Fit for Purpose: Issue 1

BUS I N ESS N EWS

FIT FOR

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CLOSING THE GAP THE MEASURES MAKING A REAL DIFFERENCE

FROM THE TOP

LEADERS SHARE THEIR VISION FOR LASTING CHANGE

SOCIAL MOBILITY IN ACTION

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THE EMPLOYERS DRIVING OPPORTUNITY AND SUCCESS

USTINE Greening

WITH

WHY PURPOSE AND PROFIT ARE NOW INSEPARABLE

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JOIN

O T J E O URNEY H T

NET ZERO

One Goal For One Planet.

Net Zero.

NOW IS THE TIME.

The One Planet Pledge campaign is chaired by Rt Hon Justine Greening, drawing especially on her experience as the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for International Development.

We aim to encourage as many companies as possible to make

their public commitment to reaching net zero emissions. Purpose-led businesses have a vital role to play in helping the world meet the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this decade.

Make your One Planet Pledge now at www.oneplanetpledge.org

WE LCOM E NOTE

Welcome NOTE FIT FOR PURPOSE AIMS TO SHINE A LIGHT ON THE INSPIRING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS LEADING THE WAY IN BUILDING A MORE SUSTAINABLE, PURPOSEFUL FUTURE.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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o much has changed as a result of COVID-19. Negatives aside, the crisis has, of course, accelerated the adoption of technology. But another silver lining is heightened public demand for goods, services and employers that put social impact and purpose first. Inequalities have been laid bare and the world doesn’t like what it sees. Perhaps now, more than ever, there is a groundswell of support for a new way - of living more sustainably, of doing business more impactfully and of giving people a level playing field when it comes to opportunity.

This magazine provides real world examples of how this is possible, from some of Britain’s biggest employers, brightest universities and most inspiring leaders and social mobility champions. We uncover the secrets of the companies that are delivering life-changing interventions in disadvantaged communities and meet the individuals who have proven that where a person is born need not dictate how far they can go in life, despite the many barriers they face in achieving their career dreams and aspirations. We hope our publication provides insights and inspiration that have a positive impact on your own career or organisation. Until next time, happy reading!

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ontent

Rt HonJustine Greening WHY PURPOSE AND PROFITS A R E N O W I N S E PA R A B L E

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PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Spotlight on Nic Beech and Andrea Dlaska, Middlesex University

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B U I LT T O L A S T

Spotlight on Rob Tansey, Barratt Developments

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BREAKING THE MOULD

Spotlight on Sandra Wallace, DLA Piper

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CENTRAL VISION

Spotlight on Graham Baldwin, University of Central Lancashire

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Spotlight on Kiran Trehan, University of York

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NEW SPIN

Spotlight on John Stewart, SSE

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C L I M AT E C R O S S R O A D S In search of answers on the great sustainability drive

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A N E W WAY F O R WA R D

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SW EEPI N G CH A N G E

Why purpose and profits are now inseparable

Spotlight on Susan Bright, Hogan Lovells

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TA L E N T P I P E L I N E Spotlight on Mark Horsley, Northern Gas Networks

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THE CHANGEMAKER

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DIRECT INFLUENCE

David Harrrison on the long-term impact of events in 2020

Spotlight on Penny James, Direct Line Group

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U N LEASH I N G POTENTIA L Spotlight on Dean Finch, Persimmon Homes

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PEOPLE POWER

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O PPO RTU N ITY A R EAS

Spotlight on Louise Beardmore, United Utilities

Making the case for a transformational model

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PURPOSE IN PRACTICE

Spotlight on Simon Boss, Shoosmiths

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TH E O PPO RTU N ITY B R I D G E

Spotlight on Mark Power and Liverpool John Moores University

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O PPO RTU N ITY EN G I N E

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C A M P U S C ATA LYS T

Spotlight on Shirley Congdon, University of Bradford

Spotlight on Liz Barnes, Staffordshire University

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FUELLING CHANGE

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STEPPING STONE

Spotlight on Steve Fraser and Martin Rimmer, Cadent Gas

Spotlight on Peter John, University of West London

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SHOP WINDOW

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P R O G R E S S PAT H WAY

Spotlight on Judith Batchelar, Sainsbury’s Brand

Spotlight on David Harrison, True Potential

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Business can and must be a force for good

Spotlight on Toby Wilkinson, University of Lincoln

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LEVELLING UP

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I N C O N V E R S AT I O N

Spotlight on Dr Vivienne McVey, Virgin Care

With Lord Bird, founder of the Big Issue

Making a difference

CONTENTS

Direct Influence

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COM M ENT

Why now is a critical time for the Purpose Coalition to make a difference HAVING A SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PURPOSE AS A COMPANY HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPOR TANT. THERE IS GROWING PRESSURE PUBLICLY, AND AMONG INVESTORS, FOR CORPORATE BRITAIN TO DO ITS BIT IN SOLVING THE GLOBAL CHALLENGES FACING THE PL ANET AND ITS PEOPLE. This is why the Social Mobility Pledge is launching the Purpose Coalition - bringing together the purpose-led businesses that are working to have a positive impact on people and our planet.

The coalition will bring together forward-thinking business leaders from some of the UK’s leading companies and universities who recognise the importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles and understand their role in levelling up the UK. The public, especially younger generations, are losing patience with traditional corporate responsibility (CSR). In fact, one of our public polls found that 67 per cent of people deemed CSR as little more than corporate advertising.

Companies need to earn back the confidence of the general

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public by taking action. As well as encouraging businesses to sign up to the Social Mobility Pledge and One Planet Pledge, This Is Purpose also work with companies to create Action Plans that outline their commitment to tackling the twin challenges of levelling up and reaching net zero.

The members of the Purpose Coalition are working to implement their Action Plan and develop new ideas and initiatives to have maximum purpose-led impact.

The coalition will also include senior leaders from universities which play an essential role in producing graduates with the skills that we need to level up the country.

COM M ENT

Additionally, universities have the power to make huge improvements to social mobility by engaging with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, raising their aspirations and improving their job prospects.

To make a real impact and to create a strategy that goes far beyond marketing or PR, companies must now fully embed social responsibility into the purpose and operations of their business.

It’s about working closely and directly with communities, building deep partnerships with local organisations and making genuine efforts to increase the spread of opportunity.

Members of the Purpose Coalition understand that

tackling ESG issues is core to the future of a successful business.

With the recent publication of the UK government’s Ten Point Action Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, and plans to reach zero net emissions by 2050, it is clear that our economy will be changing in the coming decades.

With this change comes an opportunity to make muchneeded improvements to social mobility - by improving access to opportunities in the UK’s most deprived regions.

The business community will play a critical role in this push.

Companies must act now or they face being left behind in the rising tide of purpose-led business.

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COM M ENT

Why purpose and profits are now inseparable SPOTLIGHT ON RT HON JUSTINE GREENING, CO-FOUNDER OF THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PLEDGE

AND C-19 BUSINESS

PLEDGE AND FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION.

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COM M ENT BUS I N ESS N EWS

CO-FOUNDER’S COMMENT

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olitical, market and consumer forces are all converging to make having purpose critical to business success. And those organisations neglecting it, who haven’t worked out their broader role in our communities and country must urgently adapt, or face a very real threat from their competitors who steal a march.

BY RT H O N J U ST I N E G R EEN I N G, C O - F O U N D E R O F T H E Politically, S O C there I A isLrightly now a push to create equality of M O B I L I T Y P L E D G E & Copportunity - 1 9 across the UK and through the Social Mobility Pledge since 2018, I’ve been urging more companies to B U S I N E S S P L E D G E A Nmake D aFcommitment O R M toE drive R this through their purpose and social responsibilities. It’s the right thing to do for our S E C R E T A R Y O F S T A T E country F O but R it’s the smart thing for business to do too. In various markets and sectors, we see mounting evidence E D U C AT I O N . of the intrinsic role that having a clear purpose has in underwriting long term commercial success. The shift in consumers expectations towards businesses making a positive impact is also intensifying – heightening the need to build business strategy and plans around a meaningful purpose.

Yet evidence suggests great numbers of employers haven’t understood why having authentic, genuine purpose matters or if they have, haven’t yet worked out how to make the necessary changes through their culture, people, process and products. It was reported earlier this year that many businesses are still “taking a tick-box approach” to achieve full compliance with the updated UK’s Corporate Governance Code.

“Companies need to improve their governance practices and reporting if they are to demonstrate their positive impact on the economy and wider society”, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said in its annual review.

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COM M ENT The code was revised in 2018 to help “build trust in business by forging strong relationships with key stakeholders”. It urges businesses to focus on long-term sustainability by “aligning purpose, strategy and culture, promoting integrity and valuing diversity”. So far, so good.

Yet, when it looked at how companies are responding to the revised code, the FRC’s findings included: “Many companies are grappling with defining purpose and what an effective culture means with too many substituting slogans or marketing lines for a clear purpose.”

I believe businesses must play their unique role in delivering equality of opportunity and social mobility. It’s a priority for people, so it should be a priority for business and they are best placed to fulfil it. Our own research at the Social Mobility Pledge also backs that up with evidence.

For example, 65 per cent of UK employees believe the old saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” still rings true when applying for promotions and management positions in their organisation. In any purposeful organisation which considers itself to have integrity, background or perceived class would have no bearing on staffing decisions. Employees would feel it was about competence not connections. We’re far away from that in the UK, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Companies can find purpose and be a changemaker for themselves, their communities and our country. Supporting social mobility is, of course, one of many measures of purpose and impact. But in Britain it is a vitally important one, given how much the UK economy is currently being held back because of an opportunity deficit, stifling talent in disadvantaged communities across the country. Progress on equality of opportunity is a win for all of us - stronger communities accessing more opportunities, stronger companies able to access more talent and a stronger economy as a result creating a stronger country. Boris Johnson stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street to deliver a victory speech which hammered home the need to close Britain’s opportunity gaps and unleash the “productive power” of every corner of the country. Businesses built around purpose have the power to make this happen and align themselves with a long-term Government agenda.

But make no mistake, it makes absolute commercial

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“

Younger consumers are putting purpose and impact front and centre

sense to focus on wider impact too. Countless research papers show a direct correlation between purpose and profitability. Deutsche Bank, for example, evaluated 56 academic studies on environmental, social and governance (ESG) in business. Organisations with the highest ESG ratings were found to have a lower cost of debt and equity.

Also, 89 per cent of the studies analysed showed that companies with high ESG ratings outperformed the market in the medium (three to five years) and long (five to ten years) term.

Looking ahead, if many consumers today already want to buy and trade with companies with purpose, it will become an even bigger feature in the future. There is growing evidence that younger consumers in particular are putting purpose and impact front and centre when they make financial and spending decisions. Among numerous such findings, research by the US Trust, part of Bank of America Private Bank, showed that 93 per cent of millennials believe social or environmental impact is important in investment decisions. And that spending power will shift dramatically - because we are currently in the throes of the biggest transfer of wealth in history – some US$30 trillion globally from baby boomers to millennials. While demand for purpose in capitalism comes from all generations, these millennials represent the buyers, customers and investors that will shape the future of businesses. Ignore them at your peril!

COM M ENT

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COM M ENT

Could 2020 go down as the irreversible changemaker in purposedriven business?

Spotlight on David Harrison, co-founder of the Social Mobility Pledge and C-19 Business Pledge, and managing partner of True Potential LLP.

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COM M ENT

Businesses across the country have mobilised in recent months to help Britain in its biggest crisis for generations. But the nation needs many more to join them in the fight...

Everyone is making sacrifices right now in the name of stopping the spread of COVID-19. Lockdown initially separated families, while personal finances were, and continue to be, eroded.

Society’s most vulnerable people, including the elderly and the homeless, still face a heightened risk of health and social dangers; and need our help more than ever.

Meanwhile, armies of doctors, delivery drivers, supermarket employees and other workers have risked their own health on a daily basis to help the country through the crisis.

Against this chaos, now is the hour for businesses to step up and play their part. These are incredibly tough times for employers, with many teetering on the brink.

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The crisis could cause a permanent shift towards profit with a clearer purpose But those that have managed to get their house in some form of order – and in doing so protect the jobs that they can – are now looking beyond their own four walls and asking what can they contribute to the national effort to help Britain through.

The age of profit with a purpose in business has reached a defining moment.

Was all the talk about being impactful and caring about communities and the wider world just that, or can it now be backed up with practical action? Businesses have always been a strong force for good, but lip service from big corporations about their good intentions has increased in recent years.

This has come amid rising numbers of customers becoming more discerning about who they buy from. Now is the true test of their convictions however.

Of course there are many examples of employers being a force for good in the COVID-19 storm. Many factories raced to produce ventilators and face masks. Pharma firms and universities remain locked in the search for a cure. Telecoms and technology companies are working round the clock to stop our infrastructure from overloading. Retailers large and small are still getting vital deliveries to people stuck at home in various parts of the country.

But businesses are also responding in less obvious ways.

At the start of the crisis we founded the C-19 Business Pledge and put out a call to employers to commit to doing more to help Britain through the crisis. Since then, well over 170 organisations representing two million-plus employees and students have signed up. In doing so they have committed to going the extra mile for customers, staff and communities across the UK. It means helping people to overcome both the immediate challenges of coronavirus, but also in the long haul to recovery for months to come. Signatories include Asda, Everton Football Club, Nestlé, True Potential, PwC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sainsbury’s, Shell, TSB and Unilever.

Higher education providers are doing their bit too, with over 20 universities spanning the UK, including East Anglia, Middlesex, Staffordshire, Stirling and Plymouth, also signing up.

Others committed to the C19 Business Pledge include BP, Barratt Developments, BT Group, Co-op Group, DLA Piper, SSE, Persimmon and Tarmac. They have agreed to meet three main objectives. Firstly, to develop plans to support their own staff throughout this challenging time.

Next, to publish clear and simple advice for customers. Where possible they should have specialist teams dedicated to supporting customers if they are having problems.

Finally – and this is perhaps the biggest commitment – they should do what they can to help communities in Britain through the epidemic. During the crisis and in its aftermath, we are likely to see isolation, loneliness, mental health issues and debt problems all on the rise.

Practical support for anyone vulnerable to these and the legion of other problems that could emerge will be integral to our recovery.

In years to come, we will look back on this crisis and ask ourselves what we did to help.

Employers will do the same and their action or inertia will be noted, by staff, potential customers and the communities they serve.

But this is no PR exercise. It could be a long slog and, in fact, the crisis could cause a permanent shift towards profit with a clearer purpose. Corporations have long talked about purpose and now is their chance to prove that they mean it.

In my own sector of financial services, meanwhile, I hope an additional permanent change occurs as a result of the virus.

We’ve known for decades that the average Brit isn’t saving enough for the future – whether that’s to fund retirement or an unexpected expense.

The coronavirus crisis, and its impact on jobs and entire industries, has reminded everyone of the importance of having a financial safety net.

While many people are inevitably experiencing immense financial difficulties right now, I hope at least one positive to emerge from the crisis is a newfound national focus on saving for the future.

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UN ITED UTI LITI ES

Harnessing people power within and without SPOTLIGHT ON LOUISE BEARDMORE AND UNITED UTILITIES

LOUISE BEARDMORE, CUSTOMER SERVICES AND PEOPLE DIRECTOR AT UNITED UTILITIES, TALKS TO JUSTINE GREENING ABOUT HER APPROACH TO SOCIAL MOBILITY.

JG

// Unusually, your role spans HR and customer services. I guess it’s about happy people on the inside equalling happy people on the outside?

LB

// People often say it’s a strange combination but my retort is that it’s all about people. One thing is about service to customers and one is about service to employees. But actually, it’s brilliant employees that deliver fantastic service for our customers.

So they go together really, really well. My role helps to make sure that our people are connected to the customers and the communities that we’re privileged to serve.

JG//

Interestingly, affordability and helping customers to manage bills is a key part of your social mobility drive.

LB// Over 50 per cent of our customers don’t have £300 worth of savings to pay for an unexpected bill. Also, if we look at the customer base here in the North West, 30 per cent of people earn less than £21,000 a year, and aren’t on any form of benefit. So really it’s about understanding the financial challenges

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that customers have and offering targeted and tailored services to them.

JG//

And Covid-19 has made the scale of challenge you’re facing as a region even tougher – where do you go with some of your social mobility programmes now?

LB// I think one of the big challenges we’re going to have is working out at what point we’re going to see secure, meaningful employment actually return and I’m mindful that many organisations, because of the challenges financially, will stop things like apprenticeships and work placement programmes. We’re actively trying to do quite the opposite, and make sure those programmes continue. We’re also using digital classrooms and having lots of online careers forums to make sure that the notion of careers stays alive. We’ve got to work doubly hard to make sure that we’re reaching those people who would perhaps think United Utilities is something that isn’t obtainable in terms of securing their future.

JG//

Being a FTSE100 company, you also have the ability to shape the broader business environment in these difficult times.

LB// United Utilities, as one of the biggest organisations here in the North West, needs to play that leading role in terms of having some of these difficult conversations. It’s really easy to make decisions which are potentially short sighted about stopping training and development and I don’t want to be in a situation where a whole generation gets forgotten because of short term decisions. So how do we come together as leaders here in the North West to make sure that we’re all doing the right things to respond to COVID but also to make sure that we’ve got future capability, because now more than ever, we’re going to need innovative, passionate, capable people? And we’re going to need to unlock talent for the new world that we’re entering into.

UN ITED UTI LITI ES

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UN ITED UTI LITI ES

Helping opportunity flow across the North West

HOW WATER SERVICES COMPANY UNITED UTILITIES IS LEVERAGING ITS CLOSE CONNECTIONS WITH DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITIES TO DELIVER OPPORTUNITY AND PROSPERITY.

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per cent hit rate in terms of leading to employment.

United Utilities is also providing a pathway into employment for people from disadvantaged backgrounds who graduate from the increasingly social mobility-focused higher education sector. The roles available to graduates are wide-ranging, exciting and rewarding, as reflected in the company’s strong graduate retention stats.

It has a clear focus on diversity and inclusion too, and has achieved ‘Disability Confident’ status as an employer. This is a government scheme which recognises organisations playing a leading role in changing attitudes for the better - and reaping the benefits of inclusive recruitment practices.

Overall, United Utilities has developed and actioned an innovative and well-resourced social mobility drive.

As well as enabling more people to fulfil their potential, however, it is also playing a pivotal role in addressing the skills shortages looming over the utilities sector and, vitally, nurturing interest in STEM subjects.

Partly this comes through its sponsorship the North West’s first STEM Centre of Excellence, which has been built at Beamont Collegiate Academy in Warrington.

Also, in 2015 it opened a £1.5m technical training centre in Bolton with the aim of developing the next generation of engineers.

Between 2015 and 2023 it is on track to develop over 1,000 engineering and technical employees, despite major challenges in this area facing engineering-relevant industries across the UK. This achievement is underpinned by a commitment to training and development that is also integral to its social mobility impact.

Another major contributor to its social mobility influence is its efforts to support households where money worries may be threatening their ability to get on in life.

The firm has a number of support schemes which help customers who may be struggling with bills. Currently it is helping around 100,000 customers in this way. The business also runs a regular affordability summit to understand more about the individual challenges faced by customers and how this should inform its customer relationships.

In summary, through careful planning, significant investment and a long-term commitment to change, United Utilities is facing the social mobility challenge head on and providing a compelling example to other PLCs.

UN ITED UTI LITI ES

As a service provider to households across North West England, United Utilities has direct links with many areas of limited social mobility.

