Newsletter, June 2016
It has been way too long since our last occasional newsletter, so here is a quick summary of what’s been keeping us busy.
We work across three areas – People, Citizenship and Innovation – but the “special sauce” (as one friend of Three Hands put it recently) is when these agendas blend to create powerful, immersive projects and programmes that result in business and social value, hand in hand.
Leadership development and sustainability: Vodafone’s future leaders
Breakthrough is a development programme that aims to build a pipeline of future leaders at Vodafone. We designed and ran an experiential module that combined skills development with engagement in a critical external issue – cyber-safety. In a great blend of leadership development and sustainability learning, the participants were tasked with running cyber-safety workshops in local schools, and then reporting back to the Head of Sustainability to inform the wider cyber-safety strategy. The case study goes into more detail.
Future talent: Developing graduates and apprentices at Sky
We’re excited to lead on the graduate and apprentice development agenda at Sky, supporting these millennials to make the transition into the world of work, with a particular emphasis on personal impact, building effective relationships, resilience and influencing – all business critical behaviours for young people entering today’s workplace.
Citizenship and future talent: Tata Consultancy Service’s “TCS Tech Challenge”
The TCS Tech Challenge is an inspiring mix of developing young people, identifying future talent and creating social impact. Teams of university students use technology to tackle challenges faced by local charities, supported by experienced TCS consultants who volunteer as mentors. We’ve been running the Tech Challenge for three years now; the latest winning team, from the University of Warwick, helped Coventry & Warwickshire YMCA devise a tech-based management information system. See the case study and short film.
Community partnerships: A toolkit for Unilever
When we helped Unilever with their partnership with Tower Hamlets Foodbank, it was decided that the process for establishing a great business charity relationship should be “bottled” in a toolkit – so that’s what we did. Using a combination of our own experience and Unilever’s own brand of leading edge sustainability messaging, we created a guide that gives teams and departments best practice guidance on how to set up and run partnerships that are beneficial to the community and to the business in equal measures. You can read more about how we developed the toolkit in our case study here.
How charities feel about employee volunteers
And finally, our research from the end of last year on charities’ perspectives on employee volunteering has gone down a storm. If you missed it, you can still take a look at the report here.
As ever, please do get in touch with questions, comments and ideas…