Gaining CSR Accreditation

Climate change and sustainability are now business essentials, and SMEs have a vital role to play. This interactive session will explore why CSR matters for small businesses, the benefits of being proactive, and how accreditation can strengthen credibility and impact.

This webinar will introduce CSR-A accreditation using four pillars—Environment, Workplace, Community, and Philanthropy—with breakout exercises to help you map your own activities and share ideas with peers. You’ll also hear speaker Alex Hughes’ personal journey to Gold CSR-A accreditation, discover practical steps to get started, and learn how to communicate your CSR effectively.

Please note: this webinar is for alumni of Help to Grow Management, please only book the alumni tickets if you have taken part in the course: https://smallbusinesscharter.org/help-to-grow-management (course alumni may invite a colleague- please do email s.white@kingston.ac.uk to let us know if you plan to). There are also limited tickets avaliable for businesses who are non-alumni to select but they must have at least 5 employees to be eligible to attend.

Expert Speakers:

After 30 years’ experience in finance, sales, operations, office management for various corporates and as an operations manager for a bespoke furniture manufacturer, Alex quit corporate life and set up her own business.

Auxilium Admin was founded in 2017 to support service-based business owners with administration services to relieve them of projects they needed to get off the ground and daily tasks that were draining their time so they could focus on growing their business.

Alex’s experience enabled her to see the bigger picture of how a small business is run and when areas need to be reviewed and changed to make the business run more efficiently and effectively. Alex pivoted Auxilium slightly after a few years to looking at the operations of a business and advise her clients in more of a consultancy role. The business name then changed to Auxilium Business Consulting Ltd to incorporate the more diverse services she was offering and could offer in the future.

Today, Alex’s mission is to also guide SMEs on the path to sustainability demystifying the process and embedding practices that attract values-aligned clients, enhance operational integrity, and contribute to a greener planet. She takes SMEs from the wilderness of knowing nothing about sustainability to accredited businesses.

Alex is very proud to be CSR-A Gold accredited small business herself, has been a finalist in various local awards and is passionate about helping other small businesses balance performance with purpose to showcase their impacts to the world.

Help to Grow Alumni Program

The Alumni Workshop series are designed to help managers and key decision makers of SMEs create nurturing work environments through supportive peer ecosystems. The initiative is part of the Help to Grow Programme at Kingston University led by Dr Bahare Afrahi since 2021.

For questions about these events please email Sophie White, SMEs relation lead, s.white@kingston.ac.uk.

The Help to Grow Management programme

Our Help to Grow Management programme is a 12-week course designed for managers and small business owners who are interested in innovation, resilience, and improving. Since 2021 we have successfully helped over 600 SME owners’ managers to grow their business and take it to the next level since.

To find out more about more including upcoming start dates at Kingston Business School contact Maliha Haider, Marketing lead of the programme at Kingston University London. S.M.Haider@kingston.ac.uk