Three Hands > News > Financial Times
London global thinkers' local kindness
By Andrew Taylor, Employment Correspondent
Published: December 23 2007 19:54
More than a third of people work for employers with active volunteering schemes, according to a Cabinet Office report published last summer. For the children at Christchurch Primary School in London's Brick Lane Ð where 97 per cent speak English as a second language and 70 per cent start school without speaking any English at all Ð such help has been invaluable.
The school is situated in one of the country's most deprived boroughs yet students tutored by staff from Gensler, the international architects, have progressed in their reading twice as fast as the national average, according to the City of London Corporation, the local authority for the financial district.
The corporation has launched a series of initiatives over the past decade to enable "thousands of City employees" to use their skills to help local communities and charities. Carolyn Housman, the corporation's community affairs manager, says that businesses have become much more sensitive to the need to behave responsibly and ethically since the excesses of the late 1980s. This could be reflected in the way in which they go about their business and also in the support they give to local communities and the disadvantaged.
Goldman Sachs backed Richard Bremer, a manager in its investment banking division, when he was asked by a friend if the bank would provide work experience for someone suffering from Asperger's syndrome Ð a condition that can cause communication and social problems. The bank, since 2003, has been providing work placements for sufferers who otherwise would have very little opportunity to gain experience of work.
Mr Bremer, writing in an 'Asperger' newsletter this autumn, said that the first placement candidate "although well qualified" had never worked before. After completing eight weeks in the company's investment banking division, he "secured a permanent position with another company". Another sufferer was still working at the Royal Courts of Justice, four years after taking a work placement at the bank.
Other large financial institutions with employee volunteering schemes include: Merrill Lynch, where 10 per cent of staff participate in volunteering programmes; Deutsche Bank, where 14 per cent of the 7,700 permanent UK staff have volunteered for community and charity work this year; and KPMG, the consultants, where 3,500 UK employees volunteered in the last financial year.
Employers that previously might have used paint-balling and go-kart days to assist team building and staff bonding send staff to work with charities and local communities, says Simon Hamilton, founder of Three Hands, which has developed specialist charity projects for businesses such as BSkyB, Royal Bank of Scotland, Motorola, Orange and Compass Group.
A recent Three Hands project gave employees at Kroll's Advisory and Restructuring corporate rescue division just three days to develop a strategy to raise £100,000 a year for the Greenwich arm of Place2Be, a children's charity devoted to helping young people overcome emotional and behavioural problems.
The task, which was successfully completed, gave Kroll employees the chance to develop management and team skills "in a challenging and authentic environment", says Mr Hamilton.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007