Thu, 03 April 听蔼听 10:00 听–听 11:00

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Wed, 14 May 听蔼听 10:00 听–听 11:00

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Since 2021, we have been empowering, advising and working with local stakeholders to build and deliver transformation in Coventry that benefits its people.

Strategic Priorities

End food poverty in Foleshill and Longford.

Ensure every resident in Foleshill and Longford can breathe clean air and access safe green spaces.

Support all secondary school children to reach their full potential and progress into employment, education, or training.

Elevate digital skills in Coventry, positioning it as the leading hub for digitally-skilled workers outside of London.

Our impact to date

Our Coventry Leaders’ Network has had a key role to play in driving innovative change in Coventry. Over the past five years:

• We brokered 拢200k in capital funding, along with skills training and support
• Provided opportunities for young people to engage with major employers
• Launched 91视频官网入口 in the Community’s Climate Fund in Coventry, support community-led climate action
• We have facilitated the donation of thousands of books, technology resources and food to schools and community centres

鈥淥ur Coventry Leaders鈥� Network brings together local business, community groups and government leaders to create meaningful connections and work collaboratively on the shared vision for Coventry, focussed on using business skills to reset economic ambitions and bring about long-term transformative impact on communities. We help drive action to achieve progress on a small set of agreed critical issues or opportunities for Coventry, based on our vision, with the goal of contributing to significant positive change in the region.鈥�

Steve Hughes

Chief Executive Officer, Coventry Building Society

“Prior to last year’s visit I was feeling very isolated, I felt at the visit that the organisations involved genuinely cared and were listening to the work we do and how difficult that is with such limited resources. After the event lots of organisations came forward and offered financial support which enabled our kitchen and cafe to be built alongside practical support drawing on the skills and expertise of organisations. I will be forever grateful for the support shown to us during this time.“

Helen Needham

Former Chief Executive Officer, Feeding Coventry

Case studies from Coventry

Feeding Coventry

When business partners visited Feeding Coventry in May 2022, they were in dire needs of funds to support their central operations. The charity had just been successful in a bid for over 拢100k capital funding to have a commercial kitchen and caf茅 space fitted but needed to provide 拢10k of match funding in order to access this. 91视频官网入口es collaborated to meet the need for this match funding, with contributions made from Salesforce, Coventry Building Society, Linklaters and National Grid. This meant Feeding Coventry were able to develop their caf茅, which now provides warm meals to local residents as well as an income stream for the community centre.

In additional to the charity鈥檚 financial needs, there was also a number of skills gaps identified from within the charity鈥檚 staff and volunteers which it was felt business could help to support with. Coventry Building Society has since been helping Feeding Coventry with business planning and supporting them to build a sustainable funding model. Salesforce are supporting in creating a CRM system which can be used to track food supplies and manage the social supermarket customers. They hope to ultimately be able to create a system which can be embedded into other similar charities and can help manage food supply demands across the city鈥檚 wider Coventry Food Network. 

Positive Youth Foundation

Following the formal Seeing is Believing visit in May 2022, some of the businesses involved made immediate commitments to Positive Youth Foundation (PYF), a registered charity that supports young people in the Coventry area and supports the national youth work sector to thrive. These businesses included the City & Guilds Foundation, who funded a programme to support newly arrived young people run by PYF.

Two businesses, Tesco and Salesforce, chose to bring their teams back to PYF later in the year for a more in-depth session to learn more what they do as an organisation and how their businesses can best support young people at PYF rather than just retrofitting their already existing youth outreach programmes.  

For Salesforce, this has developed into a long-term partnership which benefits both organisations. PYF have received support from Salesforce including funding, business planning and exposure their wider business network and Salesforce have been able to gain insights from the team at PYF and their service users on about how they can make their employment opportunities more accessible to young people and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Coventry Leadership Board

Our work is led by our local Pride of Place Partnerships – a cross-sector senior leadership board which sets the strategic direction for our work, mobilises their workforce to support with delivery of activities and acts as an advocate for the programme both regionally and locally. The Coventry Leadership Board is chaired by Steve Hughes.

Phil Andrew

Lucy Becque

Ranjit Blythe

Joe Carroll

Steph Cawley

Steve Hughes

Paul O’Sullivan

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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We have brought businesses, voluntary organisations and local authority together to tackle Norwich鈥檚 challenges collaboratively. Our work has used leadership to drive momentum, galvanise action, amplify Norwich鈥檚 story on the national stage and to drive lasting social change.

91视频官网入口 in the Community鈥檚 Place Programme鈥痓rings together business, civic leadership and communities to create long-term, transformational change in communities. We work with places to build and deliver a vision for their future that serves everyone. We provide sustained resource, advice and support to motivate and empower local stakeholders so that each place can identify its own challenges & innovate its own solutions.