It delivers 200 million litres of water a day to more than three million homes and businesses in the North West. The company employs over 5,000 people, while its work spans reservoirs, treatment works and pumping stations and thousands of kilometres of water pipes and sewers. This thriving network of activity – and its direct links with disadvantaged communities – make it a powerhouse of opportunity in its native region.

Its social mobility cycle flows through its entire organisation, bringing in new talent from a range of backgrounds – and setting it up for success in varied careers.

According to data cited by the company, the North West has 41 per cent of the most deprived areas of the country, with 27 per cent of households earning less than £21,000 a year. Almost half (47 per cent) of households have less than £100 in savings to cover an unexpected bill.

Economic disadvantage, disability and gender bias are among several social mobility barriers circumnavigated by the firm.

While its model feeds a diverse mix of talent into its own organisation, it is also inspiring more people to seek careers in the utilities sector generally, as well as the wider STEM world.

The UK’s social mobility dearth is characterised by an even spread of talent across the UK versus an uneven spread of opportunity.

London generally has the bulk of opportunities, although they are not all accessible to people from disadvantaged backgrounds living in the capital.

Young people pursuing careers outside London, meanwhile, have fewer opportunities to choose from.

United Utilities is addressing this in the North West by not only creating more opportunities – but also ensuring they are accessible and designed to enable employees to fulfil their potential.

Its efforts to intervene in the lives of young people not in employment, education or training are proving particularly fruitful; three quarters of people involved in this programme go on to find paid work. But also, they build confidence and raise their aspirations, enabling them to progress out of often very difficult situations.

Apprenticeships are similarly successful, being rated as ‘very good’ by Ofsted and showing a 100

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TH E UN IVERSITY OF BRADFOR D

Opportunities where they’re needed most

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The University of Bradford has embraced its role as a catalyst for social mobility – in an area in which it is much needed.

TH E UN IVERSITY OF BRADFOR D

SPOTLIGHT ON SHIRLEY CONGDON AND THE UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD

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// You arrived at the university last summer. So I guess you just about had enough time to get into this role and set the agenda, when all of a sudden lockdown hit?

A LOCAL AUTHORITY REPORT PUBLISHED IN 2018 SHOWS THAT BRADFORD IS RANKED AS THE FIFTH MOST INCOME DEPRIVED AREA IN ENGLAND. HERE VICE CHANCELLOR SHIRLEY CONGDON SPEAKS TO THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PLEDGE ABOUT HOW THE UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD IS HELPING TO ADDRESS THIS.

A

// Yes exactly. I set about thinking what I wanted to achieve as vice chancellor and took the senior management team and the staff back to what it is that Bradford is about. What do we really care about? What do we want to make a difference to? Overwhelmingly, we took ourselves right back to social inclusion, social mobility, driving that for the city of Bradford, the region, the North and beyond, through our teaching, research and knowledge exchange. So we’re absolutely committed to working in partnership with everybody in our region to drive this agenda.

Q// It matters to you personally as well - your journey hasn’t necessarily been a typical one into becoming a VC. How do you end up becoming a vice chancellor when you set out your career training as a nurse?

A// I think it’s all about having a commitment from a very young age to want to make a difference, and a real meaningful difference. And for that difference to impact on people’s lives, whether that be at a macro or micro level. That desire transcends a lot of professions, including nursing where it’s all about people and making a difference

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TH E UN IVERSITY OF BRADFOR D to healthy happy lives at an individual and a population level. As I went through my career, I began to realise that I could maybe make a bigger difference if I started to get involved in education.

That led me to move into academia. Seeing lives and the whole system approach to making societies fairer, just transcended all of my career.

Q// One of the things that the university’s been brilliantly involved in over the last few years has been the Bradford opportunity area. And it’s really looked at this link between health and education, hasn’t it?

A// It has. I think the difference with the Bradford opportunity area is it’s focused on four priority areas, one of which is using evidence and research to remove barriers to learning. The other ones [are] improving access to rewarding careers, literacy and the quality of leadership and teaching in the schools. Rather than focusing on the areas of say, early years or post-16, it’s taken more of a holistic approach and centred its activities on trying to work out and understand, for the long term, generating an evidence base that we can use for the future.

Q// When we at the Social Mobility Pledge visited the Bradford opportunity area everybody was just so fired up about what you

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TH E UN IVERSITY OF BRADFOR D

were doing. It was striking how you were using evidence to come up with some simple but really powerful steps like the Glasses for Classes project, for example. Tell us about that.

A// The work that’s been going on for a number of years now with the university and the NHS hospital trust has laid the foundations for the application of applied health research, focusing on people in the ‘born in Bradford’ study. That allowed the opportunity area and the applied research teams to work together to look at the things that affect people every day, and children’s chances. The obvious one was a lot of children in Bradford do have problems with their eyesight. Just a simple intervention of testing the children’s eyes in school led to the initiative, Glasses for Classes, where you go to the people and to the children in schools rather than assuming that people will actually go to the opticians and get their children’s eyes tested.

So it’s understanding the communities and their needs and their values and their concerns in order to make an impact. If it’s not centred in the community, then I don’t think you will get the impact.

Q// And it’s really about having those local priorities owned by communities so that they’re not having change done to them, they’re fundamentally part of it themselves.

A// That’s right. The term we’re using is a ‘city collaboratory’.

It’s a bit of a made-up word but it’s meant to indicate that we are working in collaboration with the people of Bradford and asking them what their problems are; and then identifying, if we put our efforts in this part of our active action research and applied research, that would make a bigger difference.

It’s generating the problems from the community’s perspective that we want to solve.

Q// Tell us a bit about the role of Bradford University within the opportunity area and how you feel the university has contributed towards it.

A// I sit on the opportunity area board and a lot of our academics are involved in it in different ways.

One of the key things is our access and participation plan that we’ve developed in collaboration with the opportunity area.

[It’s] helping us to develop a whole system approach to the pipeline of students, starting off as young people living in the community and maybe being part of the ‘born in Bradford’ study, and moving through and taking all of that learning, and integrating it into every step of the educational pathway.

With the university perceived as being at the end, it actually needs to be involved in the beginning as well, so that it can learn how our young people and our families live and learn together and the best mechanisms and approaches that we can use to keep narrowing the attainment gap.

Also, making sure that it’s connected and that the university isn’t seen as isolated, but equally, our approaches are connected right across the educational pathway.

We can’t be successful in narrowing the attainment gap, and enhancing social mobility, if we do this in isolation.

It won’t work - we won’t crack the issue of working class boys [performing poorly academically], for example, if we don’t work with the schools in the areas in Bradford south where there are particular concerns.

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CAD E NT GAS

HOW CADENT GAS,THE UK’S LARGEST GAS DISTRIBUTION NETWORK, IS FACING UP TO THE UK’S SOCIAL MOBILITY DEARTH.

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CAD E NT GAS

SPOTLIGHT ON STEVE FRASER AND MARTIN RIMMER AND CADENT GAS

FUELLING A REVOLUTION IN OPPORTUNITY CREATION

Cadent Gas has over 200 years of history, tracing back to the very start of the gas industry in Britain. Having previously been part of National Grid, Cadent established itself in 2017.

It delivers gas to over eleven million homes and businesses in the UK, spanning around 82,000 miles and serving both populated urban centres and sparse rural areas.

Operating across four networks – North West, West Midlands, East of England and North London – with 3,968 employees, Cadent serves fifty per cent of UK gas customers and provides them with the necessary energy to stay safe and warm.

As a regulated monopoly serving such a high percentage of the UK, Cadent acknowledges that there are differing geographical and social issues within these local communities, and recognises the role it has in delivering for all of these areas.

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CAD E NT GAS

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Its drive to target cold spots has already had a meaningful impact on local communities

Under the leadership of CEO Steve Fraser CEO, and key personnel such as Martin Rimmer, Chief People Officer, Cadent is driven to help the local communities in its service area and to support its customers at every stage of its operational delivery. As the largest gas distribution network (GDN), covering a vast area of the UK, Cadent has taken crucial steps to increase social mobility and promote greater equality and opportunities for young people, those in employment, and the local communities it serves. By employing different indicators through its Customer Vulnerability Strategy to measure social mobility, Cadent has been able to target certain areas within its service network, tailoring its support based on different social mobility challenges.

The company’s talent pipeline schemes achieve two things: they support young people in engaging with STEM and help develop key employable skills. Cadent’s Education and Skills Strategy combines STEM enrichment, careers inspiration and work

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experience; it addresses the STEM gap and increases opportunities for young people, equipping them with knowledge that will serve them in the future.

Likewise, Cadent recognises the importance of apprenticeships and graduate programmes in boosting social mobility, and thus offers a variety of programmes to increase diversity and inclusivity – a key element in addressing the social mobility coldspots.

Cadent’s NEET programme is also an excellent first step in reaching out to disadvantaged young people and despite being impacted by Covid-19, the programme demonstrated its future potential in creating employment opportunities.

Cadent has recognised that strategically there is still a long way to go in maintaining young people’s engagement with the gas industry. With its ageing and retiring workforce, Cadent needs to be creative and forward-thinking in its approach to future engagement challenges.

CAD E NT GAS

Its work on the H21 project demonstrates the crucial role that Cadent is playing in the delivery of low carbon fuels. H21 is a suite of gas industry projects designed to support conversion of the UK gas networks to carry 100 per cent hydrogen. By leading a UK wide initiative, Cadent will find itself in a favourable position with young people if it can frame its engagement with young people in the context of the energy transition and the future with a greener gas industry. As such, it needs to work on creating opportunities, be it work experience, apprenticeships or wider engagement, that reflect this green agenda and which can be incorporated into its wider social mobility strategy, inspiring the future cohort.

As a new company, Cadent has the space to cultivate a diverse and inclusive culture, which promotes innovative solutions and nurtures the high calibre of its employees. Cadent’s workspace has cultivated values of respect, reflecting its broader strategies in local communities.

Cadent’s commitment to talent progression, diversity and inclusivity can be seen with its Employee Communities, the EmployAbility programme, and its drive to address the gender gap, both in pay and opportunities. Cadent’s Employee Communities inspires confidence, establishes networks, and allows the company to monitor its diversity and inclusivity agenda. Cadent recognises that strategically there is still more to address, as it continues looking further into reducing social mobility barriers to improve the company’s accessibility.

Cadent is working hard to support the communities in its service area and should be commended for such a strong delivery. The Cadent Foundation has provided invaluable aid during Covid-19, and the employees’ selflessness is evident in its volunteering for food banks. As a company based in the Midlands with low social mobility and a high percentage of the UK coldspots, Cadent has drawn on its partnerships and stakeholders to provide necessary support to the most vulnerable in its communities.

Initiatives such as The Safety Seymour Campaign and Connected for Warmth are testament to the value Cadent brings to its service area. Engaging with people of all ages, it ensures that everyone is aware of what it does and the support it can offer.

By employing a variety of different and creative outreach frameworks, Cadent can continue supporting and inspiring a wider collective of people.

It is clear that Cadent recognises its responsibility to be forward thinking in creating long-term projects and schemes to support both its company and future generations. With the Covid-19 landscape and its many challenges, Cadent has the opportunity to shape its culture and build its strategies to continue helping individuals and communities.

As a leading purpose-driven company, Cadent’s drive to improve social mobility and target its coldspots has already had a meaningful impact in local communities, ultimately increasing opportunities to help ensure regions in the UK can reach their full potential, as demonstrated by its outcomes even through its school and community engagement.

However, Cadent has worked with the Social Mobility Pledge to identify in which areas it could go further.

The Social Mobility Pledge has looked to provide potential areas where Cadent could focus its community engagement where opportunity gaps are wider than average, or at least provide an example of the type of characteristics Cadent can look to identify when targeting its community engagement in the future.

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SA I N S B U RY ’ S

SPOTLIGHT ON JUDITH BATCHELAR AND SAINSBURY’S

Putting opportunities in the

shop window

JUDITH BATCHEL AR, DIRECTOR OF SAINSBURY’S BRAND, SPEAKS TO JUSTINE GREENING AT A TIME WHEN THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPERMARKETS IN FEEDING THE NATION HAS NEVER BEEN MORE APPARENT. 26

SA I N S B U RY ’ S

Q

JG// You have literally kept Britain fed throughout the COVID-19 crisis. It must have been a massive challenge behind the scenes to suddenly react to a lockdown and the behaviours we saw from people rushing to try and make sure their family was going to be fed.

A

JB// We move around 27 million cases of things around the country a week as a maximum at Christmas. That’s probably for 10 days in the run up to Christmas. We plan for it all year and then we heave a huge sigh of relief and lie down on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and then come back and start again. But with [the crisis] it was like Christmas every day and it went on and on and there was no let up, it was pretty relentless. When I think of all the things

we did to maximise how we could get goods through the system, it really was quite phenomenal.

Q// The staff in the stores were incredible and have really redefined the impression of a key worker.

A// We’ve always had a really strong culture of volunteering in our business, but the things that people were doing [were amazing].

People were coming off night shift and doing the shopping for people who couldn’t get online orders and then delivering it to them on their way home. It was way beyond the call of duty. It’s quite emotional actually thinking about the lengths that people went to to help each other. In many respects, it’s a crisis that brought out the best in people and we should capture it.

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SA I N S B U RY ’ S

“

There is nothing better than seeing a colleague doing a variety of jobs and progressing

Q// And I think the challenge now is, how do you make sure you don’t lose that sense of ‘the art of the possible’.

them the chance to be able to do that. Tell us a little bit about the role that social mobility plays within Sainsbury’s.

A// One of the really refreshing things was the way that different sectors worked together, and also different stakeholders, whether that was governments, regulators, NGOs and charities. If you talk about a team effort, every morning we had a food resilience forum with Defra with 120 people on that call. Between us, we were all the people that could make things happen. We’d have the call in the morning, catch up in the afternoon, and by the next morning, whatever it was we’d agreed, we’d done it. That level of scale and the pace at which we were moving, just shows that you can do big stuff in short periods of time if you have to.

A// I suppose the first really material point is that we are a massive employer. We have 185,000 colleagues in our business, and most of those colleagues are not sitting in some great big office in the middle of London like me today. They are in stores spread far and wide. A lot of them will be joining us from their local community, from school or further education and, for many people, we are their first employer. That brings responsibility with it. And when you’re spending so much of your time at work, that work has to be purposeful, it has to be rewarding and it has to give you some hope and vision for the future and how you might develop in that role. For me, there is nothing better than seeing a colleague that has never worked anywhere else, doing a variety of jobs, their careers progressing and seeing them be very successful; and actually being really quite important in their own communities. If you imagine that in a store, we might be

Q// It underlines that it’s people who make things happen. That’s why social mobility matters to me, because the more you can unleash people to be the best version of themselves, the more incredible stuff they will do. And at the heart of it is just giving

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SA I N S B U RY ’ S

employing anything from five people to 800 in some of the big stores, working lots of shifts, the teams that are working there play a big role in their local community.

If we’re not driving that social mobility agenda, and people aren’t seeing the possibilities, then the role that we can play and the purpose that we have within that community is suboptimal. That’s why we invest in it. That’s why we have massive apprenticeship programmes. That’s why we have programmes for women and why we champion diversity and inclusion, and all the things that we do that we take for granted as being normal. But I know that they’re not normal and they don’t happen everywhere else.

Q// Tell us a little bit about some of the different things that Sainsbury’s does that can have a real impact.

A// I think the way that we have championed apprenticeship programmes, and particularly those apprenticeship

programmes that really do take people on their learning journey, right from first principles all the way through to degrees and expert qualifications in certain areas. These can be anything from accounting to the skills of a master baker, fishmonger or butcher. We’ve put a lot of effort into those programmes. Sometimes income is a barrier to education. I was lucky enough to grow up at a time when, if your parents couldn’t afford it, you got a full grant to go university and didn’t end up having massive debts to pay off, which is what young people do now and it becomes a barrier or a burden later. [Apprenticeships provide the opportunity] to train on the job, work on the job and develop your skills and capability over years - and lots of these apprenticeship programmes aren’t all about young people, they continue through lifelong learning.

I think all of our investment in that is exemplary and I’m hugely proud of my colleagues working in HR and managing those programmes.

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COM M ENT

30

COM M ENT

SPOTLIGHT ON RT HON JUSTINE GREENING

How business as a force for

GOOD WILL HELP US OVERCOME THE COVID OPPORTUNITY GAP Businesses have already been a real force for good during the coronavirus crisis. Now they can play a real leadership role through the coming challenging months ahead as Britain deals with its aftermath. There will be difficult days ahead, that’s inevitable, but how we respond to the challenges is a choice we can make.

The impact of coronavirus on our economy is already, like the impact of coronavirus on children’s education, uneven. Different people and places will face very different impacts. It’s why, through the Social Mobility Pledge, we have looked at how existing social mobility coldspots are being affected by the way coronavirus is hitting jobs and the economy.

For some areas it’s a double hit effect. They were already a social mobility cold spot and now coronavirus disproportionately hurts their local economy and makes their challenge even greater. Just as they did in the early part of the coronavirus crisis, Britain’s smartest business leaders must continue to ask themselves what they can do to be part of the national effort helping Britain bounce back from coronavirus. During lockdown, when these companies were asked what they were doing to help, they could talk genuinely and convincingly about the steps they were taking.

How can they also be part of the solution to the new challenges of the opportunity gap and social mobility crisis that Britain faces?

People want to see businesses again set out how they can help more broadly and how they can continue to show being a force for good.

The COVID Opportunity Gap evidence base the Social Mobility Pledge has set out out is aimed at helping businesses understand where the greatest challenges lie and, therefore, where help is needed most. A number of companies – including 10 per cent of the FTSE 100 - have worked with me to build Opportunity Action Plans, which can reflect this analysis to make sure they can show not only what their impact can be through their plans, but that they’ve also built in careful thinking about where that impact can be most valuable.

It’s going to be crucial work, and I hope that all companies will put similar plans in place. Certainly, there are plenty of insights to inspire other employers into this within this publication.

The right choices by Britain’s business leaders at this pivotal point, could make all the difference to communities and people most in need in the coming months.

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VI RG I N CAR E SPOTLIGHT ON DR VIVIENNE MCVEY AND VIRGIN CARE

LEVELLING UP through a civic health model

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VI RG I N CAR E

VIRGIN CARE IS TAKING A NEW APPROACH TO ACHIEVING EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IN HEALTH AND WELLBEING, AS WE REPORT. Health inequality in the UK is not just a medical issue; it’s a socioeconomic one too.

There is a growing body of evidence that indicates there is a large difference in health outcomes between the least and most privileged groups in society, despite living in a country where healthcare is free at the point of use.

This is because the health inequalities often occur not during the point of treatment, nor inside hospitals or GPs practices, but throughout communities, due to a complex series of interrelated factors.

For example, a child born into a low-income background or into poverty in the UK, is more likely to have a low birth weight, shorter life expectancy and a higher risk of death in the first year of life.

To this end, Virgin Care has demonstrated a new way of working in Essex, to help make a difference on the stark reality of health inequality, and break the barrier it presents to social mobility and opportunity.

Virgin Care’s Civic Health Model, which it launched in its delivery of services in Essex, having been commissioned by Essex County Council and West Essex CCG, has adopted a proactive (rather than reactive) approach to promoting better health outcomes, by working with communities. It has demonstrated how healthcare can be more than treatment - and working upstream to help those furthest away from privilege to make the right choices everyday in regards to their own health.

It has delivered a purposeful collaborative community approach to the delivery of healthcare services in Essex, focussed on outcomes which enable it to tailor the business to maximise its effectiveness and bringing together the skills of the organisations involved with, through volunteering, the community’s own skills.

