PROFESSIONAL SERVICES 2018 BATH BUILDING SOCIETY Chief executive Dick Jenkins
Tell us a little about your business… It’s a building society headquartered in Bath, so we offer mortgages and savings accounts. We provide mortgages to people who are creditworthy, but not well served by the bigger lenders and people; rather than computers, we make the lending decisions. On the savings side, we offer a more personal service than our competitors because we are focussed on Bath. The society can trace its origins back to 1904, when it was set-up originally as a Friendly Society. It used members’ investments to buy property to rent, becoming a building society in the 1950s, lending money for people in the city to buy their own homes. Although we operate throughout Britain, we enjoy great support from the city of Bath and its surrounding areas. We currently have 55 staff, covering our head office and two branches. Tell us about your community/ charity involvement... We once again donated £6,500 to a diverse range of charities in 2017 through our Charity Awards Scheme, which offers small but meaningful sums to local charities and community groups working in and around Bath. Amongst charities supported were the Bath Child Contact Centre, Three Ways School, Bath Gateway Out & About and the Woodworks Project, all based in the city. In the first half of 2017, our charity of the year was the Bath Samaritans, offering much-needed distress counselling services. From the middle of the year, Focus Counselling became our charity of the year for 2017-18. www.bathbuildingsociety.co.uk
Sam Laite
RECRUITMENT FWD THINKING
Founder and director Sam Laite
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PROVIDE MORTGAGES TO PEOPLE WHO ARE CREDIT WORTHY BUT NOT WELL SERVED BY THE BIGGER LENDERS
Tell us a little about your business… FWD Thinking was born in 2015. We don’t just place jobs, but help professionals forge careers in marketing, digital and sales. We stand by our clients’ side to help them put together the right team, so they can build empires. We are currently three people strong, but are actively recruiting for likeminded professionals to join us. Tell us about your community/ charity involvement… Over the past three years we have supported the the Threeways School and, specifically, free of charge recruitment for their café project 3 Café and Kitchen. We are also active in the community, supporting Hayesfield, Ralph Allen and Beechen Cliff in preparing their senior students for mock interviews, cv writing and transition from school and college into the working world. Work/life balance – how important is this to today’s workforce? Working and recruiting millennials means we have to place a great emphasis on work life balance. Incentives outside of pay and bonuses, such as flexible working, trips away and frequent off site team events are really important. www.fwdthinkingrecruitment.co.uk
168 I BATH LIFE I www.mediaclash.co.uk
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