Why Norwich?

Norwich is renowned for its idyllic charm and its reputation as one of the friendliest cities in the UK, but it faces significant challenges that hide beneath this. The city’s social mobility ranks in the bottom 10% nationwide, with disparities in life expectancy of up to seven years between different wards. One-fifth of Norwich is considered among the 10% most deprived areas in the country. 鈥�

By harnessing the collective power of businesses, local authorities, and community organisations, we aim to create sustainable growth and elevate outcomes for every member of the Norwich community.

Strategic Priorities

Improving financial resilience and well-being in Earlham, reducing food and hygiene poverty

Increasing social mobility levels by helping school children understand the world of work and connecting jobseekers with employers in the city.

Increasing the number of businesses offering skilled volunteers to local community organisations and charities. 鈥�

Create a safe community green space in Earlham that all can access.

Our impact to date

Since we started working in Norwich in 2020, our leadership board, chaired by Aviva, has brought together senior leaders to facilitate long term-transformational change. Together, we have successfully delivered over 200 events and activities to upskill and connect residents in partnership with Norwich City Council.

In our deep dive neighbourhood of Earlham, we listen and learn about the need of the community. Early actions include recruitment of volunteers to support a community clean up, support for a Social Supermarket, facilitating free community dinners, numerous donations of hygiene products for the children of Earlham and an opportunities festival held at the local community centre bringing doorstep activity to the community.

Download Norwich’s 2024 Impact Report

“Engaging with other committed colleagues from a wide range of organisations within the city to harness our individual expertise, resource, and capacity to work together with communities to affect real change is inspiring.听 The challenges are deeply engrained within communities and it鈥檚 going to take the combined effort of local government, public, private and third sectors working with communities to make lasting change.听“

Julie Schofield

Associate Director of 91视频官网入口 Partnerships, University of East Anglia

“BITC has given us the opportunity to look at ways of bringing about sustainable social change and mobility. The ethos is very much a ‘do with’ rather than a ‘do to’ which is critical and should always remain central to all plans made.”

Jade Hunter

Head Teacher, West Earlham Infant and Nursery School

“BITC has amplified the debate about our social issues, often championed by the voluntary sector. We鈥檝e had the opportunity to highlight our own charity mission and values to other local organisations and joined many partnership initiatives that have changed people鈥檚 lives and delivered strong social return. Combining energy and resources has helped influence local policy 鈥� and long may it continue.”听听 听

Dan Skipper

Chief Executive Officer, Age UK Norwich

Case studies from Norwich

Supporting The Feed

The Feed is a social supermarket that offers a wide range of affordable groceries to help people eat well despite rising cost of living.

During the Seeing is Believing event The Feed鈥檚 CEO, Lucy Parish, highlighted that having a guaranteed regular supply of food was becoming a real issue and at times the shelves were empty. This really impacted Jeremy Chew, Operations Director for Boparan Private Office, and within a matter of days, Jeremy had sourced regular delivery of frozen cooked chicken into The Feed鈥檚 social supermarket. It doesn鈥檛 stop there, Jeremy is also providing Nourishing Norfolk (a food hub that supplies food to rural communities across Norfolk) a regular supply of Frozen poultry goods.

Dental Hygiene Drive

To build trust and engagement in the community of Earlham, we sought to provide dental hygiene products to every child attending school in Earlham.

In April 2024, a team of 9 dedicated volunteers, including Marsh and Saxon Air employees, and the Place lead embarked on a mission to collect donations of toothbrushes and toothpaste from Norwich City supporters. The response we received was truly overwhelming.

Throughout the afternoon, over 1,500 items were donated and over 拢150 was raised on our JustGiving page.

Earlham Opportunity Festival

A priority of our Place work in Norwich is improving social mobility by way of access to job opportunities and skill development. With this, our focus has been on providing opportunities in the community that assist in employability, upskilling, and additional support.

In April 2024, we ran our first employability and wellbeing event at Cadge Road Community Centre in Earlham. The event brought together various providers covering employment opportunities, housing, and wellbeing support services. We had 19 different providers who shared their expertise and resources with the community,

In moving forward, we hope to replicate and adapt this programming to give similar resource access and support to schools and families in the community.

Norwich Leadership Board

Our work is led by our local Pride of Place Partnerships – a cross-sector senior leadership board which sets the strategic direction for our work, mobilises their workforce to support with delivery of activities and acts as an advocate for the programme both regionally and locally. The Norwich Leadership Board is chaired by Andrew Dernie.

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is one of Britain鈥檚 largest water companies, providing fresh, clean drinking water daily to over eight million people. Being a responsible business is an important part of Severn Trent鈥檚 ethos, whether that is by making a positive difference in the community or protecting the environment.