This new model is called “a Civic Health approach”. It is about service providers using their skills not only to deliver services, but

empowering local communities, working with civil society and supporting local people to tackle both health inequalities and, in doing so, boosting social mobility by focusing on long term outcomes which are proven to make a difference over short term activity targets.

This Civic Health approach has meant that local programmes have been more successful and developed long term value because they are based on what local people and communities want and need and build skills rather than solve immediate problems.

Involving local communities in developing and delivering these programmes has also brought greater diversity of thought and innovation, helping to produce bottom up creative solutions and more inclusive approaches.

Through strong leadership, the Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service is a fantastic example of successful partnership in action.

In working on behalf of Essex County Council and NHS West Essex Clinical Commissioning Group, the Service provides health visiting, school nursing, family health education and support, and specialist children’s community health services across the County.

These are services which exist across the country, commissioned by local authorities, but in Essex the County Council, Virgin Care and Barnardo’s have changed their focus to the impacts of what they do – and the approach is reflected first in the way that the service was commissioned, and then in how it is operated.

Its work ranges from parenting support, support for young people with special educational needs and disabilities, providing information for children, parents and school staff on health issues and support for physical, emotional and developmental issues.

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VI RG I N CAR E The service has 29 multidisciplinary Healthy Family Teams that work from district-based Family Hubs and Delivery Sites across the county. They provide pre-birth to 19 services centred around GP practices and clusters of secondary schools, feeder primary schools, nurseries and their communities.

It clearly demonstrates how Virgin Care, in partnership with Barnardo’s and Essex County Council, has facilitated more effective health services in the community which improve health outcomes.

This in turn boosts life chances, social mobility and opportunity for the community it serves.

The “Civic Health” model used in Essex is similar to the model Justine Greening introduced for Opportunity Areas at the Department for Education where local communities and businesses work together on key local priorities to lift outcomes for young people in the area. That collaborative approach was shown to have “helped to create a step change in the level of enthusiasm and support for our shared mission - by drawing on and empowering local educators and local talent.”

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Virgin Care has shown how this can also succeed in the health and care sector, provided the right conditions are created. Both Essex County Council and Virgin Care were keen to highlight that the delivery of the service in this way was only possible due to the approach to commissioning and managing the service towards a common, longer term aim.

The Essex experience also shows that, while investment is important, it is possible to achieve a greater impact by working with, and seeking to understand, local communities and their needs – and at the same time, by recognising that all local communities are different.

The way in which social mobility is improved in Darlington or Oldham is likely to be different from the way it is approached in Harlow, but there are common approaches which can be taken to identifying these solutions – and these are captured within the Civic Health Approach. Solutions need to be more responsive to local needs than the more centrally controlled approaches we are used to.

VI RG I N CAR E

It is a genuinely different working model and contrasts markedly with the more cumbersome models where accounting rules can inhibit long term investment and activity monitoring can take precedence over longer term achievements. The more responsive and nimble system in Essex makes for a much more effective strategic approach to dealing with social problems.

It is important, however, that there is a way of evaluating social mobility outcomes in this context. Virgin Care has 27 outcomes specified in its formal contract with the County Council, but that contract is a ten year one. Although this enables progress to be made and shown achieving social mobility, and therefore being able to measure it, can be a 20 or 30-year process.

Virgin Care is an organisation which nurtures its employees and it works hard to recruit from within the community, both to paid employment and through empowering volunteering. Its use of systematic career pathways means that people who join the organisation can, with support, work their way through to qualifications in administrative, healthcare and leadership fields and to the associated jobs, with Virgin Care or elsewhere.

Virgin Care works towards creating opportunities for people at all stages of their careers.

It has shown how volunteering can not only be part of community health provision but also part of a wider mechanism as a pathway into employment. The Civic Health Model it has adopted also shows that successful community engagement can boost social mobility, offering new opportunities and improving access to services for marginalised and vulnerable people at the same time.

In Essex, as in many models that tackle social mobility, one entry point is schools. Virgin Care acknowledges that early years intervention is crucial in ensuring that a child’s education outcomes are as positive as possible. The way in which the work internally and with schools is connected with other stakeholders in the community may vary. Different communities may choose to put together different core priorities and these should be supported.

Virgin Care’s approach has enabled it to build effective and meaningful local partnerships. It has facilitated the community to look after itself and has changed the emphasis from one which purely commissions services. It demonstrates the synergy between treatment and health prevention at its most preliminary and shows that, to be most effective, you should go to the source – the community itself.

• Two years ago there were four volunteers, now there are 40 • Three years ago there were 35 unfilled nursing vacancies, by 2021 there will be none • Essex Council had previously employed no care leavers, now it employs many The innovative cross-organisational approach has brought benefits to all parties. Local, smaller scale solutions are supported by a local community which is fully engaged and the business has credibility and accountability as a result.

Health outcomes and social mobility are inextricably linked and it is well known that the least advantaged in society generally have access to the least high-quality health services, relative to their needs, compared to higher income groups.

That inequality means that, amongst other poor outcomes, there is a 19-year gap in average life expectancy between the least and most deprived areas of the UK. Those living in the most deprived areas spend nearly a third of their lives in poor health, compared with only a sixth for those in the least deprived areas. Health outcomes, whether at early years, schools or young adult stages are huge barriers to positive social mobility.

The success of the collaborative community approach we have looked at in this report in Essex demonstrates that its bottom-up approach, its adaptability to local conditions and its willingness to invest up front for the long term is a model that other areas with an opportunity gap should replicate.

It provides real value to that community by helping to address their own health inequalities and boost social mobility as a result.

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H O G A N LOV E L L S

A

T O C R E S IN T HE MIDST O F EEP SW

ING

CHANGE

SPOTLIGHT ON SUSAN BRIGHT AND HOGAN LOVELLS

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H O G A N LOV E L L S

SUSAN BRIGHT IS UK MANAGING PARTNER AND GLOBAL MANAGING PARTNER INCLUSION AND RESPONSIBL E BUSINESS AT HOGAN L , Y T I S R E V I D R OVELLS, FO ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LAW FIRMS. HERE SHE DISC USSES HOW THE ORGANISATION IS HELPING TO RAISE ASPIRATIONS IN SCHOOLS.

Q A

// Tell us a little bit about your approach to social mobility.

// We’ve always been very keen for the profession to be very open. Law has a bit of a reputation about people not really knowing or understanding [it]. So it’s about demystifying it for people who have maybe never met a lawyer and would have no clue as to what it is. At the end of the day, law is about helping people with your toolkit of law to solve a problem or to get an outcome. In terms of outreach, we’ve done a lot of work in that area, both in London, but also in some cold spots around the country. We go in, talk about law in a very accessible way and give children the opportunity just to understand what that’s like. In the sixth form, we often bring the children into the office to get a feel for it, and I think that’s really important. It’s about giving people aspiration. A lot of kids have never walked into an office building like that, and it’s a quite frightening thing to do. So we’re bringing people in, taking them to the canteen sitting around and having a meal together and talking about it, and they’re inspirational.

They’ve got such views on everything, it’s extraordinary. So we do a lot of work in that space through different programmes, and we partner with other people. There are some really great organisations - like the Sutton Trust, Aspiring Solicitors and

Rare Recruitment – and we work collaboratively with them all, going into schools and giving young people the opportunity to join a training programme with us [or] mentoring them and so on. Then people join us and [it’s about] making a place where people want to stay and grow and feel really included. I’d like to think that Hogan Lovells is a very open and inclusive place and we do a lot of work [on that].

We realised in about 2010 that the proportion of black and ethnic minority people we had joining us as trainees was about nine per cent, so not enough. We did a lot of work thinking about how do we widen access to more universities and really to make this a place that people want to join. The team worked incredibly hard at getting out there and talking to people and we increased the proportion to 30 per cent. It took five years by 2015, but I’m pleased to say it’s stayed above 30 per cent every year since.

Then you have to turn your attention to say, ‘we’ve got these great people from real diverse backgrounds, from different racial backgrounds all joining us, [but] how do we make it a place where people really, really want to stay?’ You have to hold a mirror up to your own organisation.

Q//

There are wider changes happening in law in terms of how you qualify to become a solicitor. How do you think that might change the opportunities for having a really diverse profession?

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H O G A N LOV E L L S

YO U ’ V

E GOT PEOPL E W I T H R E A L G RI T , D E T E R M I N AT O N , RESIL IENCE A ND D RI V E T O B E S U C C E S S F U L

that PRIME has done, is create an app to connect students who are still at university with young people who are, for example, in law, to do mentoring at a time when the usual ways of connecting people are different. How far along are we? I think we’ve done a lot, but we’ve got so much more to do as a profession to keep doing it. I think it’s about being on it all the time. It’s not always about coming up with something new, it’s about putting in place opportunities to go out into schools, talk to kids, give them the opportunity to come in, to talk to people about what it’s really like.

We just have to just keep at it all of the time,

Q//

Of course, nobody can do it all on their own and it is this tapestry of all the law firms making their contribution to it that ultimately will achieve bigger change in the longer term but you’re not going to fix it overnight. It is quite generational in nature, isn’t it?

A// A//

There are changes coming up to the solicitors’ qualification examinations. The aim behind them is to widen access and to make it more accessible. I hope very much that they have that impact. I’m not personally sure that simply changing an exam [is a] silver bullet. I think it’s really important that you maintain the quality. People want to go to lawyers who really know what they’re doing. That benchmark is really important. So I think there’s no one silver bullet, but it’s a combination of things. I do think that we are making progress in terms of widening access. About five years ago, we introduced what we call contextual recruitment. It flags up to us people who are applying from a challenged background. For example, their results may not look so spectacular, but compared to the school they’re at, they are really very good. It gives us the opportunity to interview a broader range of people. We’ve had people come through now who’ve been flagged up in that way, and boy are they good. That’s what’s so interesting. You’ve got people who’ve got real grit, determination, resilience and drive to be successful. That’s fantastic for us and I hope fantastic for them, too.

Q// How far on the journey do you feel the legal sector is and what are the challenges ahead in terms of opening up the sector?

A//

There has been a lot that’s done. PRIME was set up a long time ago amongst law firms in order to give a much wider range of young people the opportunity to do work experience, which is so important. Collaboration like that is critical. What do we do going forward? Well, I think the challenge, we’ve got is this immediate challenge of being in a virtual world. One of the things

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You’re absolutely right. It was 1989 when I joined our firm and we had 39 people joining at the same time. Of that 39, 30 were women, so women have been joining the profession in their droves for a long time. And yet, really getting women through into partnership and so on, that’s been a Herculean task and it’s one that keeps going or you keep slipping back. Cultural change is critical, but in addition, I think it’s about changing systems and the way organisations do things and the processes. For example, how do you progress in law? By getting the opportunity to do really great work, working with really great clients. And so the systematic change you can make on the business is how you allocate work. It’s very easy for a partner to say, ‘I’ve got this great new job in and Joe down the corridor did a really great job last time so I’ll get him to do it again’. But what about Jo without an E who’s just come back from maternity leave? So, it’s about creating systems which help people to think more broadly when they allocate work.

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BUS I N ESS N EWS

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT OUR WEBSITE TOGETHERTOMORROW.CO.UK

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This campaign is focused on the long lasting effect which lockdown has had on the LGBT+ community, especially in regard to increase in loneliness.

With millions of us having been forced to self-isolate, shield and keep ‘socially distant’ from even our close friends, loneliness has had an acute impact on those in more marginalised communities.

Our campaign is working towards a UK wide strategy to tackle loneliness in the LGBT+ community, a recognised measure of loneliness and the development of innovative solutions to tackling the issue amongst the LGBT+ community.

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DI R ECT LI N E

Taking the direct road to social mobility SPOTLIGHT ON PENNY JAMES AND DIRECT LINE GROUP

DIRECT LINE GROUP IS ONE OF THE UK’S LEADING INSURANCE FIRMS, BUT THE COMPANY IS COMMITTED TO DOING A LOT MORE THAN JUST PROVIDING INSURANCE, AS WE REPORT HERE. Led by CEO Penny James, Direct Line has set out its vision to create a world where insurance is personal, inclusive and a force for good.

To do this it has renewed its purpose: to help people carry on with their lives, giving them peace of mind now and in the future.

This purpose has become a focal point of its plans as a responsible business as it looks to increase its social impact and positively impacts the lives of its people and local communities.

It has already shown it understands that being a responsible business isn’t an add-on,

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but is fundamental to how it does business every single day, and has embedded its sustainability strategy, across both people and planet, at the heart of this.

It’s important to consider that planet and people are two sides of the same coin, and that’s why Direct Line’s commitment to responsible business spans across the ESG agenda. From its environmental focus on all buildings using electricity from renewable sources, and none of its waste goes to landfill - the bar it has set on preserving the planet is equally as strong on its people and community agenda too.

Direct Line’s philosophy of making insurance personal is something that is firstly clear from how it delivers on being a great place to work internally, its focus on diversity and inclusion, and having a positive impact on communities.

One of the key insights from Direct Line’s work is the level at which the company empowers its people. Indeed, many of the company’s initiatives and programmes are both founded and led by its people at all levels of the company; not just by managers or directors.

From its Diversity Network Alliance, to its Social Mobility Network Employee Network, to its establishment of employee-led Community and Social Committees, Direct Line’s employees are encouraged to make active decisions and steer the future of the company’s strategy. Direct Line supports its people to have a voice and take leadership.

It is well known that a good company culture isn’t something that can be implemented or imposed, but something that has to be lived.

It’s something that is hard to measure, but is best measured by engagement of employees.

The indication of high employee engagement through the leadership they have in many decisions, and particularly through how the company supports local communities and the placement of their local priorities at the heart

DI R ECT LI N E

This same culture is reflected in how Direct Line engages externally with local communities, driven by the belief that people’s feelings about working for the company are linked to the company’s reputation in the community they live and work, and how the

of Direct Line’s external engagement, is itself a sign of a strong and positive company culture.

The company has always had a strong track record on its commitment to diversity since its founding, but Direct Line has shown its determination to identify under-represented groups in financial services and insurance, and encourage them to pursue careers and progress in the company. It was one of the first businesses to sign the Government’s Women in Finance Charter, which sought

to address the under-representation of women in financial services, and particularly in management positions.

While making these commitments are important, it’s outcomes that really matter.

Direct Line is already ahead of the HamptonAlexander target which requires FTSE 350 companies to have at least 33% women on their board by 2020. The company has met this, as its Chief Executive Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer roles are held by women.

company interacts with and supports those communities.

Furthermore, Direct Line has sought to make insurance truly personal through building relationships with local communities, and never has this been more important than through the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a time when community groups and charities have been under financial and wider strain, Direct Line immediately coordinated a £3.5 million fund to help these groups through the crisis, and worked with local authorities to identify those it needed to support the most.

Direct Line’s Community and Social Committees have empowered a more localised and employee-led approach that focuses on each community’s individual priorities and needs.

It has enabled Direct Line to tailor its support to all communities in a way that makes a greater difference, rather than taking one corporate and universal approach across all its sites.

Direct Line has built strong foundations in its track record of delivering for local communities, and through creating an authentically diverse and inclusive workplace internally.

The Social Mobility Pledge has worked with Direct Line to identify how the company can increase its external impact on communities around its sites across the UK, to boost social mobility in the communities where life outcomes are the lowest and where opportunity gaps are the widest.

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OPPORTU N ITY AR EAS

EARLIER THIS YEAR FORMER EDUCATION SECRETARY JUSTINE GREENING PUT HER SUPPORT BEHIND A YORKSHIRE POST CAMPAIGN FOR MORE OPPORTUNITY AREAS IN HER NATIVE YORKSHIRE. HERE SHE EXPLAINS WHY.

Opportunity Areas raise school standards - we just need more SPOTLIGHT ON RT HON JUSTINE GREENING. The teachers at Herringthorpe Primary School, Oakwood Comprehensive School, as it then was, and Thomas Rotherham College in Rotherham transformed my life for the better.

I knew that education was the key to being able to make the most of my potential and I have never lost that sense of how important it is for all of us.

Yet we live in no ordinary times. One of the most damaging impacts of Covid-19 was the schools shutdown and how much it disrupted the education of millions of children and young people around the country.

It’s bad for them and it’s bad for the rest of us.

We’ll need all of those young people with their talent and potential fully developed if we’re to be successful as a country in the future.

So ambitious steps on levelling up Britain have never been more important.

We know the issues for education. That’s

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why we should support The Yorkshire Post’s fantastic campaign for a new wave of Opportunity Areas across Yorkshire and the rest of the Northern Powerhouse.

They could make a real difference at the very time that they are most badly needed.

I set 12 Opportunity Areas up whilst I was Secretary of State for Education to bring the Department for Education and local schools together, working with a wider community and businesses, all with the aim of improving education for local children.

Opportunity Areas work because they recognised the fact that different communities already faced different challenges on education, even before the Covid-19 schools shutdown which we know has affected our least privileged children the worst. The challenges for schools in Rotherham, where I grew up, aren’t the same as for schools in Halifax, or for schools in Leeds or Selby.

A Whitehall one-size-fits-all approach can only ever get us so far on raising education outcomes. In the end, we also need a more bespoke approach for individual communities.

They are intended to be longer-term efforts, but it’s hugely rewarding to see what Yorkshire’s Opportunity Areas in Bradford, Doncaster and the North Yorkshire coast are already achieving after just three years.

As The Yorkshire Post reported recently, the progress in education results for Opportunity Areas is striking – improvements for reading, writing and literacy are above the national average, with the North Yorkshire coast and Doncaster’s rate of improvement 12 per cent above the national average, and Bradford’s rate of improvement 16 per cent above the national average. These are real results with real impact.

In Scarborough a concerted focus on teacher recruitment has meant this year’s September term has filled all its teacher vacancies for the first time in years.

In Bradford, a “Glasses for Classes” push saw several hundred children get their eye tests up to date and the right glasses prescription that quickly helped progress their learning. In calling for a new wave of Opportunity Areas across Yorkshire to be announced at the Autumn Budget, The Yorkshire Post has rightly identified that there’s never been a more important time to get schools, communities and businesses working together to help our children and young people who’ve had their

OPPORTU N ITY AR EAS

school time disrupted through this terrible virus.

We need a national effort to combat coronavirus and we need a national effort to get this country’s education system back on track. It will work best if it is driven forward at a local level by those who care most about their local communities.

There’s no time to waste. Ministers can quickly drive forward their levelling up agenda by scaling up what we know already works

and rolling out Opportunity Areas to other communities that they can help the most.

We’ve seen Mr Sunak launch lots of Treasury programmes since Covid-19 hit Britain – the furlough scheme alone cost £14bn a month.

They have all had an objective of supporting jobs and our economy in the short term. But a levelling up Government must look ahead to the long term too.

Investing in education is about how we support jobs, careers and the economy of the

future. We shouldn’t short-change that either.

Of course, there are other steps needed across our education system more widely, but Opportunity Areas are a crucial element of a levelling up plan for our schools that is now more than ever desperately needed.

The Yorkshire Post campaign for more Opportunity Areas across the region to boost education outcomes is a transformational one that we should all get behind. It has my full support - and it must get the Chancellor’s too.

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S TA F F O R D S H I R E U N I V E R S I T Y

It’s incredible to see people who were told they couldn’t do it go on to great things

LIZ BARNES, VICE CHANCELLOR OF STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSIT Y, TALKS TO RT HON JUSTINE GREENING ABOUT COVID, SOCIAL MOBILITY AND THE WORK OF THE INSTITUTION IN HELPING PEOPLE WHO MAY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN OFF IN LIFE TO FINALLY UNLOCK THEIR POTENTIAL.

