Converging in Staffordshire: Making A Difference Locally

While Converge operates all over the UK and beyond, we’re headquartered in Staffordshire, with deep local roots and an opportunity to make a positive impact locally. Over the past year we’ve been involved in a host of different activities ranging from intrepid volunteering days to helping local students gear up for great future careers. Here’s our journey through a rewarding year in Staffordshire.

Going wild

We embrace flexible working, enabling colleagues to live throughout the UK but over 50% of us live in Staffordshire and working in partnership with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust has enabled us to volunteer in the great outdoors.

The Trust manages over 40 nature reserves in the county – a total of 1,980 hectares of land - and for 50 years has ensured that the county’s wildlife has had secure places to feed, shelter and breed.

All Converge employees have an opportunity to take 3 volunteering days each year, and since the start of 2024 we've volunteered for 1,491 hours nationally. In Winter 2024, two dedicated teams from Converge volunteered their time to support our efforts on local beauty-spot Cannock Chase. They used hand tools to cut back dense birch and oak scrub, revealing the underlying heathland habitat, to connect two separate heathland areas. According to the Trust, the teams’ positive, "can-do" attitude made all the difference, and they were incredibly grateful for their contribution.

Helping vulnerable communities in Staffordshire

In 2024 we worked with an amazing local charity called Signposts Services. They provide local one-off practical support for people around Stafford with tasks ranging from decorating and garden clearances to help with filling in forms and dealing with debt.

A team of employees volunteered with Rising Brook Community Church in Stafford to help clear overgrown gardens and hedges for local people – and now they’re able to enjoy their gardens as warmer weather approaches. We’re also proud to have donated to their local foodbank, supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

Ahead of Christmas 2024 our staff were also delighted to play Santa early by delivering over £250 worth of toy parcels (two full sacks!) to Rising Brook Community Church and spent a Saturday morning with them preparing food parcels.

We want to congratulate Signposts Services for recently being honoured in the King’s Awards for Voluntary Service and we’re delighted to have played a small part in supporting such a wonderful organisation.

Charitable giving, local style

Every two years Converge select two charity partners, one of which is local, with our employees making the final choice. Our local charity in 2023/2024 was Katharine House Hospice and we’ve enjoyed plenty of days supporting them. The highlights included a charity Cricket Match, and a Charity Walk at beautiful Shugborough Hall, including colleagues volunteering as marshals and contributing to their biggest fundraising event of the year.

We would like to offer warm thanks to our colleagues for donating a mountain of clothes, toys and books, along with furniture from our HQ for sale in Katharine House Hospice’s retail shops. This was on top of a hugely successful Christmas raffle all of which contributed to raising over £12,000 for the Hospice over 2 years. We were even able to supply them with some AV screens to help with the hospice's internal training needs.

Our local charity partner in 2025/26 is Brighter Days Rescue, a dog rescue charity based in nearby Penkridge, saving abandoned dogs and connecting them with loving homes. Working in partnership with Acer to become corporate sponsors we have already visited to help with everything from cleaning out kennels, to dog health checks and even some sowing to repair their bedding.

In the words of Sarah Brown, Fundraising Coordinator at Brighter Days "Everyone who attended was fantastic - confident with the dogs and eager to get involved! It was wonderful to see a collaboration between the two companies."

One of our employees, Bids and Tenders Coordinator Emma Lockley, has also supported Brighter Days in the best way possible by rehoming one of the charity's dogs herself!

We’ve been promoting Brighter Days' inspiring work on the Converge social media channels too, to support them to rehome even more dogs.

In 2024 and 2025 we’ve been proud to have supplied some chocolaty treats in the form of Easter Eggs donated by Converge colleagues to The Voice Project in Stafford, who support young people leaving the care system.

Inspiring local students

Staffordshire is home to a host of FE colleges and Universities, with no shortage of students studying IT related courses, so we’re keen to build ties. In September 2024 we were delighted to welcome a cohort of HNC/D Computing Students from Stoke-on-Trent & Staffordshire Institute of Technology to our recent Cybersecurity Summit.

The students learned about AI, misinformation, ransomware and more from Microsoft, AW Networks, Hitachi Vantara and Nellcote alongside AI expert Dan Sodergren.

Our Vice President of People Operations, Alison Hodgens also hosted a fruitful day with a group of students from NSCG (Newcastle and Stafford College Group), along with work placements over the summer as part of their T level qualifications. The day included a career talk and a tour of our HQ facilities. The students pictured here have undertaken T Levels in either Digital or Business Administration.

In 2024 we hosted 231 weeks of work experience or work placements here in Staffordshire, including one from Keele University focused on reducing carbon emissions, an issue central to our core mission on sustainability.

We’ve recently increased our presence in local schools too, for example attending the Career Day at Walton High School in Stafford.

Giving locals a sporting chance

Who knew we had a bunch of talented footballers here at Converge? In 2024 we held our charity football tournament in support of Shelter UK and Katharine House Hospice had a great time while raising money for worthwhile causes. Congratulations to Chris Birchall and his winning team!

We also entered a team into the Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce charity football tournament at Leek Town, which raised money for the Chambers’ chosen charities while also supporting the diverse range of apprenticeship schemes available locally.

Every team, including ours, contained staff who were apprentices, and we enjoyed some friendly competition while raising money for great causes.

We also had fun alongside other local businesses at a charity football match that raised money for the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM)! The charity is another one of our 2025/2026 charity partners, and they're a national organisation that helps anyone struggling to find hope in life.

A sustainable link up with Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce

Sustainability is central to our ethos and business model as we recycle and refurbish thousands of units of IT hardware every year.

Converge are Patrons of the Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce Local Area Advisory Board and Energy, Environment & Sustainability Forum and our Global Director of Sustainability, Sheryl Moore, a Forum member, was delighted to host them for a day which included a tour of our zero-landfill IT recycling facility. We look forward to hosting more visits in the coming months.

Seven of our colleagues also played in a charity football match with the Chamber in March 2024 to support apprentices - a cause close to the hearts of both Converge and the Chamber.

Other local highlights

In an effort to help all parts of our community, including residents who needed help navigating the digital world, we donated some IT kit to Elmwood Retirement Village, a retirement village in Stafford as well as paying them a visit. Technology should be accessible to all so it was great to do our bit to help their residents.

We support local employment, and we attended the DWP Staffordshire Job Fair to promote opportunities for jobs in the thriving IT sector here at Converge.

We’re also working alongside Staffordshire County Council as part of their Open-Door programme highlighting the fact that we are a Disability Confident Employer. This Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) scheme enables us to demonstrate how we recruit, retain and develop disabled people.

In September 2024, some of us attended an Energy Advice Workshop run by the Staffordshire Business and Environment network, focused on ways for businesses like ours and our customers to reduce energy bills and carbon emissions.

Last, but not least, thank you to the Converge team of thirteen who did a litter pick at Milford Common. We’re especially proud of you as it rained throughout the whole day!

Measuring our impacts locally

On top of the practical efforts by our teams locally, we’ve also made quite an impact in Staffordshire through our business practices. Our social value reporting tool shows that we’ve achieved the following in Staffordshire in 2024:

• £119.7m of social value generated.
• 80 IT recycling collections (including 16,246 individual units).
• 188 metric tonne reduction in waste to landfill.
• 1,331 tonnes of CO2 saved.
• This is the equivalent of 1,428,021 plastic bottles saved!