Commitment to race equality

Since signing the Race at Work Charter, Severn Trent launched its 鈥榃onderfully You鈥� Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy, to help better deliver for its customers and do right by its communities. The organisation believes that by employing, valuing and investing in a range of local talent from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, it can build a skilled workforce that is able to understand and empathise with customers and communities.

As a result of its D&I strategy, representation of Black, Asian, Mixed-Race and other ethnically diverse employees has grown steadily, by just under 1% year by year. Severn Trent also has an impressive 90% diversity data disclosure rate. Feedback from employees is monitored via an anonymous engagement survey called Quest and engagement scores have also increased year on year. Severn Trent is now in the top 5% of energy and utility companies globally.

How is Severn Trent developing its D&I strategy?

Severn Trent collaborates with a range of organisations to ensure consistent learning and development. It has recently refreshed its strategy and progress has been reviewed. The new approach is moving away from overarching workforce targets and focuses on three key areas:

Diversity: Specifically, leadership and new hire targets
Inclusion: Specifically, employee engagement and attrition
Social Value: Aiming to put 拢10.5 million worth of value into communities from its employability initiatives.

The organisation also externally benchmarks by government-backed indices, like FTSE Women Leaders, Parker Review, Disability Confident and the Social Mobility Index.

What advice would you give to other organisations?

鈥淭hink about how diversity can help your business to achieve its business plan and strategic objectives.鈥� advises Alison Smith, Diversity and Inclusion Lead. 鈥淲hat is your data telling you? Don鈥檛 just look at overarching workforce targets as this can mask where diversity is needed most, look at it by different business areas and key roles. For example, diversity is a challenge in the water industry and for us, but as an organisation with high retention rates and a proven track record for developing internal talent, focusing on overarching minority ethnic diversity targets doesn鈥檛 help us to see how we are really doing. That鈥檚 why we focused our targets and actions on new hires and leadership, so we can ask ourselves: are our new hires representative of our communities and are we representative where the decision-making happens?”

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Wed, 15 January

听蔼听

10:00

听–听

11:00

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  Thu, 06 February听蔼听09:30听–听10:30

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  Thu, 06 February听蔼听10:00听–听12:00

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  New Member Induction- February 2025
  

  Thu, 13 February听蔼听10:00听–听11:30

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Tue, 11 February

听蔼听

10:00

听–听

11:00

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  Race Equality Campaign 30 Year Anniversary Event
  

  Tue, 25 March听蔼听10:00听–听11:00

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91视频官网入口 in the Community (BITC) has brought senior business leaders into Coventry to highlight how business interventions can positively impact communities.

The visit comes as data shows that the unemployment rate of those aged 16-64 in Coventry (6.4%) is almost twice as high as the UK average of 3.7%,^[3] and BITC research found that one in 10 people in the West Midlands said that they will need to rely on community support, such as food banks, due to the rise in the cost of living.^[4]听

This visit follows one of BITC鈥檚 The King鈥檚 Seeing is Believing visits to Coventry, supported by Salesforce and Linklaters, that took place in October 2023. The King鈥檚 Seeing is Believing visits bring senior business leaders into communities to understand the challenges people face and showcase how businesses can collaborate with each other and with community organisations to develop innovative, long-term solutions to address them.

The visit was attended by senior business leaders from a range of companies, including Orbit Group Ltd, Coventry Building Society, Cadent Foundation, Jaguar Land Rover and more. 

Supporting community organisations in Coventry 

At The King鈥檚 Seeing is Believing visit to Coventry in 2023, business leaders visited Foleshill Community Centre and St Francis Employability, two community organisations that are working on the ground to support individuals who are trying to secure employment and manage everyday life. 91视频官网入口 attendees saw first-hand the barriers people face when trying to access employment and how employers can better support them. After hearing from service users, business leaders worked together to come up with meaningful solutions to support community organisations and their beneficiaries. 

At today鈥檚 visit, business leaders returned to Foleshill Community Centre and St Francis Employability to discover the impact and importance of business collaboration to support community organisations. 91视频官网入口 leaders were able to see how their actions following the previous visit have positively impacted the services that the community organisations provide and the lives of their beneficiaries. 