SPOTLIGHT ON LIZ BARNES AND STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY

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Q A

JG// Tells us about how the last few months have been for the university.

// They have been difficult as they have been for everybody, but I’m just so proud of how our staff and students have responded and and kept everything going and way beyond that. We had to shift to remote learning.

That presents challenges for everybody, particularly for staff and students who are juggling homeschooling, and all that brings with it. But they did that very quickly. Also our support staff put a lot in place. Our digital services team were running out to deliver computers and making sure that students and staff had the technology they needed to engage. Our learning, teaching and support team were working and giving seminars to staff and supporting them in getting up and running for those that were a little less confident in delivering online learning. All of our students support moved to online. So our careers team [were] still providing the same level of support to students in their homes. Mental health support for students, which has been so crucial through this period, has all been delivered remotely. So the whole university operation shifted to operating from home whilst actually we also had a

S TA F F O R D S H I R E U N I V E R S I T Y

strong team on campus, making sure that the students that remained here were all looked after and taken care of. Our nursery was up and running throughout the period. In fact, they had children turn up that they’d never seen before, because parents who worked in the NHS suddenly found that the provision they needed might be closed, but they knew we were operating.

Q// As terrible as the crisis was, do you think there will be some positive legacy in relation to how you have been able to better support people remotely?

A// There are a number of things that we’ve learned an enormous amount about and will take forward and look at how we build them into our practice beyond next year. We need to recognise that this period has had a quite significant impact on lots of people - staff and students. I think it’s going to take a long time for us to help people recover from what they faced during the period. As an example from our mental health support, we found that we could provide so much more support when we’re doing some of it remotely. Actually, we can expand our service and reduce our waiting lists by having the remote support alongside where we really need it, the face-to-face. So we’re redesigning our service now.

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S TA F F O R D S H I R E U N I V E R S I T Y

“

She had spent her life caring for her parents and had never had an opportunity before Q// Tell us about some of the work that you’ve done to reach those young people and mature students with potential but for whom going to university might have been a pipedream.

A// Stoke-on-Trent in particular really does have some challenges. Nearly 25 per cent of our population of families are in the most deprived in the country. [Many of these families] probably do have aspirations but what they see are the barriers.

There are all sorts of things that can happen through their lives that maybe get in the way of young people and then mature people accessing the learning and support they need. It doesn’t mean they don’t have potential. So much is to do with your background and where you live as opposed to your potential and that’s what we’re seeing a lot of. So how do you reach those families that have always thought [university] is ‘not for the likes of us’? How do you get to the people that have had such difficult times in their lives? One project that we’re particularly proud of is [run] with the YMCA. One person who came to us had been a drug addict from the age of 14 and spent all of his life fighting addiction and everything that brings. But he’s now graduated, and went on to do a master’s degree. He then got funding to do some research and he now informs national policies on drugs and drug abuse. We’ve got a student studying with us now, just progressing into his second year, who lived on the streets for four years. He’s been in the armed forces like so many [others] who have great difficulty in adapting to civilian life. We work with YMCA to help these people transition into higher education because it isn’t that they haven’t got the capability and ability.

It’s more that they don’t know how, but also that they need that support and transitioning because it’s a long time since they were in school. Then there are others that we work with.

Throughout my period working in higher education, I’ve always felt quite emotional when I’ve been doing events, particularly around foundation programmes and transition into university, because you talk to people who tell you stories about how they were written off in school; or how they were told constantly that

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they weren’t going to make it. Then it just becomes part of what they believe. They believe they can’t do it. There’s something about getting to these people, helping them develop that confidence and belief in themselves, and then seeing them come out the end that’s just incredible. In terms of what they go on to achieve, I could provide a long, long list of the great things that Staffordshire graduates do. But not all of our graduates come here to get into high paid jobs. My vice chancellor’s prize two years ago went to a mature student. She was 58 and had spent her life caring for her parents, and she had some disabilities herself. She had never had an opportunity. At that age, she came and studied with us and when she left she set up an LGBT group within the church, she set up a food bank and she did some postgraduate study with us part time.

In terms of her confidence and that giving back element, and getting more engaged with society, it was fantastic. But her ambition was never to earn lots of money it was about, ‘this is my time, this is my chance to develop me and do something for me.

And I know I can do it’.

Q// And many of your students want to give something back once they’ve been given an opportunity.

A// Yes [it’s about] leaving the doors open behind you. So often the stories you hear are about the doors being closed very early in life, and it’s just so sad that our young people coming through feel written off at an early age.

S TA F F O R D S H I R E U N I V E R S I T Y

Q// Staffordshire does a lot of work encouraging people to become students who may have never felt it was a possibility.

But there are also lots of things you do as a university to make sure that once those people come through the doors they can make the big adjustment that’s required.

A// Absolutely. For example, we’ve come towards the end of our Flying Start programme for this year’s cohort. Some of our students with disabilities come with their families, [who may] stay in accommodation with them to help them to settle in. They’re just amazed that they’re here this year in particular and they really, really valued that opportunity to come along early, to help themselves get used to the environment to develop that feeling of security and safety being here, but also being able to have their families and other support wrapped around them and that’s crucial.

So it’s really important that we spend that time helping students to settle in and find their way.

Q// The other end of the pipeline for the university is then connecting people up with opportunities so they can make the most of the talent they’ve developed; and you’ve really focused on some of the growth sectors that perhaps were less obvious to some higher education institutions, but are the growth industries of the future.

A// We keep transforming our offer. We’re now talking about graduates for jobs that haven’t even been dreamt up. Our latest

course , an eSports degree, made a flying start because eSports is a multimillion-pound business across the world. And there are so many opportunities out there. We launched our London campus last September because we needed to align our games students and our eSports students with the key employers in Europe and London is seen as the capital of [the industry].

While we’ve been there, we’ve been connecting up with industry and making sure representatives from industry are on that campus all of the time and our students are exposed to them and they’re getting placements with them. Another good example is comic arts. We have a degree in comic arts.

I went to talk to those students recently before lockdown and I don’t think there was a student in there that wasn’t working on a commissioned piece of work. So we were already hooking them up with those opportunities.

We also have Airbus placements for our computing students. We also have courses sponsored by Cisco, Google and Microsoft.

So we’re just linking them up with the key players out there, making sure they get that exposure.

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U N I VE R S ITY OF WE ST LON DON

We’ve given them a stepping stone to something they never dreamed of SPOTLIGHT ON PETER JOHN AND UNIVERSITY OF WEST LONDON

THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST LONDON IS ONE OF THE UK HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR’S LEADING SOCIAL MOBILITY DRIVERS. HERE VICE CHANCELLOR PETER JOHN SHARES HIS OWN CAREER STORY THAT HAS HELPED TO SHAPE HIS APPROACH TODAY.

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Q

// What was your aim when you were growing up in Wales? Did you ever expect that you’d end up being a vice chancellor?

A

// Absolutely not. I came from a very poor family in south Wales. We lived in a prefab, we didn’t have a house and I had a very, very seriously ill brother. He was three years older than me and died when he was eight.

Literacy wasn’t the big thing in our family, it was just survival and, because he was dying, they had to bring a teacher into the house under the 1945 Education Act. So I sat on the table when he was being taught to read and I learned to read by the time I was three. Then I was pushed off to nursery because we couldn’t look after a dying child at home, and from that I got the 11

plus, [went to] Grammar School, and so on.

My main aim at that age was just to carry on as best I could, because all the attention was put on my brother every minute of the day, because he could die quite easily. So I was left to do with things on my own, I suppose.

Q// Do you feel like this made you somebody who was self-reliant, because you’d always had to make sure you took your own decisions?

A//Of course. In South Wales at the time, it was a pretty dark period back in the 50s and 60s, and I was made self-reliant, and I had no expectations on me to exceed, which was a good thing. [There were] no expectations at all because I was the only one that had ever done anything and was

Q// When did you first start think that education was the path you were going to go down?

A// I had a scholarship to do a PhD and after I did my degree I decided I wanted to teach children who were in trouble. I went to work in what was then called a community homeschool, they were the ex-borstals or prison schools. I had to live in with the students as well as teach them and it is almost impossible to to explain what it was like to teach those children.

Reading about their backgrounds, which were absolutely, desperately bad in terms of what had happened to them, and then trying and teach them at the same time, was too difficult. I decided to go back into academia then, and then worked at what was then Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes, then I went to the University of Reading, and then to the University of Bristol, where I stayed for about 16 years, and then moved to University of Plymouth.

That was mainly lecturing. I became a reader at Bristol, then I got a chair in Plymouth.

Then from Plymouth out of the blue, in three years, I went from being a dean, to being a VC within three years.

Q// Tell us about what you’ve brought into the university in terms of your ethos and how you wanted it to work?

A// The first thing I realised when I moved out of the Russell Group into the new university sector was how different it

U N I VE R S ITY OF WE ST LON DON

likely to do anything. I came from a mining family. I lost my uncle who broken his neck in the pit when he was 21. So I came from that kind of background, although there was one important thing – south Wales miners had a very strong sense of autodidact, selftaught, and there was always a feeling inside the community that education mattered, but not necessarily formal education.

was. There was different construction of a curriculum, different students and different kinds of possible ambitions that they might have. I was struck by the lower level of ambition, both at Plymouth, but mostly at West London. So I decided very early on, to concentrate on those students. What their needs were, and what their desires were and what they wanted. Most of them wanted their families to be proud of them, they wanted their families to be well looked after and they wanted the opportunities that other people took for granted. I built the curriculum around that over a five-year period to make sure that these students could not only succeed in the way they wanted to, but their families in the next generation could succeed as well. That, if you like, made me move the university towards a more enterprising, career-based university because, in the end, these students don’t have anything to fall back on. They have to make it for themselves a bit like I did in a funny kind of way, and I felt an affinity with them, I understood them, I could speak to them and they understood me. I think that’s the way I designed how the University of West London would continue.

Q// It’s worth remembering that young people are going to university for a reason - not just to learn, but to make sure they can then get connected up with something afterwards. So really what they want is to understand that the chance of being able to translate a degree into an opportunity afterwards is really as high as it possibly can be; and that’s something you’ve really worked hard on, isn’t it?

A// Absolutely right. I [mentioned] the lack of real ambition and you had to really explain to them what the world was like out there, what they could get, what the possibilities were, where they could go.

Too often they’d been constrained by their environment, and understandably, so. So

we had to spend so much time opening up the possibilities for them. But there’s nothing worse than opening up possibilities.

Hence, we started this idea of every student having a work placement guaranteed.

That starts to put the stepping stones into place so they can move from that into their ambition into where they want to go.

Because many of them don’t have a very clear idea of what they want to do or where they want to go when they’re young. And they don’t have the networks or the connections that so many people do and take for granted.

So you have to create them for them. The only way you could do it was to get around 6,000 employers to offer work placements and that took a lot of effort. But once that was done, they started to take advantage of it. And now they write back to me and explain what’s happened and so on, and you realise that you’ve given them a stepping stone into something that they never dreamed of, or possibly thought they could ever get into, while so many take that for granted.

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TR UE POTENTIAL

The pathway to progress SOCIAL MOBILITY PLEDGE-FOUNDING MEMBER TRUE POTENTIAL LLP HAS A THREE-STEP S O L U T I O N T O T H E N A T I O N ’ S O P P O R T U N I T Y G A P, AS FIT FOR PURPOSE REPORTS. SPOTLIGHT ON DAVID HARRISON AND TRUE POTENTIAL

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TR UE POTENTIAL

C

lose to 20 per cent of the financial adviser market use True Potential’s products and services.

These include investment management and business support services, as well as financial services technology.

The company has expanded rapidly since its inception in 2007, ranking as the fastest growing financial advice and technology services company headquartered outside London in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Deloitte Technology Fast 50.

Across the group, True Potential has over £52bn assets under administration. In 2017 and 2018 it won its category at the European Business of the Year award, beating 34,000 other firms from 35 countries. The company is powered by a commitment towards creating opportunities for all.

This is evident in its products and services, which are equally open to both high net worth individuals and pension savers who wish to start by putting aside as little as £1 for their future. It can also be seen in its approach to employees.

The UK’s lack of social mobility is particularly prevalent in financial services.

Led by founder and managing partner David Harrison, True Potential has found a highly effective solution.

Its Pathway to Progress is designed to speed young people with limited life chances into fulfilling and ever-developing careers.

The Pathway to Progress True Potential believes that youth outreach and talent acquisition programmes should not be delivered as standalone activities – and certainly should not be considered ‘tick box’ or merely ‘ CSR’ exercises.

There is a much bigger prize at play.

The company urges that they are run with purpose and focus on a natural strengths process that factors in disadvantaged areas.

Crucially, they must give candidates of all backgrounds a real opportunity of employment and a clear path towards a flourishing career with a contextual focus on an individual’s life journey.

While this may consume more management and HR time in recruitment processes, it ultimately ensures candidates are selected on a broader range of considerations.

True Potential has achieved this as part of its pathway that has three stages – outreach, employment and progression.

These are seamlessly connected and managed with one overriding goal: To create a pathway towards success at work based on talent, attitude and aptitude.

Stage One: Outreach Give opportunities, new skills and career aspirations to young people in disadvantaged areas.

As well as working with schools, True Potential has helped create a school that could set disadvantaged people on the path to success.

Through its sister organisation, set up by company founder David Harrison, it supported the launch of the Beacon of Light in Sunderland.

The initial £150,000 contribution from the Harrison Centre for Social Mobility (HCSM) to the sports and education facility was more than a mere financial donation, however.

It was the catalyst for a new education programme run by HCSM at the centre that aims to complement core skills in maths and English to inspire a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs – and provide support and education for those that need it most.

The Beacon is located in Sunderland Central parliamentary constituency. Sunderland Central is ranked 24th out of the 29 North East constituencies for social mobility, according to a report by the House of Commons Library.

In terms of youth social mobility, it is ranked 357th out of 533 English constituencies, placing it in the bottom third nationally.

The Harrison Centre at the Beacon hosts workshops which give teenagers and young people the skills, confidence and experience necessary to get on in the world of work.

There are four programmes in total aimed at ages 14 to 19+ and attracting young people from across the surrounding region, many of which are from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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TR UE POTENTIAL

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The young people True Potential engages with receive a head start in pursuing their career ambitions, but True Potential is rewarded too; by unearthing talent that could drive its business forward in future.

During the coronavirus crisis, True Potential and its partners at the Foundation of Light stepped up their efforts to ensure people in disadvantaged communities were not further left behind.

The Foundation redeveloped the programmes delivered at the Harrison Centre – Back in the Game and Back on Track – to move to an inclusive e-learning programme of delivery.

All 34 Back on Track participants continued to be engaged by course tutors through Microsoft Teams, and for learners who did not have access to technology or the internet, tutors posted workbooks and course resources to learners at home and drove to participants houses to pick up learner work to continue the assessment process.

Harrison Centre learners completed qualifications across the four months of lockdown which included: Maths and English, Personal and Social Development, ICT, Sport, Health and Social Care and Customer Services, all of which had a module of managing finances embedded into the work programme.

Learners have now returned to staggered classroom delivery with 98 per cent of learners returning to face-to-face delivery.

On the Back in the Game programme, tutors developed 15 new programmes specifically designed to meet the needs of lockdown, engaging the adult learners and their children together in course activities to ensure positive family relationships over the course of lockdown.

Within three weeks, tutors had developed new schemes of work to provide accredited programmes focusing on health and wellbeing, physical activity, work skills and employability as well as managing finances and home cooking skills. Within a month of launching the programmes, the Foundation had enrolled 76 learners on programmes, offering daily contact with participants via Microsoft Teams to support participants through their programmes.

To ensure the hardest to reach learners can benefit from the Harrison Centre’s employability programmes, the team is taking forward examples of what has worked well in lockdown to include a mixed delivery approach from September, with online learning and face to face classroom delivery.

Delivery over lockdown has been a real success and has generated new ways to support young people to make the most of their talents and potential.

Stage Two: Employment Develop recruitment policies that reward talent, effort and determination, not the candidate’s connections or background.

In April 2018, True Potential became one of the first companies in the UK to sign the national Social Mobility Pledge.

Companies representing over seven million employees have since signed up, including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Vodafone, ITV, BT, Adidas and Thomas Cook.

The Pledge commits businesses to working with schools, offering apprenticeships and adopting fair recruitment polices.

The latter point means that a person’s upbringing should not influence hiring decisions.

To achieve this, True Potential uses an approach known as name-blind recruitment.

This is an extra safeguard against the risk of unfair bias for one candidate over another.

True Potential runs a thriving apprenticeships scheme that leads young people into exciting careers in the fast-moving worlds of financial services and technology.

Despite the UK going into lockdown and the after effects on the economy, True Potential has continued to thrive. It has grown its team with 58 new hires joining the firm during the coronavirus lockdown.

The expansion of its head office team is a result of strong management leading to even stronger financial performance in the second half of 2020 The firm recorded a £15.7 million profit between April and June at the height of the coronavirus crisis. The results meant True Potential was able to keep all 300 employees in full employment and nobody was furloughed.

The new recruits, who have joined the team between April and September 2020, will fulfil various roles within True Potential‘s head office, including customer support, technical support, IT software development, compliance and marketing.

This is yet further evidence that purpose and profitability go hand in hand, opening up new career opportunities underpinned by sustainable businesses.

TR UE POTENTIAL

Stage Three: Progression Create a continuous pathway of opportunities that leads to rewarding jobs and ongoing career development.

Social mobility means more than simply opening up access to jobs.

It means empowering people to go as far in life as their talents, hard work and attitude will take them, unhindered by unfair bias.

True social mobility occurs when an individual is able to fully unlock their potential and continually build on it.

But True Potential is located in one of England’s cold spots for adult social mobility. Its neighbouring constituency, Newcastle upon Tyne Central is ranked 417th out of 533 in England for social mobility.

This underlines the need locally for stronger pathways, first into employment and then crucially, the opportunity to forge a career

with the skills needed to thrive as the 4th Industrial Revolution approaches.

To dramatically improve the career trajectory of people from all backgrounds, True Potential opened its own academy.

The True Potential Academy is a conduit between the company’s various outreach and education activities and exciting careers in financial services and technology.

Harrison Centre students and apprentices are given the opportunity to join the academy. Here they have the opportunity to learn about and experience many aspects of working life with True Potential. They then may have the opportunity to secure full-time employment with the company. The academy is also open to existing staff who want to turbo-boost their career progress – or switch into a new field.

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UN IVERSITY OF LI NCOLN

SPOTLIGHT ON TOBY WILKINSON AND THE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN

The power of visible pathways Q

// The Holbeach campus, which is home to the National Centre for Food Manufacturing, is integral to your social mobility drive. Could you tell us a little bit about how it evolved over the years and the strategy behind it?

A

TOBY WILKINSON, DEPUTY VICE CHANCELLOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN, IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INSTITUTION’S WORK WITH OUTSIDE ORGANISATIONS, INCLUDING THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PLEDGE. HERE HE UPDATES ON THE UNIVERSITY’S ONGOING WORK IN DRIVING SOCIAL MOBILITY.

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// Holbeach is very much at the centre of the UK’s food manufacturing industry. A large amount of growing and manufacturing goes on there and many of the products we find on our supermarket shelves are made there.

