance and involve colleagues and clients in our work. Our People and Culture group lead on this area of work and research and test new ideas.
8. Our promise to learn lessons and improve
Our CSR policy and procedures create a framework for us to continuously improvement CSR results. Therefore, all Guildhawk employees are provided easy to understand guidance in the Staff Handbook upon joining the organisation. The handbook includes the Guildhawk Health and Safety policy, risk assessment process and more. The Guildhawk Head of Operations is certified in First Aid through an accredited organisation. All people complete an official workstation assessment upon joining and understand how to officially report matters openly or anonymously to increase health, safety and quality.