Steve Hughes, Chief Executive of Coventry Building Society and Chair of BITC鈥檚 Coventry Leaders鈥� Network, said: 

鈥淎 fifth of neighbourhoods in Coventry are among the 10% most deprived in the UK. We know that through business collaboration, we can address skills shortages, enable growth in Coventry and make a real change to the city and the lives of those who live and work here. The King鈥檚 Seeing is Believing programme is a powerful initiative that allows business leaders to see how much of an impact business interventions can have on people鈥檚 lives. It has been a catalyst for the continuous work of The Coventry Leaders鈥� Network which is committed to transforming the communities in Coventry that need it most.鈥� 

Mary Macleod, Chief Executive of 91视频官网入口 in the Community, said: 

鈥�91视频官网入口 in the Community works across the UK to transform lives and help communities thrive. Collective business action is critical in achieving this goal, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Coventry Leaders鈥� Network and business leaders from across the UK to support the incredible work already being done in Coventry through the actions of local business and community organisations. I hope today鈥檚 visit, and the demonstrable impacts shown, inspire business leaders to take further action in Coventry to support its people.鈥� 

St Francis Employability has benefitted as a result of business actions following The King鈥檚 Seeing is Believing visit in October 2023. These include: 

• Coventry Building Society funded the installation of new plumbing to enable the Community Caf茅 to have running water, which it was previously operating without.听
• Orbit Group Ltd collaborated with Fortem to fund and build a new roof for the church, as the previous roof had sustained water damage both inside and outside.听
• The Cadent Foundation provided St Francis with access to their winter support fund to help service users with food and fuel vouchers and winter necessities to stay warm during the colder months. It also connected them to the Green Doctor programme to help them make their homes more energy efficient. In addition, Cadent has provided funding to make St Francis a centre for warmth, supporting and extending the advice and services offered.

ENDS 

Notes to editor 

1. Photos from the visit are available upon request.听
2. This visit is part of BITC鈥檚 wider work in Coventry, led by the Coventry Leaders鈥� Network, chaired by Steve Hughes, Chief Executive of Coventry Building Society. This work is focused in Foleshill and Longford, with the aim of:听
   – Ending food poverty in these areas.
   – Ensuring everyone in these areas has access to safe, green spaces and clean air.
   – Supporting all secondary school children in Coventry to reach their full potential and go on to sustained, meaningful employment, education or training.
3. These figures come from the . A spreadsheet with the full figures is available upon request.听
4. BITC research conducted in partnership with YouGov 2022. All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,019 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 6th 鈥� 7th October 2022. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).听
5. Find out more about Foleshill Community Centre .听
6. Find out more about St Francis Employability .听

For further information, please contact Polly Dacam, Press Officer, on 020 7566 6638.

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鈥淲hen people hear that you are in your fifties or older, they tend to think that you are coasting towards retirement and therefore, you are no longer ambitious and that you do not have that many years left to get a real return on investment in training.鈥� Job Coaching participant Erica explains.

Erica’s story

Erica is a highly experienced manager, who has successfully navigated many changes throughout her career. Last year her role was unexpectedly made redundant, with no suitable opportunities for redeployment in the business.

Erica set about looking for a new job but with high numbers of people in a similar position, she had a difficult experience job-hunting. She found it hard dealing with the ups and downs of the job search, the dashed hopes and the lack of actionable feedback from recruiters, which left her guessing about how she could improve and be successful. Erica felt her age was a barrier, which made her reluctant to disclose all her job history or the dates of previous qualifications, but she often had no choice, as certain companies made it a requirement to disclose this information. She believes this made it harder to secure interviews and meant she had to face many rejections.

How the Job Coaching programme supported Erica

After over a year looking for her next role, she was determined not to let the lack of success curb her enthusiasm and chances of securing a job. Erica decided to seek out one-to-one coaching to support her and was introduced to 91视频官网入口 in the Community鈥檚 (BITC) Job Coaching programme, which is how she met Graham from .

Graham joined NatWest鈥檚 graduate scheme around 25 years ago and now works within the organisation鈥檚 Learning and Development department as a Curriculum Manager. His previous roles have been in aerospace engineering and the Scottish civil service.  

Graham jumped at the opportunity to take up the opportunity offered to employees at NatWest to volunteer as a Job Coach. It allows him to keep his existing coaching skills well-honed and he finds it interesting working with different people and learning about the challenges they face.

Graham always encourages his colleagues to participate: “The programme is thoroughly worthwhile. We are in the right place to support others. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

“The programme is thoroughly worthwhile. We are in the right place to support others. It’s a win-win for everyone.” – Graham, NatWest

What was it like working with Graham?

Erica felt that it was useful to connect with another person in the real world, rather than trying to tackle job applications alone.

Graham provided a useful sounding board for Erica and helped her think about how she could change her approach to job hunting. They also identified what else was important, weighing up different opportunities based on things like job satisfaction, time requirements, salary and benefits and impact on life outside of work.

Graham asked in-depth questions to help Erica express the breadth and depth of her skills, knowledge and experience and how these could be transferable to different job opportunities. Through coaching she was able to talk more about her transferable skills, free of imposter syndrome, which helped her excel in her interview.

As a result of this work together, Erica secured and has now started a new job. This next phase in her career will deliver social value, which is important to her. She is now focussing on the capabilities she wants to use and has a positive attitude to the future.

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References

¹

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