For many years we had a small campus there engaging with the local food manufacturing in terms of skills development and education. What really crystallised that presence in the south of Lincolnshire was the formation of our multi-academy trust. Back in in 2011 there was a merger of two secondary schools and we were approached as a university to see if we would take on sponsorship of that secondary school. Because the school was right next to our National Centre for Food Manufacturing we thought it would make a lot of sense to see what synergies we could find between the university-level provision and secondary education in the area. Over the years since 2011, the trust has expanded to five schools now spanning everything from primary to secondary, and now with our campus, tertiary opportunities, apprenticeships.

We’ve created an entire educational ecosystem, where children and young people from the first time that they enter full time education can see a pathway through from primary to secondary, into university level education and into jobs with local industries.

We worked really closely with the local food manufacturing sector, not only at university, but also to bring their contacts into the schools to help with apprenticeships and with the vocational provision at the academies. It’s been a fantastic experience for us in how we really put Holbeach on the map in terms of the food sector. [It’s about] creating those pathways or those opportunities for young people so that they can see a way all the way through to highly skilled, highly paid employment.

Q//

And employers have really responded to this and actually more strategically looked at how they can locate higher skilled jobs there because you’ve really developed this national centre.

UN IVERSITY OF LI NCOLN

“

Crucially it creates higher skilled, higher paid jobs - so it’s a win for everyone A// I would really hope [so]. Obviously the industry sectors will differ in different parts of the country but I think universities have this extraordinary convening power. They are anchor institutions in many of their communities and are able to join the dots and link up different parts of the education and employment ecosystem in a way that creates real opportunity for people.

Q//

And do you think getting into higher education has steadily become the norm in a place like Holbeach, instead of being something that a few children and young people did?

A// They’ve responded magnificently. For example, two of the really big players in the sector have members on the governing body of the trust. So they’re very involved in the strategy for the academy school. They also sit on an advisory body for the National Centre for Food Manufacturing. One of the critical things that I guess as a university we can bring to the table is our expertise in robotics, in automation and in the 21st century digitalisation of industry. That’s something which is very appealing to the food manufacturers because they can see how that will will help their industry in the future. Of course, really critically, it also creates higher skilled, higher paid jobs in an area which traditionally has been quite low skilled, low wage agricultural work. So it’s a win for everybody actually.

Q//

Do you feel that it’s a model that other universities could really look at and adopt?

A// They’re much more familiar with it as an option for them.

Because the university is heavily involved with the school, that whole concept of higher education is brought to the attention of children and their families from a much earlier stage. And because we share our facilities on the university campus, with our secondary school next door, it means those young people have the opportunity to access facilities, which they would never normally get in the school environment. It just creates that buzz of what higher education can open up and it becomes a much more normal part of the conversation for families in that area.

Q//

One of the challenges for some students in terms of going to university is that they’re not sure what’s next. Whereas many of the young people in your area can now see there is this wider world of work and potentially a career in a local industry. So they have a good sense of the opportunities that lie beyond university.

A// Absolutely. It’s about creating those visible pathways so that a young person at the age of 16, instead of leaving school and getting a low pay job, can see that if they stay on and progress through into university, they can still get a job in their local area where they may wish to stay for family and other reasons. But it will be a much better paid job with better prospects - and this is not just a theoretical concept. They can see their peers who have gone before them who’ve done exactly that.

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UN IVERSITY OF LI NCOLN

Food for thought in the levelling up agenda THE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN HAS FOCUSED ON DEVELOPING A NEW MODEL TO TACKLE SOCIAL MOBILIT Y WHICH IS SUCCESSFULLY CREATING OPPORTUNITY IN A RURAL AREA, BUILDING ON THE STRENGTHS OF THE COMMUNITY THERE AND LEVERAGING THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

Its strong partnerships with schools and industry offer local young people the chance to aspire to a future outside the experiences of their parents that they would not have had without the University.

The establishment by the University of Lincoln of a multi-academy trust, its campus in Holbeach and the National Centre for Food Manufacturing provide a clear path of progression for residents of Holbeach and the wider South Holland area.

It provides a social mobility pipeline that covers primary, secondary and higher education, skills and training, and employment opportunities, catering to those seeking both academic and vocational routes into their career. The case studies included in this report are prime examples of the ‘joined up’ solution to the social mobility problem that the University of

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Lincoln provides by leveraging the Lincolnshire Educational Trust and its close partnerships with businesses through the National Centre for Food Manufacturing.

The National Centre was successful in securing a multi-million pound investment from Innovate UK, the UK’s research investment service. This is clearly a significant headline figure but its true significance lies in the fact that the award would not have been made had the project not aligned with the long-term strategic objectives of the United Kingdom as a whole. Not only is the University of Lincoln and the National Centre for Food Manufacturing providing for the Holbeach area by supporting the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s goal of futureproofing the agri-food industry, it is also supporting UK PLC and the goal in the Government’s Industrial Strategy to reach 2.4 per cent of GDP being spent on research and investment.

• The academy trust is now responsible for the education of over 2,500 young people across five schools.

• The Centre supports over 350 apprentices in 70 businesses including Sainsbury’s and Tesco, Coca-Cola and Nestlé.

• Bakkavor and OAL Group were anchor employers who formed a key part of the University’s successful bid to establish an Institute of Technology, helping to secure £13m of capital investment into local colleges and the National Centre to advance skills in engineering and manufacturing.

Lincoln and the surrounding areas had the potential to become increasingly economically deprived. Its poor geographic connections and sparse employment opportunities would have meant that many young people would have been forced to

UN IVERSITY OF LI NCOLN

either remain there with very few prospects, or move away to areas where they were more likely to find work. The University of Lincoln’s strategic programme of work has changed that landscape. It has provided local opportunities for local people that are a perfect fit for its rural environment but also look to the future of industry via digital and robotics capabilities. Crucially it has engaged large employers who now see the region as a talent pool that is relevant to their business needs. They have continued to work closely with employers and other local partners during the pandemic to ensure that teaching, training and learning can continue as fully as possible and that all pupils, students and apprentices are supported as much as possible.

The CBI has regularly reported its concerns about a skills shortage in the UK. Two thirds of firms are already facing digital skills shortages. It has highlighted that by 2024 almost 50 per cent of jobs will require higher level education. The University of Lincoln is already addressing the issue by investing in local solutions that

will help to future proof the region. But it recognises that these must be long-term projects which should be allowed to embed themselves into the community to be as effective as possible, and to continue to make a real difference. It is enabling young people to access opportunities which improve their lives and that of their communities, facilitating individual and regional social mobility.

The work that the University of Lincoln has undertaken has been focussed, wide ranging and innovative. It has considered the challenges and skills shortages facing the area and pursued strategic partnerships, not only with other local organisations but also with global businesses. It should act as a blueprint for other universities to deliver similar results in areas where there are currently limited opportunities. This will be even more crucial as the country recovers from the impact of the pandemic. Young people need to be able to aspire to a better future for themselves and for their communities and the University is providing the means to level up Lincoln.

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I N C O N V E R SAT I O N

A new age of social justice 58

I N C O N V E R SAT I O N

Rt Hon Justine Greening talks to Big Issue founder Lord Bird about the way ahead for the social justice agenda.

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ord Bird, is founder of the Big Issue and a longtime advocate for driving social mobility. Since he co-founded the magazine in 1991, it has provided life-changing support for some of our country’s most vulnerable people. In 2018 he also helped to create the Social Mobility Pledge, working closely with the Rt Hon Justine Greening. They discuss social justice in the context of coronavirus and the opportunities it presents to turning a corner on homelessness.

J G : One of the things to come out of lockdown was the speed at which everyone had to suddenly confront a range of issues, whether you’re runnning a business, looking after your family or in the health service - but also for homelessness. It was striking that within a matter of days, solutions were found for people for whom years had been spent trying to get a life changed. It feels to me like this is a moment where we’ve got some decisions to take about trying to get better outcomes for some of those people that we desperately want to see get help.

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I N C O N V E R SAT I O N

‘‘

Social mobility is the very bedrock of our modern democracy

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J G : So there are two groups that we really need to be concerned with, one is people that were already rough sleeping and homeless before we found a temporary assistance for, but the question is what next. And then you are saying, because of the downturn, there is a danger that we have a massive influx of new people that add on to those numbers that were already there.

L B : What we’ve got is ordinary people living comfortable lives, people who put all of their efforts and all of their eggs in the property basket or into bringing up their children. They are now passing into a place that we need to support them so that they don’t enter the mechanism, the system of homelessness and homeless decline. The LGA will be left to take those children and families and put them into B&Bs and find other transitional temporary accommodation or they will put them on a social housing scheme. So we have to reach out to those half a million and that is exactly what the Big Issue is now orientating itself for.

We are becoming bigger players than we were before in homeless prevention.

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L B : That is the interesting point. What is really exciting about this is that we have had a situation for decades [then] we very quickly lost all of the country’s rough sleepers, probably about 90 per cent which is about 5000 people. To me what is exciting is the speed with which government can work when it uses the facilities of the homeless organisations. The government didn’t actually lift [the people] themselves but it commissioned lifters. People like St Mungo’s, Crisis, Centre Point et cetera. They very quickly said ‘we’ve been giving you money for years, to help people survive on the streets, now we are giving you money to lift them off the streets and then we’re going to pay for the Travelodge bills and we’re going to support local authorities who have been the biggest source of support.’ But the real problem for me is what we do afterwards. We’ve managed to get agreement from [homelessness tsar] Dame Louise Casey and the Minister for Housing that they will not allow people to return to the streets. So we’ve got those green lights and hopefully they don’t have to go back onto the streets.

My problem, and this is where social mobility is a really important ingredient, is that a lot of people’s prosperity is about to be destroyed. If you look at what the Local Government Association [LGA] reported recently, that there are about half a million people who will not be able to pay their mortgages or rent. That frightens the life out of me.

JG:

And the work you are doing in the House of Lords now, driving the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill, is also about getting upstream and stopping problems before they even happen.

Tell me more about why you’ve ended up being so involved in this.

L B : I entered the House of Lords with a proviso that I was not going in for any other reason than to, as I graphically described to one newspaper, cut the throat of poverty. What I was really saying was that I was not there to help people through the days, weeks, months and year, upping benefits. I wasn’t there to do any more than find the mechanism for dismantling the problems that produce social immobility because that’s what were dealing with. I was very, very concerned that I needed to find a way of identifying problems and moving forward.

JG:

Do you feel like the Lords and Parliament more broadly has really seized on this enough? I was awestruck in the House of Commons at how few MPs were really engaged with social mobility day-to-day. So they might look at a particular symptom of the problem but I remember having a debate in Westminster Hall on how the Treasury needed to reform [to improve] social mobility, and there were about four MPs there. I remember the opposition had a debate on social mobility at the back end of last year and I think there were three MPs on the government side. It does seem to me that there is an issue of a lack of urgency in all of this and people have almost got used to the slow pace of change when actually they should demand much faster progress.

L B : What I find so difficult is that the greatest enemies of social mobility are people who themselves are socially mobile. When I talked to some MPs and some members of the government about social mobility and they all say that [welfare] support is much more important. I was saying in a debate the other day that we have to increase social mobility, very much based on what is happening in Wales where the Future Generations Bill there is asking many many questions about the quality of education, social delivery and people in need. I said we need to up social mobility, and a number of people in the House of Lords unified around the very idea that social mobility is not all it’s cracked up to be. But 90 per cent of people in Britain, and the British middle classes, have come from a socially mobile background. Therefore social mobility is the very bedrock of our modern democracy.

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

This is a moment to decide what kind of Britain we want to open up again 62

SOCIAL JUSTICE

J G : Social mobility is a right. People should have a right to make their own way in life unhindered by circumstances or background.

It’s telling that we’re still even having to debate what I think is the very fundamental but obvious point that where you start in this country should have no bearing on how far you can get.

What’s fascinating to me is that there’s a view that it’s almost a zero-sum game. In other words, if we allow more people to get opportunities, then other people have to do worse. I think that’s a false dichotomy. More people doing better lifts everyone at the end of the day. There is a fundamental issue of how sustainable any society can be when gaps get so big. The [COVID-19] crisis does feel like a genuine moment to take some decisions about what kind of Britain we want to open up again. Because if we weren’t happy with the original one, and I certainly wasn’t, now is the time to refashion it.

and drove you to be strong and take on your education. I didn’t have a mother like that - I had a mother who wanted me to get out to work as soon as ‘effing’ possible. What is interesting to me is that we all have to sit back and realise that if we don’t get it from mum and dad, and that is the best way of getting it, we’ve got to get it somewhere. We have to have education that reorientates the child who it has been let down by the opportunities that don’t always come out of family life and reorientate them put them on a better pathway. But I [also] think it’s terrible that our prison system does not redeem [and] rehabilitate but often produces people who have been warehoused.

“

L B : I told a minister a few years ago that they were failing 30 per cent of our children in schools. I [explained that] whenever I talk to people in the prison system about how they did at school they all say they did very badly. When I talk to the working poor I ask how they did at school they always say very badly. When I talk to A&E department and I talk to doctors there I ask what is the commonality of people here; and they say one of the real problems is that the NHS is clogged up with people who have not particularly done very well at school and they are using the NHS as a drop-in because no-one has given them the chance to move on and address some of the issues around social mobility and social opportunity. That minister was you and we sat for an hour talking about how we could remove the barriers to social mobility.

JG:

I thoroughly agree and I think if you were putting achieving social mobility and levelling up at the heart of government, then it would naturally turn you to look and direct your efforts at the people furthest away from a level playing field and opportunities. And of course that includes people in the justice system, recognising that it’s not just their own lives that get lost because they are not able to fulfil their potential, [but there’s] a greater cost to wider society. First of all the sheer expense of people being in the justice system, but more importantly the opportunity cost of the fact that we never realised what they could go on to do.

One last question - what advice would you give to your younger self?

Interrogate yourself and find out what you’re doing and where you’re going

J G : And we vehemently agreed that it was utterly unacceptable to have young people left behind before they’d even got into an adult life. I think that was one of those discussions that in a way helped me realise there were a lot of other people around us in Parliament who felt exactly as passionate as I did about social mobility and social justice.

L B : That was an apocryphal meeting for me by the way. I know where you come from and that you had a mother who helped you

L B : I once said ‘don’t get caught’ but I don’t think I would give that advice now because I was caught and was given the opportunity to make up for the poor family life that I had - a violent, troubled domestic-abuse life. The advice I would give John Bird is a very simple piece of advice, and that is ‘question yourself, interrogate yourself and find out what you’re doing and where you’re going. I spent so many years just floating and going from one crisis to another never realising that stealing that car might lead to imprisonment and all of that. But if I’d stopped and thought about it I might have then said what about learning to read and write? What about learning some skills? I would have tried to make myself feel that actually I was a worthy human being and that if I put my mind to more constructive things I could be very useful to people.

SPOTLIGHT ON NIC BEECH AND ANDREA DLASKA AND MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY

Pushing beyond the normal limits of what is possible MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY’S VICE CHANCELLOR NIC BEECH AND DEPUTY VICE CHANCELLOR ANDREA DLASKA TELL JUSTINE GREENING ABOUT THEIR APPROACH TO SOCIAL MOBILIT Y.

JG

// When I visited the university I was amazed at how much of a community it was, but also how much the students themselves are part of running it and maintaining it. They are really at the heart of it – not just of the learning experience, but how the wider university works and runs.

AD

// Many of our students are the first in their families to go to university. They commute, they have other responsibilities and sometimes it can be quite difficult to go and ask for help or to become part of a community. We work really hard to ensure that all students feel comfortable joining the community and using our students and working closely with our students on this means that you talk to your peers a lot of the time, when you want to find out where can to get help and where to find like minded people. So it’s absolutely crucial that we

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work with our students union, but also with our student learning assistants, other student groups [and]ambassadors, who we pay, and who say they really feel they are Middlesex employees. They can contribute to the success of their peers.

JG//

Nic you have come into this role as vice chancellor comparatively recently. What’s your impression of the university having been in the role now for a few months?

N B// I started in February and was going around trying to meet as many people as possible - and six weeks later, we were all doing it at a distance. You mentioned the word community and that is so important for us and is so evident in the way people are.

There’s a real commitment to each other, and to having a learning community in which, it’s not that any of us pretend to know all the answers, but that we’re actually really interested in each other, and how we can be in dialogue, and become changed ourselves because we engage with others. We’ve really been thinking about ourselves doing co-leadership with the students so that it’s not really a top down model, it’s much more about working out what our values and our priorities are - and our students are right at the heart of that. So we’re really not an ‘us and them’ community, there’s one big us and it’s quite diverse. So people bring different things to the table, but we’re united in our values and what we’re trying to do.

JG//

Many of your students are commuter students; some are more mature and often have other responsibilities. Tell us a little bit about how you feel that brings a real diversity to the university, and also the challenges it presents.

N B// We’re one of the most diverse universities in the country by far and that is a wonderful privilege. But it means that you’ve then got to be really conscious of translation between different ways of thinking. We’ve got great diversity, for example of faith groups, we’ve got diversity in terms of ethnicity and gender, but also in terms of background, and that makes a big difference.

For me, it’s about us being a learning, enquiring community in which our starting point is not that we assume we know what the other people are like, and we certainly don’t assume that we’re all the same as each other. So you don’t tend to generalise like that, but you do start off with some questions [to establish]

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what is it that we’re trying to achieve here? How do we best learn in collaboration with each other? There’s a huge amount I learn from our commuter students who are balancing and juggling many responsibilities, but bring different experience into all of our sessions. That’s what actually can help us be really creative in the way we work.

AD// The unique strengths our students bring are so striking, in terms of how their life experiences have shaped them. Living at home having responsibilities for their family, working, being the first in family to go to university gives, them a unique perspective on what is discussed in the classroom. Employers are really beginning to recognise that. Our partners tell us that they really need that diversity in their businesses to succeed. So we’re on a good journey there but the challenge is to really help our students to translate that grit, experience and ambition that they have into something that employers can understand is valuable for their business. So you really don’t say ‘write a CV, and these are the other bits and pieces that you should mention’, because often they haven’t had that opportunity of travel or an internship in the summer. But they bring other things to the table. So we say, ‘tell your story and make sense for an employer out of what you bring to the table’. That’s been really successful. We have a number of projects, with the Ministry of Justice, PwC and others, where we are really working together to see how we can use the strength that our students bring and how they articulate it to open up opportunity for them.

JG//

That drive is so important. But also, isn’t it important that we have a really open workplace and recruitment practices so that fantastic students like the ones at Middlesex University really can have those doors open to them and have a good crack at getting the opportunities that are out there.

N B// One in seven of our students becomes an entrepreneur and I don’t think that’s any accident. That is because they’ve got such drive and they’ve pushed themselves beyond the normal limits to do what they’ve done in their degrees. Then they’re fantastic at starting up businesses, and social enterprises, subsequently. But also, I think the doors of many large employers are not as open as they would aspire to them being. There are lots of systemic forms of bias, often unconscious, in the system.

M I DDLESEX UN IVERSITY

Even in London, if you look at the ethnicity pay gap, it’s a 21.7 per cent disadvantage in terms of pay for minority ethnicities.

Whereas for our student population, it’s over 63 per cent from those same ethnicities. So there are just indications there that, while the students are really moving on, they’re being really ambitious, they’re doing exciting things, and a lot of the corporate world wants to be in that ballpark, there’s a bit of catching up to do. That’s probably about opening up both employment systems, talent management programmes, mentoring and other sorts of support in which we can help the students access both employment and entrepreneurship.

JG//

What are some of the things you’d like to see employers do differently to help make their doors more open to as many graduates as possible?

