Newsletter, February 2020
Our occasional newsletter is a brief update on how we’ve been pursuing our purpose to create business value and social value hand in hand. Here’s some highlights from across all three of our areas of focus– social insight, leadership & talent and citizenship.
First up is the very exciting publication of our latest Impact Report, which was a great excuse to share some of the projects from last year we are most proud of. As social and environmental issues hit the mainstream in a big way in 2019, our focus on making meaningful connections between businesses and society was more relevant than ever.
Our work on a major leadership programme at William Hill is a great example of how to put purpose and CSR at the heart of leadership development. We set up projects with gambling support charities, placing future leaders face to face with ex-gambling addicts – and helping them to define how they would adapt their day to day leadership behaviours in response.
Developing leaders through experiential charity projects that link to social and environmental issues of relevance to the business has also been central to our programmes with M&G and Network Rail.
Immersion was a crucial part of our project to create a new flagship community programme for Royal London, which aligned closely with their social impact agenda. Bringing senior stakeholders from across the business together with charities and their beneficiaries who have experienced financial vulnerability was key to understanding where and how they could have maximum impact.
Also on the citizenship side, we delivered our eighth annual Community Day for British Land, continuing to refine our innovative model that engages and develops 300 staff and truly meets the needs of 30 charity partners.
The problem gambling theme continued in our social insight programme with Santander. The question: what should the bank’s role be with customers at risk of, or experiencing, gambling-related harm? The two days we spent with leading gambling support charities and their beneficiaries were immensely powerful in developing ideas and an action plan around this tough issue.
These three strands of work – leadership & talent, citizenship and social insight – were all brought together at our Forum on Bringing Purpose to Life in November. If you were unlucky enough to miss it then the highlights are here.
Please get in touch if any of this inspires or intrigues you.