Community engagement

How does “Community Engagement” underpin our strategy?

By engaging with the communities in which we operate we promote our business, attract high quality recruits and gain a greater understanding of our customers, vendors and employees.  Community or charitable events serve to enhance employee skills and increase employee engagement.

What does “Community Engagement” entail?

Our businesses seek to be contributing members to the communities in which they operate. We also support a number of charitable organisations both at a Group and a business unit level. Our principal areas for charitable support continue to be the alleviation of homelessness, the provision of training for the homeless or marginalised in order to allow them to return to work, and the improvement of the quality of the built environment. Our businesses have also supported numerous other charitable causes, including support for neglected and vulnerable children and provision of care for sufferers of cancer or other illnesses.

Who is responsible?

Community engagement is, by its very nature, a local activity and our corporate head offices and individual businesses manage their own activities in this area to suit their own preferences and locations. We encourage all of our employees to engage in charitable or community activities outside the workplace and we recognise the value that this brings to communities and the personal reward and new skills it can bring to our employees.

What did we achieve in 2011/12?

Our employees engaged in a great number of community and charity events. 

We entered the third year of our partnershp with Impetus Trust.

We enhanced our support of the Prince's Foundation for Building Community.

For more detail on all of the above, please see the case studies listed on the right.