AD// I think the main thing is that we really want employers to think again about what talent means to them, and what skills they really need, and what evidence they use to find out whether the person who’s submitted something in writing [is right for them].

Really take a different look at the young people in front of them and ask in a different way, and look to what they themselves may have done on their educational journeys, in terms of travelling, volunteering and gap years, because many of the very talented young people out there haven’t had that opportunity but they will bring something much more valuable to the business.

N B// It’s really I think about forming collaborative advantage between these different parts of society. It’s a huge advantage to the employers to reach in and work with us, and that’s what we want to do with them. So giving opportunities for project work so that students aren’t doing unpaid internships when they’re already doing part time jobs to support themselves. [Also], reimagining and rethinking through the term ‘pipeline’ so it doesn’t end up as a leaky pipeline, which it is at the moment. Certainly redefining how evidence of competency is gathered and understood. For example, thinking about gender and name-blind paths to selection processes. Also, role modelling and having access to those role models… What can be really effective is people who have recently moved into those organisations being accessible to students and to others, to have a conversation about how that’s happened and to build the relationship to personalise it.

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BA R R AT T D E V E L O P M E N T S

SPOTLIGHT ON ROB TANSEY AND BARRATT DEVELOPMENTS

Constructive progress in UK social mobility ROB TANSEY, GROUP HR DIRECTOR AT BARRATT DEVELOPMENTS, TALKS TO JUSTINE GREENING ABOUT THE COMPANY’S WORK TO FILL A SECTOR-WIDE SKILLS GAP BY FINDING UNTAPPED TALENT.

Q A

// What does social mobility mean to Barratt as a business and why it is so important?

// Our company vision puts the customer at the heart of everything that we do. In many respects it starts here. If you treat your customer right you will create a positive employer brand perception that will [also] mean people will want to work for you. And those people [already] working with you, will want to stay with you. One of the key opportunities for us is actually opening up many different pathways for people to come and work for us. We’ve had a diversity and inclusion strategy for a number of years but we’ve still got an awful lot to do.

As part of our business strategy, we know that we have a skills crisis and we know that we need to look at other routes to market and other pools of employment. So it is not purely altruistic.

By reaching out to those in socially deprived areas, we have an opportunity to improve our business and improve lives.

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Q//

Tell me about some of the ways you’ve broadened the range of talent coming into the organisation.

A//

Three years ago we embarked on a programme whereby we accepted that around less than 40 per cent of our workforce was female. In senior management it was around 15 per cent.

Our BAME statistics were not good [either]. As a consequence, we had a programme of inclusive leadership and unconscious bias training, which everyone in the organisation has been through. They are all now in a position where they are looking at their recruitment methodology, how they treat their people and how they promote them; and they are doing it in a much more inclusive way. But we’ve got a long way to go. We have a number of graduates that work for us, who created something which I was really proud of called Built By Both. It’s a series of networking events in construction for like-minded people in all different types construction. We have lots of speakers come

BA R R AT T D E V E L O P M E N T S

along and really motivate people. The sole driver is to say that construction and women can go hand-in-hand and there are some phenomenal career opportunities for people within construction and housebuilding. But we wanted to showcase that and our grads ran numerous events in London, and in Manchester, and they were exceptionally successful. This is still alive and kicking currently.

Q//

I guess a lot of this approach involves confronting stereotypes through the role models you have within the business?

A//

We have a lot of women in hands-on, site management roles [who would] come and talk to people at our events and I thought that worked exceptionally well. We have also looked at other routes. For us the ex-armed forces represented a marvellous opportunity. We teamed up with the Career Transition Partnership and saw an opportunity to recruit ex-armed forces people that

have come from varying backgrounds who are looking to get into civvy street. They’ve got some phenomenal skills and abilities and great training behind them - probably the best training in the world. We have something like 400 sites and have historically recruited site managers from other housebuilding sites but we decided to look at it very differently. We’ve now got more than a hundred ex-armed forces people working with us who have become immersed in housebuilding and very quickly are managing or assistant managing our sites as we speak. So it’s about diversity of thinking in terms of different talent pools, but also those individuals will come from different backgrounds in some cases, from social deprivation, and they’ve got an opportunity that perhaps they would never have had before.

Q//

You’re also working with ex-offenders and the homeless how do you approach taking on board such a diversity of people all at the same time?

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A//

We’ve come across some phenomenal young people that we would seriously consider bringing into the organisation in the many pathways that we have. It’s not always easy, [but] we have tried to engage with a number of organisations on ex-offenders. Recycling Lives is a wonderful charity in the North West whereby they have a business that actually provides services to organisations who need recycling support. In a number of prisons in the North West they actually have workshops where people are doing work for the business - preparing them and transitioning them to get into work in the real world. We work with them, as well as Bounce Back in Brixton prison, and we also have worked with a number of prisons on the Isle of Wight. Our intention has been to engage with them to see if there are individuals that could then transition into working with us. We’ve had some success. We’ve also got a lot of outreach programmes. One of our most exciting is the Beacon of Light, in Sunderland [a sports, community and education facility]. We know in that part of the country there are a lot of young people not in education or employment and from socially deprived areas.

We are focusing on young people aged 14 to 19+ and, through a number of programmes, we are trying to engage young people in construction, in terms of either the workplace or further education.

Our ambition this year is to help more than 800 of those individuals through those programmes. In some cases we have been able to bring them into our organisation and provide them with work placements or jobs. We [also] work with Whizz-Kidz, a wonderful charity for young people with disabilities.

They are helping us on this journey [to be more inclusive].

We’ve audited all our offices from the perspective of a disabled individual and asked would this work environment work for them. We did our own research and with third parties worked to get offices ready. We then invited Whizz-Kidz to visit our sites and actually [experience] them. They gave us additional advice and guidance and we made those final adaptations. [It’s about] proactively ensuring that we are attracting those individuals to the business and I think it’s a work in progress. In terms of BAME representation, when we started our journey on diversity and inclusion we focused on gender. It was the first characteristic that we felt we could get our arms around. We are now in the process of getting our arms around this [BAME] challenge and within the business we have a number of groups including a BAME networking group which is a cross-functional group of people who meet remotely through facilitated discussion.

We talk to them about their perceptions of working with us and what could be better - and what needs to be better from a BAME perspective.

Again this is a work in progress but this is something that we really want to drive to ensure that we are attractive to people from a BAME background - and also that people within the business from this background feel engaged and motivated.

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Constructive progress in UK social mobility HOW NATIONAL HOUSEBUILDER BARRATT DEVELOPMENTS IS HELPING TO CLOSE BRITAIN’S OPPORTUNITY GAP

Barratt’s philosophy of leaving a positive legacy in the communities around its developments has been clearly demonstrated by its strategic approach in making a social impact across society.

It demonstrated a unique and impressive commitment to this as it set out to prepare diversity action plans for its division and subdivisions throughout the company, with the aim of identifying where barriers to diversity existed, and to set out to improve against the new targets set out.

Through developing these plans Barratt has demonstrated a strategic and considered approach to boosting diversity both nationally and locally.

Barratt has demonstrated a highly successful track record in generating positive outcomes in local communities, across its engagement with schools, and through initiatives such as the Barratt Homes Construction Academy, in partnership with Sunderland AFC’s Foundation and the Beacon of Light.

The Beacon of Light has engaged over 300,000 young people in the North East of England, the region with the highest number of young people not in employment, education, or training, and Barratt’s Construction Academy supports 400 learners through its specific programmes every single year.

Barratt has been identifying and supporting vulnerable groups in communities across the UK, specifically supporting the homeless or those at risk of homelessness into employment in partnership with St Mungo’s charity; and through supporting organisations such as Recycling Lives, Barratt has been helping rehabilitate ex-offenders and help them back into the world of work and meaningful employment, including within Barratt itself. Throughout this specific work in helping vulnerable

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groups, Barratt has proven its will to not just look for the easy wins across the responsible business agenda, but take on some of the widest opportunity gaps and the most significant challenges.

Barratt has set out to increase the diversity of pathways into housebuilding and the wider construction sector, and specifically address the poor record of the sector in drawing and retaining female talent into roles, with only 13.32 per cent of the sector being female according to the most recent data produced up to June 2020.

Barratt has empowered its graduates to lead on these solutions, as they created a legacy project, ‘Built by Both,’ which aims to champion the involvement of females and males in the sector, and create a network for women with ambitions to enter the sector.

It is also creating opportunities for young people to earn qualifications such as degrees without the fees through its degree apprenticeship programme.

This currently has 86 apprentices on the programme and caters for apprentices of all ages, many of which are school leavers, but also includes members of Barratt’s workforce who might be midcareer but wish to study towards a degree or higher qualification.

Furthermore, Barratt has looked to address where business needs overlap with societal issues which it can have a positive impact on. One of these is its ability to target opportunities, in training and work, towards groups which might constitute untapped talent pools, and traditionally face more significant barriers into entering skilled work. This also fits a business need with an increasing deficit of a skilled workforce in house building and construction sectors in the UK.

BA R R AT T D E V E L O P M E N T S

“

Barratt has an innovative and transparent approach to boosting diversity through the use of data.

Barratt is tapping into untapped talent pools namely through its Armed Forces Transition Programme, as it seeks to make the progression into civilian life easier for former servicemen, by helping train, mentor and support them into careers in the sector.

The company has also demonstrated a strong ethos of innovation as it consistently reviews its progress and performance on boosting diversity and testing how fit for purpose its current ways of working are.

As such, Barratt’s new data-led approach is utilising an Applicant Tracking System to benchmark diversity performance across both

recruitment and progression within the company.

This is currently used to blank out diversity characteristics to reduce any potential discrimination in the recruitment process.

Barratt has piloted name-blind recruitment in one division of the company, which will be rolled out over coming months. Barratt is also considering tracking further socioeconomic diversity statistics, such as free school meals, and wider sophisticated factors too.

Barratt has also recently launched an innovative and transparent approach to boosting diversity through use of data.

The new and industry-leading Applicant Tracking System has equipped Barratt with the means to provide transparency of reporting through tracking the data of its applicants and employees, and thus help focus Barratt’s decisions and activity, and therefore drive action.

This use of data has also strengthened Barratt’s ability on succession planning, which in the context of a skills shortage in the sector and across the country, is crucially important to deliver the future skills to build the highest quality homes, and put customers and communities first.

In summary, Barratt Developments has shown how putting diversity and widening opportunities can be more than just a responsible business agenda, but actually at the heart of a central business agenda.

It has integrated and interwoven its ambitions on diversity into how it operates as a business everyday, leaving a positive legacy in the communities around the sites it builds, and making progress towards building a more diverse house building and construction sector.

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A new age of collaboration between business and the community

SPOTLIGHT ON SANDRA WALLACE AND DLA PIPER

SANDRA WALLACE IS DLA PIPER’S JOINT MANAGING DIRECTOR (EUROPE) AND INTERIM CHAIR OF THE SOCIAL MOBILITY COMMISSION. SHE HERSELF ACHIEVED SOCIAL MOBILIT Y IN FORGING A HUGELY SUCCESSFUL CAREER IN LAW AND HAS GONE ON TO HELP OTHERS DO THE SAME BY SHAPING DLA’S SOCIAL MOBILITY APPROACH AND THROUGH HER WORK WITH THE COMMISSION. HERE SHE TALKS TO JUSTINE GREENING ABOUT THE LONG-TERM CHANGES REQUIRED IN BUSINESS IN THE CONTEXT OF A DIFFICULT 2020.

Q

JG// As a law firm, social mobility is at the heart of what DLA is all about. How does that fit in the context of COVID-19 and its potential impact in widening the opportunity gap in the UK in the long term?

A

SW// The crisis has really brought home to everyone at DLA how much more we have to look at the home environment. It’s opening our eyes to the whole life cycle of the opportunities we need to provide to people. They can come into our offices and we can show them what it’s like to be a lawyer and give them access to our programmes while they’re in our offices, but we have to think what more can we be doing and what more should business generally be doing to address some of the challenges that this crisis has brought out. For example, with some of the IT that we have taken for granted as individuals, should we be saying as a business, when you have equipment you no longer use, could that be used in our outreach programme? Should we be up-skilling our lawyers to understand home learning [so that] we can talk students through how they can best motivate and prepare themselves when they are not in a school environment? It’s about looking at all those things that really come to the fore now rather than just the things we provide when it’s business as usual.

Q//

Some of the programmes that DLA has done very successfully are in schools but if young people are out of school or more of the learning they do might be online, including when they get to university, it means you then have to rethink your approach to have the same level of impact.

A//

Absolutely and we have to put ourselves in their shoes and think, ‘let’s not take things for granted that we assume are available’. This is a rethink that’s going to happen in our

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DLA PI PER

“

You’ve got to put your money and time where business now along with the support that we’re already doing.

The circumstances have forced us to focus on what’s an experience like for people in lower socio-economic backgrounds and what support can we give that might help them, not just when they’re in front of us in our premises or in school.

your mouth is and

business is making that conducive

The impact of the quality of the home environment can extend into the early years of careers. So if you’re training to be a lawyer but your home environment isn’t conducive - and you’re at a law firm that shifts to home working because its more cost effective - it could mean that you’re less able to shine and progress than, perhaps, someone with a bigger house, better facilities and more peace and quiet.

A//

That’s right. [The situation] makes you look into your communities and what’s out there, what’s available, what are we supporting and how are we working with local authorities and local enterprise partnerships to ensure there are facilities or an environment outside the home that still means [people] can access things and still shine. If [the crisis] changes the way of working for a law firm going forward, we’ve got to look at what that means for everybody and not just the assumptions that we might make about the facilities and technology we assume everybody will have. So I think there will have to be more collaboration with our communities and local authorities in order that businesses have both bases covered.

So you end up with a new relationship between companies and local councils or the government where both sides are trying to work out how they can help one another; recognising that employees are part of two communities where they work and where they live.

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Yes and that means people are not forced to move to get access to those facilities. The more local these facilities are to people, the more likely they can still rely on their families and their support networks and still have access to opportunities. So I absolutely think that’s a partnership that we need to explore a bit more than we have done so far.

make sure your

Q//

Q//

A//

Q//

Looking back on your career to date, what advice would you give your younger self about whether a career in law is good for you?

A//

You have to be really resilient. There will always be people who tell you ‘that’s not possible’, or ‘it isn’t for people like you’. You’ve got to appreciate that not everything is going to be successful straight away. I would say to my younger self you have to try to work on that but then resilience is different to confidence so I would also say be confident and don’t make assumptions about what you can or can’t achieve.

Q//

And in your career you’ve been able to shape the company to make the career path for people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds smoother with fewer barriers.

A//

Yes, it took me a while to realise that I had an obligation. You realise that you’ve been given these amazing opportunities. You now have your own access to amazing opportunities and you’ve got to let people know what is out there. Then you’ve got to put your money and time where your mouth is and make sure your business is making that conducive. We can’t do everything as one business but as a legal sector, if we get together more and work collaboratively together which we are doing, then that is really powerful.

DLA PI PER

LEVELLING UP LAW

DLA PIPER IS A GLOBAL LAW FIRM WITH OFFICES IN OVER 40 COUNTRIES ACROSS THE AMERICAS, EUROPE, THE MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA AND ASIA PACIFIC. SOCIAL MOBILITY-DRIVEN PRACTICES ARE INGRAINED IN THE BUSINESS, WITH A RECOGNITION OF THE NEED TO FIND AND NURTURE TALENT FROM THE WIDEST POOL OF CANDIDATES POSSIBLE.

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DLA PI PER Although officially formed in a 2005 merger between US- and UKbased firms, DLA Piper’s origins can be traced back to 19th-century Yorkshire.

The firm’s focus on social mobility is an integral factor in its continued growth and development.

Both in the UK and internationally, social mobility-driven policies and practices are ingrained in the business, with a recognition of the need to find and nurture talent from the widest pool of candidates possible.

Law is too often not the first choice of career for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But DLA Piper is leading on long-term and impact-driven access programmes to change this, having been at the forefront of industry-wide improvements in recent years.

It is working hard to support people from less privileged backgrounds who might not otherwise have considered a career in law. Its participation in PRIME, for example, demonstrates a drive to collaborate with peers and measure the effectiveness and success of current programmes.

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The firm is a founding member of the PRIME Commitment, an alliance of over 70 UK law firms committed to improving access to the legal profession through quality work experience for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Its Head Start programme, meanwhile, is market-leading and impact-driven, supporting young people in reaching their full potential. It eases the path of people from under-represented groups into the legal profession, and helps them overcome barriers that might prevent them progressing into the law and succeeding in their careers.

It sees DLA Piper work with each student for three years, providing financial assistance and a tailored course of mentoring, training and internships. This approach develops the participant’s skills, confidence and networks.

After completion, students are linked to the firm’s global graduate recruitment programme and are encouraged to pursue the right opportunities for them.

Through the firm’s open days and Insight Programme, DLA Piper is further increasing accessibility for young people and helping raise

DLA PI PER

their aspirations. The Insight Programme offers a look at life at a global business law firm. Delegates can hear from the firm’s senior leaders, participate in professional skills training, gain insights on practice groups and attend networking events.

The programme is aimed at first-year law students or penultimateyear non-law students. Open days provide insight into life as a lawyer in a global law firm, information for those wishing to apply for an Insight Programme or summer internship, and an opportunity to meet people at the firm. Students from any year group or degree discipline may apply for the open days, which are held in each of the firm’s UK locations. Work placements, including summer internships, offer the opportunity to develop valuable workplace skills and networks.

Recruitment practices are, of course, a pivotal factor in improving social mobility, and recruitment is often where people’s social mobility journeys begin.

DLA Piper has committed to ensuring transparency and fairness in its recruitment practices, resulting in a level playing field of competition for both internships and careers with the firm.

These fair practices have been demonstrated through the adoption of contextual recruitment, and the active recognition of candidates who have faced significant challenges in life. Assessors review candidates’ achievements in the context of their starting points in life and the barriers they might have faced as a result. The firm has also removed minimum academic entry requirements for graduates, which helps to assess a candidate’s true potential. It has also moved from a competencies-based model focused on traditional indicators of talent, such as university performance, to a strengths-based model that considers each individual’s aptitude and potential. This helps to reduce unconscious bias and “pastfocus” questioning that favours candidates from more privileged backgrounds. The removal of unfair barriers in the recruitment process also includes the eradication of legal jargon and needless

procedural complexities that might disadvantage people in certain situations. This ensures that applicants are judged purely on their talent and potential to do the job, rather than their background or other factors beyond their control that are irrelevant to their suitability for the role.

Company culture is a key factor in retaining people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Culture is hard to change, and is about more than just the intent to be a good and ethical business.

Inclusiveness, diversity and a commitment to social mobility are woven into DLA Piper’s corporate values through partnerships, education, agile working and flexibility, and pipeline development.

This creates a workplace where uniqueness is respected, valued and embraced. It is a place where people from disadvantaged backgrounds can see a path for progress that is clear of any unfairly placed barriers. DLA Piper recognises its responsibility as one of the world’s leading global law firms to have meaningful social impact. It has demonstrated leading practice in boosting social mobility in the legal sector, and is setting an example of how businesses can increase opportunities across all sectors.

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T H E U N I VE R S ITY O F CE NT RAL LAN CAS H I R E

TH EY WER E R EMAR KABLE and we ’ re ve r y pro u d o f wh at the y achieve d THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE (UCLAN) IS A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR OF TALENT INTO THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR, AMONGST OTHER AREAS OF FOCUS. THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PLEDGE SPOKE TO VICE CHANCELLOR GRAHAM BALDWIN ABOUT ITS VITAL ROLE IN THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS AND ITS ONGOING WORK IN WIDENING ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITIES.

