iGuana Collaborates with Cellmade to Employ Prisoners

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ZAVENTEM, Belgium - Jan. 6, 2015 - PRLog -- The way companies do business has changed dramatically over the last few decades. Advances in science and technology have reshaped the competitive landscape. Companies that are well prepared to recognize new opportunities and act on them quickly can achieve great success. The 21st century has also brought about a major social change – businesses are embracing the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and starting to understand how important it is to contribute not only to their bottom line but also to our society as a whole.

As we move toward a more complex and global business environment companies must be able to adapt to the new challenges and think creatively.

It is with this in mind and over 10 years of fruitful cooperation that iGuana (former Allgeier DMS Solutions) and Cellmade are joining forces to raise awareness about the business and social benefits of working with detainees.

iGuana and Cellmade work together with detainees
iGuana, a leading provider of electronic document management and document archiving solutions, was one of the first few companies in Belgium to start working with detainees over 10 years ago. Today, we employ 75 people detained at the Centrale Gevangenis Leuven (Central Prison Leuven). At peak times over the last decade we employed the services of as many as 100 prisoners at a time.

Central Prison Leuven operates under the guidance of Cellmade, representing the Central Service of the Prison Labour Board, an autonomous department of the Federal Justice Service of Belgium. Since 1931 Cellmade has been in charge of providing work for detainees, connecting them with employers and providing the necessary training and workshop facilities for prisoners and companies at over 30 prisons in the country.

Working in close cooperation with Cellmade, iGuana employs Central Prison Leuven detainees to complete a number of tasks for iGuana ScanFactory, an outsourced document scanning and archiving service we offer to our clients. Detainee work involves preparing documents for high-speed scanning: removing staples and paper clips, organizing and placing them in boxes and preparing them for shipment to our ScanFactory facility for further processing. Once at ScanFactory, these documents are scanned, indexed and classified within our digital archiving software where they undergo thorough quality control.

Since we started working with Central Prison Leuven, detainees have processed a total of 300,000,000 document pages for iGuana ScanFactory.

Prison labour benefits all
Many companies do not realize that they have an opportunity to work with prisoners and that the necessary workshop facilities are already available for them to start.

With little, if any, coverage in the media, this is not surprising. It is for this reason that iGuana and Cellmade have decided to send a message to the business world and spread the word about the benefits of employing prison labour, for companies and detainees alike.

We have many years of experience working with prisoners and we can testify to the great success of this initiative. Despite all the negative associations that often arise in relation to prison labour, practical experience and results speak for themselves. We believe that we should leave the justice system do its work while we focus on ours.

We consider detainees that work for iGuana our employees, all 75 of them. We work closely with Cellmade and Central Prison Leuven to create a healthy and productive work environment where we can train our detainee employees to perform tasks that are essential to the quality of work and the end product that we deliver to our customers. The work that we outsource to Central Prison Leuven is always completed on time and its quality meets our high standards.

It is not difficult to see why. We offer prisoners a job, a fair salary and a chance to give back to society for the felonies they have committed. We offer them a chance to become responsible members of society once again and an opportunity for faster rehabilitation. In return, detainees deliver results, they are disciplined, they look forward to and enjoy their work, and they are entirely focused on the task at hand.

It is a win-win situation for all.

Corporate social responsibility at its best
Last, but not least, at iGuana we believe in corporate social responsibility. In our case it goes beyond providing prisoners with a job, assisting in their rehabilitation process and helping the justice system transform them into productive members of society.

We also believe that employing prison labour is a way for companies, like ourselves, to support our own economy and our own country. We are a for-profit business and, needless to say, that we could outsource some of the work we do for customers to sub-contractors in lower-cost countries, such as India or China, for example. However, we choose to work with a Belgian organization, Central Prison Leuven, and pay our detainees a salary in accordance with Belgian law.

We believe that in these tough economic times and considering a series of financial crises that swept over the world in recent years, it is important to utilize the production and labour potential of our own economy, here, in Belgium, and we encourage our fellow colleagues in business to consider doing the same.

Visit our website at www.iGuana-iDM.com

About iGuana

For over 30 years iGuana (former Allgeier DMS Solutions) has been at the forefront of providing turnkey electronic document management and document archiving solutions. iGuana has many years of unrivaled expertise in scanning and indexing huge volumes of documents and works with clients in the Healthcare, Banking, Financial, Insurance and Government sectors.  At the core of iGuana solutions are the iGuana iDM Document Management software suite and the iGuana ScanFactory high-volume document scanning services.

About Cellmade
Cellmade represents Central Service of the Prison Labour Board, an autonomous department of the Federal Justice Service of Belgium. Since 1931, Cellmade’s mission has been to provide work for the detainees and to connect them with potential employers. Today, Cellmade has 30 prison workshops all over Belgium where detainees perform all kinds of work, including: packaging, assembly, folding, electrical installations, document scanning, carpentry, printing, and much more.

Contact
Daria Mavrenkova, Marketing & Communications
dmavrenkova@iguana-dms.com
+32 2 70 90 100
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Tags:Prison Labor, Employment, Social Responsibility
Industry:Government
Location:Zaventem - Vlaams-Brabant - Belgium
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