As a socially responsible company, Arxus is always looking for initiatives to improve its impact on socially important themes. This is simply ingrained in Arxus's DNA, and the Cronos Group, of which Arxus is a member, is also a forerunner in various initiatives concerning corporate social responsibility.

Arxus has been involved in socially responsible entrepreneurship for longer than today. For many years now, Arxus has been committed to a number of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations: Electrification of the vehicle fleet, structural support of home-based work for our employees, a partnership with GoForest, ... are just a few of the many examples Arxus has already undertaken.

Now Arxus and the Cronos Group are announcing a structural collaboration with its long-time partner Microsoft. In a charter called the Microsoft Partner Pledge, both organizations commit to work on 4 specific social issues, which are more than pertinent today:

Initially, Arxus will focus on the challenges around digital skills and sustainability, without pushing the other two themes into the background of course.

Digital Skills

The gap between the supply and demand for digital talent is only widening every day. Every organization these days is struggling to find the right talent to be supported in their digital transformation. This is detrimental to the progress of our region as a whole, and moreover the ever faster evolving demand for digitization creates the necessary challenges for employees to remain relevant.

It is for this reason that Arxus is investing in a joint initiative with MiCronos, the Microsoft community of Cronos companies, in a Cloud Academy. This cloud academy offers the possibility for employees of our customers to follow a personalized path, to further develop their talent and keep themselves relevant in the new digital ways of working. Supported by the Cronos experts and best-practices, we can thus fully develop the digital skills of our customers and their employees.

Arxus experts also often speak at guest lectures in our universities and colleges, and as coaches for student teams at hackathons, such as Hack The Future, organised by our own Cronos Group.

Sustainability

In the sustainability theme, Arxus has quite a few initiatives under its belt.

The full electrification of its fleet has been underway for quite some time. With the highest number of full electric cars in the Cronos Group, Arxus is a real frontrunner in the group. In the quest for CO2 neutrality, Arxus has even more partnerships underway. With GoForest, Arxus is not only planting trees in critical locations around the world, but is also changing the behavior of farmers in order to tackle the causes of the soil and deforestation problem. In this way, we address not only the symptom, but also the cause of the problem.

And not to be underestimated is our deliberate choice of Microsoft as a partner. Microsoft is one of the leaders in the world when it comes to corporate sustainability, with years of investment that strives not only to be neutral, but also to completely remove the historical impact the company has had on the planet. If that's not a strong partner to have by Arxus's side!

More to come

But the story does not end here! By signing the Microsoft Partner Pledge, Arxus and the Cronos Group are committing themselves to do even more about the four important themes in the charter. Program Manager Jochen Van Gasse, for example, talked even more about the future plans of Arxus and the Cronos Group in an interview with CSR specialist Jocelijn Geurts, from Axudo.

Let's make a better world, together