Newsletter, November 2015

Our occasional newsletter has become even more occasional as we’ve been working hard on some brilliant projects and programmes, all designed to create business impact and social impact hand in hand. Here are a few quick highlights.

Future talent, banking and society

One lesson from our forum on future talent (mentioned below) was that graduate recruits need to be engaged in community, CR and sustainability from the very beginning if they are to feel they’re experiencing the wider sense of purpose that Gen Y craves. For the third year running we’ve devised social impact projects for BNP Paribas’ graduate training programme, helping the grads to develop key business skills through real projects that give them exposure to major societal issues. This year a total of 80 graduates took on strategy projects with charities including Alzheimer’s Society, Greenhouse Sports and Vital Regeneration.

Evaluating business and social outcomes

Diageo’s Learning for Life programme is designed to transform the lives of young people by training them for careers in the hospitality sector and shifting their attitudes towards alcohol in the process. Diageo asked Three Hands to evaluate the impact of the programme on the young people taking part, the business and the sector more broadly. We devised an evaluation framework and carried out research amongst all of the key stakeholders, enabling Diageo to demonstrate the value of the programme to the business, their customers, young people and the communities in which they operate.

Diversity, inclusion and open minds

We helped a senior team at Lloyds Banking Group understand LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues by running a one-day project that saw them offer strategic advice to two LGBT charities in return for valuable insight and guidance on LGBT issues. It was a powerful day of learning all round. The case study tells you more.

In brief

We’ve also worked with British Gas on a series of tailored volunteering events for senior teams, ran an event for a global HR team at Unilever looking at their role in the sustainability agenda, supported Marks & Spencer with a workshop to help them develop a major community initiative and worked on leadership development programmes for both Vodafone and RSA – more of which in the next newsletter!

And finally – our Forum on Future Talent

Speakers from Sky, RSA, Tata Consultancy Services and BNP Paribas and a host of young people helped us to explore the topic of future talent at our annual half day forum. The key take-aways and a short film – the next best thing to being there – are here.

Needless to say, please do get in touch if you feel inspired or curious…