SPOTLIGHT ON GRAHAM BALDWIN AND UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE (UCLAN)

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T H E U N I VE R S ITY O F CE NT RAL LAN CAS H I R E

Q A

// How did the university cope with the original lockdown?

// We coped remarkably well. I was pleasantly surprised at how we responded. Looking back, it all happened so quickly. We went from planning for beginning to work from home, to leaving campus very suddenly and setting up a remote home working situation that ultimately proved to be very successful. A lot of that was due to the work that we put in as a university and information systems people to develop a culture that was beginning to use technology to a far greater extent to support learning.

We had some very interesting data. Suddenly we saw an increase in student attendance at many sessions and during the whole process we’ve seen quite significant improvements in student performance. So actually there is an awful lot for us to learn and as we begin to gradually return to campus, one of the critical bits is how do we take the lessons learned and the good things from that lockdown and ensure that we continue to make progress with the students in the future.

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Q//As an institution you train a lot of the people who will go into the healthcare system. Presumably there were students of yours who graduated early to get into those key roles that were really needed at the height of the crisis?

A// Yes this was the other amazing response from the university during that lockdown. We’re the largest provider of students in health and social care in Lancashire and Cumbria and we’re the only modern university with a school of dentistry, medicine and pharmacy; so they were all in extraordinary demand.

Both nurses and medics graduated early and were then able to go and support the local trusts. Medical students graduated and within 48 hours, all of them were employed in the East Lancashire Health Trust supporting on the frontline. They were remarkable and we were very proud of what the school was able to achieve in terms of making sure they were appropriately prepared. Even our secondyear nursing students were going into the trusts to provide support and additional pairs of hands. It was an amazing response right across the university, focused on all areas but particularly apparent in medicine and health.

Q//In terms of your role in widening access to opportunity for local people, could you tell us a bit about your work in Burnley. The campus there has been a really good example of how you’ve managed to put that opportunity to get to university right on the doorstep.

A// We are in an area where there are quite considerable inequalities, particularly health inequalities, and there is an awful

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lot of work needed to address those. Part of the reason why we have the medical and dental provision that we do is because we recognise that we need to educate people within this geographical region and hopefully they then stay here to [become those] skilled practitioners we require in an area where there is a shortage.

Therefore we are able to address these health inequalities through the doctors and dentists and so on who are graduating from this university. In dentistry, for example, they will do their first year in the university but then we have dental education centres that we’ve established in areas of need, for example in Carlisle, Accrington or Blackpool.

The students then work there and so, while they’re being educated, they are able to feed into that area and provide a vital service.

At the same time they are getting a really broad range of experience and when they graduate and go into the world of work, they’re probably as well prepared as anybody in that primary care kind of environment. In terms of levelling up, that’s really, really important. That’s what we [also] did with the Burnley campus. It’s been open for just over 10 years now. It was deliberately opened in an area where we knew that progression into higher education was low. It wasn’t because the people of Burnley are any less able, or any less desiring of university education, but they just didn’t necessarily have the opportunity to leave Burnley or take up opportunities that were offered at university campuses elsewhere. So, we’ve established the campus and we’ve now seen the provision expand considerably and with it the take up into higher education. Those people are then able

to progress beyond that in the future.

We’re working in collaboration with other providers in the town, particularly the further education providers and it’s a really good opportunity to ensure that the people of Burnley have the opportunity to progress into higher education, with all the benefits that we know that brings.

So that’s been a real success and is very much our approach as a university – the concept of widening access to university and providing opportunity and ensuring that all those people who can benefit from a university education get the opportunity to do so.

T H E U N I VE R S ITY O F CE NT RAL LAN CAS H I R E

“

They’re getting a really broad range of experience before they go into the world of work

Q//As you mentioned, you work closely with local further education (FE) colleges.

How do you make sure that you maintain a good relationship with them and collaborate well together?

A// We’ve been working in partnership with FE colleges for many years. I think we had one of the largest partnered college networks in the UK for some time. With it goes a structure. We have very good people who are absolutely committed to ensuring that they support the partners as best they possibly can. There are a number of formal governance arrangements that

we put in place for that which bring us together on a routine basis with the people who lead on higher education within the FE environment. As a consequence we have established very good relationships with individuals that then enable use on an informal basis to carry on working together. I don’t think there’s any secret to partnerships in that way, it’s just about establishing open relationships where you have good communication on all sides, you have similar ambitions and you set out very clearly at the outset what it is that you are trying to achieve. If you do that then it’s quite a simple process.

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U N I V E R S I T Y O F YO R K

MAKI NG A M EAS U RABLE DI FFER ENCE THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK IS A SHINING EXAMPLE OF A RUSSELL GROUP INSTITUTION THAT HAS FULLY EMBRACED SOCIAL MOBILITY FOR THE BENEFIT OF ITS STUDENTS, REGIONAL COMMUNITY AND ITS OWN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. RT HON JUSTINE GREENING TALKS TO KIRAN TREHAN, PRO VICE CHANCELLOR FOR PARTNERSHIPS AND ENGAGEMENT AT THE UNIVERSIT Y, TO FIND OUT MORE. SPOTLIGHT ON KIRAN TREHAN AND UNIVERSITY OF YORK

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U N I V E R S I T Y O F YO R K

“

WE’VE GOT TO MAKE S U R E W E C R E AT E AN I NCLUSIVE AN D W E L C O M I N G C U LT U R E

Q A

JG// From your perspective, coming to York and now putting your strategy into the university, how have you approached that work and what has it involved?

KT// Social justice is firmly established as one of our founding principals, so it’s not unsurprising that the University of York is already committed to social mobility. We already deliver a significant amount of work in this area. For me this work is absolutely critical because it’s in our DNA, it’s part of our roots and the legacy we want to leave as we move forward with our next 10-year strategy.

Q// Where do you feel you’ll be focusing most within that strategy?

A// There are three areas that we really want to make a difference on. One of them is around widening participation.

It’s critically important for all universities, but at York we’re taking an active approach to engaging and working with our local schools and colleges, but also extending our reach more widely through our communities to develop the aspirations.

We’ve done that through running a whole series of events and workshops. One recent example is the Big Deal. [This] was about developing business and enterprise skills through our access and outreach activities. We delivered online to 13 to

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15-year-old pupils across the country, to really support them in understanding what it might mean to develop an entrepreneurial business. There were 300 pupils involved in the competition, we had a final, we showcased them through a whole series of videos and they got exposed to the world of enterprise and businesses.

Partly that was to inspire participants to pursue their career goals, but also for them to realise their potential aspirations. That’s one concrete example of the kind of work we’ve been doing. The second has been around the attainment gap. It isn’t just about raising the aspirations, we’ve got to make sure that when we do get students from these communities into our universities, that we create an inclusive and welcoming culture. So I’ve been working on an initiative with our students union, and with our access and outreach teams, in relation to creating and making space. That’s ensuring that the spaces we have at the university and the images, photographs and artistic work we have, are reflective of the students who have both passed through our doors, and the students that are coming in. It’s really important that students from diverse communities see people that look like them, because all the research has shown that role models are really important as part of that process. We’ve been working really hard around decolonising the curriculum, and because we have such a long and established history, particularly in relation to the work that we’ve done on social justice, that’s given us a really good start.

Q//

A// I think it’s absolutely essential that Russell Group universities are at the forefront of this agenda. Our mission at the very start of this is a university for social good. We were founded on the principles of access, equality and education for all. Universities, particularly Russell Group, are leaders in their field. They’re places of curiosity and places where research in this area has a long-established history. So we have to put that research to work, and attract the very best of our students. One of the things that I’m most proud of is the fact that we’re moving away from simply a deficit model, i.e. the problem lies with the other, and we’re working collaboratively. I think it’s really important that we take an institutional-wide approach, and that we make diversity and inclusivity everybody’s business – [including] our regional partners and local authorities - and [make it] an anchor institution in the university. Not only does this make good business sense, it’s the right thing to do.

A// I absolutely agree. All of the research that’s done in industry shows that when you have a richness of diversity, it not only increases diversity of thinking and ideas, but it also leads to an increase in return on investment. And so I think having that collective richness is great learning – for our students and our staff. It also helps regenerate economic growth for our communities. All of those things together are so, so critical.

When we think about the whole agenda, particularly in levelling up, what I was really pleased about in the work that you’ve been leading Justine, is that you’ve been really clear and purposeful about what the levelling up agenda means. This isn’t more of the same of what we have been doing, it’s about grasping the nettle, and saying, ‘let’s make a difference but let’s make a measurable difference’. This isn’t just an add-on to what we do, this is central to our processes, our systems and our operations.

Many of the universities involved with the Social Mobility Pledge are non-Russell Group universities. What does it mean for York as a Russell Group university to be really throwing itself into the work of the Social Mobility Pledge? What are some of the challenges and opportunities that come with that?

And the university grows because of it. We know within business that diversity leads to better decisions and better organisations and there’s no doubt that it’s the same for universities. This is about an enhanced learning environment for your students by having a more diverse student body that can draw on a far wider range of experience.

U N I V E R S I T Y O F YO R K

Q//

Q//

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LET’S MAKE A M EAS U RABLE DI FFER ENCE

In terms of working with business, I know you do a huge amount of work in reaching out, not just to the big companies in your region, but the SMEs as well. Can you tell us a little bit about the work of the university in connecting up the talent you’re developing to those opportunities outside of the university once they’ve graduated?

If I take our vision statement, a university for public good, and then articulate how we embed that in our core principles - equality, diversity, inclusion, collaboration and working across institutional boundaries - we do that in terms of the mentoring opportunities we offer our students, the placement opportunities and also through our volunteering scheme.

The volunteering scheme is really powerful because that is both led and engaged with by the students. It’s both ethical and empowering education working at its best, and has lasting legacy. We’re making sure that our students have exposure and opportunity that’s agile and aligned to our desired position and our mission as a university for public good. Shared purpose is really, really important as part of that process within the context of our teaching and learning. We want to produce students who are both global and ethical leaders when they leave.

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he story of SSE is very much one of a transformation for the planet, but one which benefits people too. In the last two years, SSE has been undergoing a major transition, putting a net zero mission at the heart of everything it does.

This transition to net zero has been hardwired into the business, and drives decision-making across the group, with the company’s stated vision now to be a leading energy company in a net-zero world, while its purpose is to “provide energy needed today while building a better world of energy for tomorrow”.

SSE is a company which lives its values and delivers on its purpose. It has demonstrated how its leadership in the energy transition is more than just about preserving the planet, and that it’s about people too, as it has encompassed within its ideas presented in its recent Greenprint, and the spirit of its industry leadership in supporting the Living Wage in its early days.

SSE has consistently shown itself to be a first mover, and an advocate for progressive change, from leading in renewables, to campaigning for wider investment in clean growth to create jobs and opportunities.

SSE is taking its people in the company, in local communities, and people across the UK and Ireland with it on its journey, as it seeks to make a wider social impact, boosting opportunities, and tackling pressing socioeconomic problems such as the national skills shortage, as it progresses in tackling climate change.

SSE is taking its people on a journey as it seeks to make a wider social impact 89

SSE It has clearly demonstrated that as one of the largest energy companies in the UK & Ireland, it can use its size and scale, as well as its leadership in renewables, to be an advocate for responsible business.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when both public health and socioeconomic challenges are greater than before, SSE is a clear example of how the transformation in energy can be harnessed for wider social impact.

It has demonstrated this through its thought leadership, from initially being one of the first-movers on supporting the Living Wage campaign in 2013/4, to providing practical solutions for the Government in aiding a clean and green economic growth,

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with the publication of its ‘greenprint’ in early 2020.

It has shown a comprehensive and chronological approach to boosting social mobility and addressing the national skills shortage, or ‘skills gap,’ and also in recognising that the transformation in Britain’s energy sector will require new skills for the future.

It has delivered this through a programme of engagement with schools, and partnering with specialists such as Teach First; and partnering with Barnardo’s on its ‘Barnardo’s Works’ and Career Ready initiatives to reach young people from circumstances where barriers to opportunity are the highest and prepare them for the world of work.

SSE

From these programmes, it has also sought learnings to widen its impact, and has developed its own ‘SSE Works’ programme, which is an employability programme which provided a six-month fully paid work placement to NEETs facing various long-term barriers to accessing the workplace. This is an approach that has a proven focus on outcomes, rather than purely being a means to increasing employability skills, and is a stand-out example of boosting social mobility.

Beyond its successful outreach and engagement, SSE has a strong record of creating wider and more accessible pathways into employment, building on its flagship employability programmes.

It has worked to create a more level playing field at the point of recruitment, by shifting from skills-based recruitment practices, to focusing on strengths-based recruitment practices.

This means recruitment focuses on potential, rather than those who might have had the privilege of being in a position to have learned those skills already. SSE’s apprenticeship programmes are a key entry pathway for school leavers and young adults to progress into a career at the company, particularly for those who choose not to attend university; which also sit alongside its graduate programmes entry pathways.

Spearheaded by HR director John Stewart, the company has shown that it is leading by example in creating an inclusive culture and ensuring everyone feels included and engaged.

Ultimately, diversity and inclusion is more than just a good thing to do, it’s also good for business, and SSE is delivering on this in an impact-focused way.

For example, SSE’s impressive focus on shifting working practices to a majority of flexible working can benefit not only parents, but all colleagues who have caring responsibilities, or health and accessibility issues that might make going to and working in a set workplace more challenging than those who don’t.

But SSE has gone one step further and set out to strengthen the business case for the benefits of diversity inclusion. It began benchmarking the benefit to the business of investing in inclusion initiatives, and has calculated that since it began benchmarking, returns have risen from £4.52 in 2017, to £7.51 in 2018, and to £8.92 in 2019.

SSE’s work in proving the business case has made diversity and inclusion tangible and outcomes focused, and has proven a business case that should inspire other employers to take a similar approach. This is another strong example of SSE providing genuine advocacy on social mobility and wider responsible business.

Thought leadership, and leading with action, is one of the key differentiators between the old style of Corporate Social Responsibility of self-promotion, to actually being a real advocate for change. This is a quality the Social Mobility Pledge believes SSE has firmly established in its approach to sustainability.

SSE has shown a strong record of best practice in boosting social mobility by tackling the Skills Gap, and demonstrating how the energy transition presents opportunities for people, and opportunities to dispel inequalities of the past.

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SPOTLIGHT ON RT HON JUSTINE GREENING

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eaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is the right – and smart – thing to do. Britain must play its part in protecting our planet.

In recent times, we’ve seen the government struggle to plan for the next week, let alone next month or next year. But on one vitally important issue we have some certainty.

This country has passed a law that commits us to reaching net zero by 2050, which signalled our dedication to balancing carbon emissions. While some might say this is too slow, we can all agree that the direction is the right one.

So in spite of all the uncertainty around us, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that on this most fundamental issue we have a clear sense of where we’re going.

Reaching net zero is the right thing to do – Britain must play its part in protecting our planet. From investment in hydrogen to replace natural gas and the use of lower carbon biomass instead of traditional coal power, to the study of innovative carbon capture solutions reducing emissions from industrial processes, Britain can lead the way in the green energy transition. And reaching net zero is the smart thing to do, because it’s how we can deliver the high-skill, high-salary, high-productivity economy that politicians of all political colours say they want for our country. Crucially, if delivered the right way, a net-zero economy can turbocharge the government’s levelling up agenda.

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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y For decades opportunities have become clustered in certain areas, and for certain groups; while the lack of opportunities has intensified in “cold spots” throughout the UK. The green energy transition will require new skills, and a new supply of talented people to power it. It’s a chance to dispel the inequalities and cold spots of old.

We’re at a crossroads, albeit amid a crisis, where things can become better. There really can be a socially “just” green transition. I first said in 2014 that the agendas of planet and people are two sides of the same coin. And both require government, businesses and communities working collectively. No group can deliver this alone because we’re creating a brand new ecosystem for our economy – one operating on a different and better premise than today’s in relation to two vital aspects – how it affects our planet and how it affects our people.

Government must provide the right, stable investment climate, unlocking funding to transition our energy sector and allowing new green economy sectors to flourish. And it must create an education system that can look to the long term, building a talent pipeline with the knowledge and skills these new green economy careers need, so

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young people can grab the opportunities being created.

We shouldn’t forget that a 30-something adult working in one of the net-zero careers of 2050 is only just being born right now. Alongside investment, the private sector and purpose-led businesses must show real leadership, demonstrating that they have sustainable plans on both net zero and levelling up opportunities. It’s what responsible business and the ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda is all about and goes far beyond traditional corporate social responsibility. Through my work on social mobility, as an MP, as education secretary and now outside parliament, leading a business coalition working on the ground, I know that business has a crucial role to play in delivering grassroots change. Every business in our country can be a force for good in helping us achieve net zero. That’s why I have launched the One Planet Pledge. By being part of the pledge, companies and universities are setting a date to get to net zero. In doing so they are making a public commitment to the people they serve.

Smart businesses aren’t waiting until the last moment, they’re seizing the opportunity to be at the forefront

of this people and planet revolution that can help us reinvent Britain for the better. Levelling up and net zero have behind them the same ethos and values, of recognising the value of an individual and country’s place in a wider world.

It’s an ethos that understands that with a shared place in the world comes a shared responsibility to one another. As an African proverb rightly says: “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”

Going together means Britain, including its businesses, collectively taking a lead on tackling the climate crisis and providing stewardship for our planet.

And going together also means creating a fairer version of Britain. Today’s version with such disparity on access to opportunity for no other reason than a person’s background and circumstance is the antithesis of how a modern Britain should run. It must change.

Not every generation has the need or the chance to reshape its country so profoundly.

We are the generation that can put right the wrongs of the past – both on our planet and also for our people. That’s our opportunity.

We have to grasp this moment.

This article was first published the Independent newspaper.

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Britain can lead the way in the green energy transition

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A P I P E L I N E of Opportunities NORTHERN GAS NETWORKS IS A POWERHOUSE OF SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THE REGIONS IT SERVES, AND A LEADER IN THE UTILITIES SECTOR IN TERMS OF PURPOSEFUL ACTION.

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SPOTLIGHT ON MARK HORSLEY AND NORTHERN GAS NETWORKS

Established in 2005, Northern Gas Networks (NGN) delivers gas to 2.7 million homes and businesses in the North East, Yorkshire and The Humber, and Cumbria.

The company covers 37,000 km of pipeline and serves 25,000 km 2, including vastly populated urban centres, as well as sparse rural areas in the North.

NGN has been repeatedly recognised by Ofgem as the most costefficient of the UK’s eight Gas Distribution Networks (GDNs), not only delivering excellent value for money, but also supporting the region socially and economically.

Driven by its commitment to customers and sustainable innovation, NGN is at the forefront of utility companies in terms of its responsible business practices, and how it aims to have a positive impact on its customers and local communities.

Led by Chief Executive Mark Horsley, NGN works hard to help the local communities in the area it serves and should be commended for its strategies addressing social mobility.

Situated in a landscape with social mobility cold spots, NGN has taken pivotal steps in engaging with the local communities and providing them support – be that with work opportunities, education or outreach.

By employing social indices and measurements NGN has been able to target certain areas within the region, tailoring its support based on the different social mobility challenges, ranging from rural isolation and poor physical health to mental health and financial hardships.

Through the company’s work experience schemes and apprenticeships, NGN is increasing accessibility to young people, helping them develop key skills, while also giving back – culturally and economically – to the region.

Diversity and inclusivity are interwoven into NGN’s culture and the company has nurtured a workplace where employees value and appreciate one another, reflecting their broader strategy in local communities.

NGN has recognised that strategically there is still plenty to be addressed and are looking further into reducing social mobility barriers for employment, for instance, hiring across different age groups and balancing the gender gap.

NGN has created a framework which effectively draws on its partnerships to provide the necessary support and funding for the local communities in the North.

Initiatives such as Warm Hubs are a testament to the indispensable value NGN funding provides to the local communities.

The company’s drive to identify vulnerabilities is aided through training and workshop sessions for NGN employees, especially operational staff.

Outreach at schools and colleges enables NGN to educate the youngest in the region and engage them with their work.

In particular, they have aptly entwined art with STEM to inspire a wider group of young people, thus understanding the impact they can have on students if addressed through different learning frameworks.

As a leading company, NGN has recognised that it needs to think in the long-term and about future generations. Its projects and initiatives are foreword thinking and creative, impacting both individuals and communities.

NGN’s strategy of taking a localised approach to making a positive social impact across its communities, and in fostering strategic partnerships on the delivery, has proven an effective way to improve the lives of even the most hard to reach groups.

This has shown NGN is focusing on making a real impact in decreasing vulnerability in all of its main forms.

In addition to the highly effective strategy implemented by NGN, the Social Mobility Pledge has yet identified some areas where gaps exist, for NGN to consider.

The Social Mobility Pledge has also identified specific social mobility related gaps across communities in NGN’s service area for the company to target its efforts towards going forward.

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They have aptly

entwined art with STEM to inspire a wider group of young people

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PERSI M MON HOM ES SPOTLIGHT ON DEAN FINCH AND PERSIMMON HOMES

Unleashing POTENTIAL PERSIMMON HOMES IS TACKLING THE UK’S HOUSING SHORTFALL WHILE ALSO DRIVING SOCIAL MOBILITY BY CREATING WIDER ACCESS INTO THE HOUSEBUILDING SECTOR.

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he UK needs about 300,000 more new homes per year to keep pace with the growth in population and to make up for years of under-supply. There is need for both new housing and the repair, maintenance, and modernisation of existing homes to address our housing shortage in a sustainable manner. This need for increased house building is happening at time when there is a skills shortage and skills gap in the UK construction industry.

The construction industry urgently needs skills and expertise in all areas of housebuilding—at technical, supervisory and managerial levels. It also needs skills in all aspects of the life-cycle of housing construction. The skills gap for housebuilding is, however, greatest in the south east of England.

In turn, the sector as a whole must recognise where this new talent and skills needs to come from. It means tapping into new talent pools, and making the industry even more open. It must attract and encourage more young people into the industry, but also increase the diversity of the young people it already brings into the industry.

Additionally, it must also seek to retain the skilled workforce that the industry develop - taking development and training

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more seriously, and invest in creating significant progression pathways in careers in the sector.

A more holistic strategy is needed to address the skills gap not just in housebuilding, but most STEM areas that face a deficit in the supply of skills against demand in the UK. Persimmon has demonstrated best practice in already responding to these challenges. It has shifted its focus to creating wider access and pathways into housebuilding, placing a significant emphasis on learning, development and progression within the company; and increasing the skills base that is required to address the nation’s skills gap, and build the houses that are needed for people and their families.

Persimmon is a compelling example of a business with wide pathways into the business that lends itself as a catalyst of social mobility and as a provider of opportunity across the UK. This provides a strong foundation to up-skill young people, and people of all ages, in areas of development.

As set out by the Social Mobility Pledge, improving access to the workplace for people from disadvantaged backgrounds is at the core of the social mobility solution. Persimmon actively widens these pathways for access to construction by creating additional talent pipelines for school leavers into its industry-leading apprenticeships.

While the business, like many others, has faced some specific

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challenges in the last two years, it is clear that it has had a commendable focus on developing its talent internally, ensuring it thrives and progresses within the company, and has created an environment where hard work and aspiration is rewarded. As shown by over 600 internal promotions over the last two years.

It has demonstrated a comprehensive and chronological approach to boosting social mobility. This approach begins with promoting skills and careers in schools around its sites across the UK; it has a focus on widening access into housebuilding, such as through its Combat to Construction programme; it has a strong focus on upskilling and developing its people, boosting progression within careers throughout the company; and creates opportunities everyday by the nature of its business model building homes for first-time buyers.

One of the foremost problems facing the UK’s performance on social mobility, and problems facing the housing sector, is the UK’s skills gap. This is the relative deficit between the supply and demand of skills. This is why Persimmon is prioritising engaging with schools around its sites across the UK and promoting skills within the sector. The company’s Ambassador Programme aims to empower young people to consider their options beyond school and inspire them into a career in construction and one of the many trade or professional roles within the industry.

The company is also looking to address the skills gap by widening the house building sector, which is already a relatively open sector, to new pools of talent from different backgrounds. The Social Mobility Pledge recognises Persimmon’s efforts on helping former army service people into jobs in the sector, through its Combat to Construction initiative. This initiative doesn’t just provide access to jobs, but also progression routes that are clear from the beginning, such as training programmes to become site managers and assistant managers.

Persimmon has also shown a commitment to continuously approving its talent development engine, including its new programme of Apprentice Masters, which is a leading example of learning and development among Social Mobility Pledge companies. This renewed focus of introducing new methods of training apprentices has demonstrated the business has both anticipated and listened to feedback on challenges that remain, as included in the Independent Review, with a strong focus on maintaining and increasing quality of new builds.

With over 15% of Persimmon’s people progressing through apprenticeships or formal training at any one time, this is also a strong boon for the economy, up-skilling the workforce in the

backdrop of a wider national skills shortage.

Externally, the company has shown a strong commitment to engaging with local communities across the country in areas where it has a footprint through development, with school engagement and Ambassador Programmes leading on outreach, specifically focusing on helping more females into construction.

It also has a significant impact on local communities across the UK as a result of how, where and why it chooses to develop projects.

It generates opportunities in these communities to get on the housing ladder, secure employment and to develop new skills.

In addition, Persimmon has focused its financial support towards charities, community groups and social enterprises that are making the biggest difference to peoples’ lives in those communities.

While the housebuilding sector is highly competitive, Persimmon is willing to work with its competitors on the issue of improving social mobility across the UK, and for sharing best practice on the development of skills, and learning from the challenges that house builders have collectively faced.

All of which raises aspirations and enables more people to unlock their potential, unburdened by unfair bias about their background or upbringing.

Persimmon has all the hallmarks of a company that has demonstrated best practice in delivering and boosting social mobility - and it is working with the Social Mobility Pledge to go even further.

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Putting purpose into practice SPOTLIGHT ON SIMON BOSS AND SHOOSMITHS

SIMON BOSS GREW UP IN A SMALL TOWN IN CORNWALL AND WAS ADVISED NOT TO STUDY LAW BY ONE OF HIS TEACHERS - BUT THAT ONLY SPURRED HIM ON, AND HE IS NOW THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF SHOOSMITHS, A NATIONAL LAW FIRM. Simon believes in giving back to communities and making sure there is a ladder for others to climb to get on in life. He spoke to Fit for Purpose about his own career and the social mobility approach at Shoosmiths.

Q A

Q//

Was law something you’d always wanted to do?

A//

Well, it’s not in the blood - I think it’s fair to say it’s not in the family. I grew up in West Cornwall in a small family business running a hotel, which was a fantastic place to grow up and be a kid, but not a fantastic place if you wanted to explore a big city or find a large commercial organisation to work in. At 17 or 18, I had no idea what I wanted to do with life, so I chose a degree that I thought would give me a good background and opportunity to see where it took me. I decided I wanted to do law, but I was advised against it by a teacher at school who I actually respected and was a fantastic teacher. He suggested it probably wasn’t the best career for me and I would struggle to get into university as a starter. He wasn’t wrong, I did struggle to get into university, but there’s nothing like someone telling you not to do something to make you want to try a little bit harder. I don’t know whether he actually read me well and said that on purpose to prompt me to go for it. Choosing university was easy, because I only got one offer, which was Birmingham University. So I finished the degree and [decided to] continue with law until I found something better to do. I haven’t yet found something better to do. It has taken me from one step to another and each has been good and interesting and has provided plenty of challenge along the way.

Q//

When would you say that you really got interested in the idea of a business having a purpose?

A// // You joined Shoosmiths in 2005 - did you think at that time that you’d ever go on to run it?

// Absolutely not! I joined what was then a large regional practice that was ambitious. It was a bit different – it had a fantastic value set and was very clearly focused around its people, but also gave a platform

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and an opportunity, for me, and for the team that joined with me at that stage, to come in and express ourselves [and] just to be yourself and get on and do it. It was it was like a breath of fresh air coming into that environment.

I joined the Birmingham office, which at that time had about 20 people in it and a very clear growth agenda, with the support of [in place] to actually go on and take the business forward.

Birmingham is now the largest commercial office in the firm. That was absolutely not down to me, a lot of people can take pride in terms of seeing how Birmingham has grown and developed, but interestingly it’s been replicated across our network.

I think it was in me all the way along but I think there’s a difference between it being in you and a realisation that it’s something in its own right. The first firm that I joined as a trainee, or article clerk [in 1986] was ambitious [but also] had some fantastic leadership within it and was very people focused. I really connected with that for the first 14 or 15 years of my career.

Coming into Shoosmiths, it just clicked. Coming into a firm where it felt so strong, it was almost irresistible to me in terms of actually matching my own personal perspective on life. I think

SHOOSM ITHS

the realisation as to broader purpose, and how the values sit under that, came much later. Looking at it from a business-wide perspective and how important that emotional connection is with what you do, I guess has come in the last five or so years. But it begs the question as to why? Why do people want to get up in the morning and do the tasks that they do? Of course, there are many answers for that but if it’s only about money, then that’s not good enough. We all need to pay the bills, but that’s not emotional engagement. Emotional engagement is what you get out…We all need to think about and understand the impact that we can have individually and collectively through what we do and actually understanding that that could be for the good of us and for the good of the society.

I think that’s much more powerful than coming in and just doing the day job.

Q//

Shoosmith’s isn’t just creating opportunities within the company – it has also started to look at this wider impact. And your offices are in some very different locations with different community challenges.

A//

We have 13 locations across the UK, some city centre locations and some not. There’s a lot of difference between being based in London and being based in Northampton, Belfast and

Birmingham. They all have their own culture, their own history, but also their own things going on around them, as you’d naturally expect. For our business generally, it’s about a national spread, but also about being local and connecting the two, and that’s really important. It’s not a one-size-fits-all and I think that plays out really well in the work we can do around social mobility, and certainly in terms of purpose through that, because there are different talents in different places.

Q//

Is the challenge of reaching out to find budding lawyers different in each office and community?

A//

The questions we get asked are really quite different from even 10 years ago. It’s much more around what we’re doing as an organisation. If you look at the lawyers coming in for their training, they are much more interested about what type of organisation they’re joining. What’s it like to be here?

What’s it going to feel like to be in this organisation?

What are other people like? And indeed, what do you do as an organisation? And that doesn’t mean law in this case, it means what are you doing about climate change? What you’re doing in your communities? What are you doing in terms of different types of background, ethnicity, gender [and so on]? All of these questions come out and they are the really important ones.

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We’ve built a reputation by really having a presence there

SPOTLIGHT ON MARK POWER AND LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNIVERSITY

OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNIVERSITY HAS BEEN WORKING TO ATTRACT APPLICANTS FROM NORTHERN IRELAND, A GROUP THAT IS COMMONLY UNDERREPRESENTED AT UNIVERSITIES IN ENGLAND.

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Mark Power, Registrar and Chief Operating Officer at the university, speaks to Justine Greening about its links with Northern Ireland and its ambitious outreach programme.

JG

// I imaging it’s been a challenging time for you at Liverpool John Moores during the coronavirus crisis?

MP

// Definitely. If we look back to March and April, we spent a considerable amount of time moving

from face-to-face delivery to as much online delivery as we possibly could.

We were in a very good position to do that, because we had a very robust digital infrastructure that supported our virtual learning environment.

And I have to say, our academic colleagues were absolutely amazing in moving materials into that online space, delivering synchronous and asynchronous lectures very quickly, and supporting students through the remainder of the academic year.

JG// Your Northern Irish students represent just over 10 per cent of the population this year. Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you've been doing in Northern Ireland?

M P//

Our links with Northern Ireland go back many years and we've built a reputation by really having a presence there; going out and talking to people in schools and colleges.

Our great ambassadors for the university are our Northern Irish students who have travelled over to Liverpool, studied with us and, in a number of cases, returned to Northern Ireland to build successful careers.

We’re a relatively small team, but we’re dedicated to offering advice, guidance, support and events. We invite parents and supporters of potential applicants to these events so they can see that the Northern Irish population is particularly important to us.

We have seen an increase in both applications and new entrants into the university from Northern Ireland, which is fantastic and goes to show that all of that outreach activity that we’ve undertaken has worked.

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O U R LI N KS WIT H N O RT H E R N I R E L A N D G O BA C K M A N Y Y E A R S A N D W E ’ V E B U I LT A R E P U TAT I O N BY R E A L LY H AV I N G A PR ESENCE TH ER E; GOI NG OUT A N D TA L K I N G T O P E O P L E I N SCHOOLS AN D COLLEG ES.

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JG// How do you support Northern Irish students once they arrive at university?

M P//

It’s about recognising that some of the best mentors for students are fellow students. I work with parts of the Northern Irish student community to provide a buddying infrastructure around the new entrants that arrive in the city.

Also, we recognise that the funding situation in Northern Ireland isn't identical to that of England, and the students are not quite as well supported financially as they are in other parts of the UK. So, we’ve entered into an organisation called UniTemps where we seek to provide students with paid employment opportunities to help support them through their studies.

JG// With COVID-19 taking much of your teaching online, how does that affect your work in Northern Ireland?

M P//

We’ve moved all of our outreach work online and the indication is that we've had a greater engagement than we would have done with face-to-face events.

We also moved our summer support sessions online, which we’ve been running for a number of years, in July and August. We recognised that many students haven’t been in the school setting for a considerable amount of time.

Running them online gave an opportunity for applicants who wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to travel over to England during July and August to engage with the sessions.

JG// Do you think remote learning and outreach will continue post-pandemic?

M P//

I think it certainly will. It has far-reaching implications for how universities think about their investments in their digital infrastructure. And that's something that we've certainly been considering over the last six months; what will the university look like over the next five to ten years and beyond?

But in this time of crisis, it really does focus people's minds.

And it's amazing how innovative and creative people can be in those circumstances. For me, that's probably one of the most heartening parts of the last six months; being able to see how colleagues have come together in such a constructive way.

JG// What are some of the challenges you have faced moving your support services online?

M P//

One of the challenges is something that is particularly related to the Northern Irish students, who typically do come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

We cannot make assumptions that they either have the equipment or access to data. So this year for students from widening participation groups, we have invested around a million pounds in a laptop scheme. We will provide students with their own laptop, as well as buying them data bundles so they can access online materials from wherever they are.

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THROUGHOUT ITS LONG HISTORY OF SUPPORTING THE WORKING CLASSES, LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNIVERSITY HAS DEMONSTRATED A

Building bridges Originating as the Liverpool Mechanics’ School of Arts in 1823, the institution was created to support the advancement of the city’s working classes and has continued to drive social mobility for almost 200 years.

The team at Liverpool John Moores, led by Registrar and Chief Operating Officer, Mark Power, and vice chancellor and chief executive Professor Ian Campbell, has recognised the nature of social and economic difficulties facing the population in the city of Liverpool.

It has developed strong links with the community over many years and is now in a good position to encourage young people with no family experience of higher education to consider it as a well-informed option; offering them the opportunity to improve their own prospects as well as that of their city.

It has also successfully built a strong relationship with Northern Ireland, a country which has always had close links with the city of Liverpool. It has sought to understand the barriers that have historically prevented young people in the province from

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FOCUSED AND EMPATHETIC COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL MOBILITY AND INCLUSION, AND ITS APPROACH IS UNIQUELY SHAPED BY THE REGIONS IT SERVES.

considering university as an option.

Its comprehensive support network means that Northern Irish students can fully benefit from their time at university and achieve their full potential.

As a result of this concerted outreach work, the university has more students from Northern Ireland than any other higher education institution outside of Northern Ireland itself.

Liverpool John Moores University’s approach to its Northern Irish students is a reminder to all organisations that success in unlocking the potential in disadvantaged areas is much harder to achieve with an off-the-shelf approach.

It recognises that the nuances of the communities targeted should be carefully considered, and all contextual barriers addressed. Its tailored approach, which considers every element of the student journey and is underpinned by its own research, has shown how successful that can be.

The university has also delivered a lesson in patience, in terms of driving real transformation of outcomes in struggling

University has established itself as an institution that takes an innovative communities. It recognises that short term fixes are poor substitutes for a thorough, longer term approach and the embedded social mobility model seen today has, in fact, been two decades in the making.

Absolutely essential to the model, through which everything else flows, is the symbiotic bond between the university and schools across Northern Ireland.

The strategy targeting schools and colleges in Northern Ireland has focused on reaching young people in some of the most deprived areas of the region, with a member of staff assigned to each secondary school and college across the province.

In an effort to promote traffic to the university’s stand at the annual Northern Ireland UCAS Exhibition, a series of tours around schools and colleges is scheduled beforehand. In 2018/19, the university delivered 142 presentations, reaching 8,855 prospective students.

As a result of these relationships there is now a near-seamless flow from secondary to higher education, ensuring that Liverpool John Moores University can tap into the potential in the region and facilitate real change there.

Families which at one time had no graduates in their ranks are now seeing sons and daughters going off to university, inspiring others in their communities to do the same. This looks likely to continue for years to come, since the university has future-proofed its social mobility approach by closely tracking research findings on the issue and adapting accordingly.

As part of its outreach programmes, the university has a member of staff assigned to each secondary school and college across Northern Ireland to support and provide expertise on university related matters throughout the year.

In terms of financial support, 42.2 per cent of students from Northern Ireland receive a bursary to help fund their higher education, a significantly higher figure than the 32.5 per cent of all students at the university, reflecting the socio-economic demographics of students from this part of the UK.

LIVER POOL JOH N MOOR ES UN IVERSITY

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Liverpool John Moores

About 100 student advocates are recruited each year as part of the university’s work to increase employability. Their duties include delivering taster sessions and supporting younger students. They are also encouraged to tell their story of making the journey from Northern Ireland to Liverpool.

Both Liverpool and Northern Ireland have been significantly affected as a result of previous recessions, and recovery has been slow. The extended economic and social impact has been hugely detrimental to areas which were already home to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country.

Liverpool John Moores University has taken a well-considered approach to the issue across the board to ensure that young people from these areas are not as likely to be left behind in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and provides resilience to their communities as a result.

Students, as well as their schools and parents, are well-informed about each stage of going to university so they have a much clearer idea of the course that will suit them, what will be expected of them, the help that is available for financial, practical and emotional issues, and finally, of potential career options.

The role of student ambassadors, as in normal university life but further highlighted during the pandemic, has helped reach out to potential students who value their lived experiences and advice.

Liverpool John Moores University has established itself as an institution that takes an innovative approach to boosting social mobility. It has worked hard to break down the many potential barriers that hold back talent and has invested in supporting both staff and students to reach their potential.

It has also put in place systems and processes to break down those barriers, especially around economic disadvantage, disability and gender bias.

It has built bridges that deliver opportunities directly into the communities that need them most.

approach to boosting social mobility

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