Strategy Focus
Focus Areas
Figure 1 - Strategy Focus Areas
Our community strategy focuses on three key areas (see Figure 1):
- Community Partnerships;
- Charitable Giving; and
- Employee Volunteering.
In each of these areas we will be seeking to improve co-ordination and strengthen current activity. In particular, we will be seeking ways in which our community activity can provide learning and development opportunities by actively engaging our employees.
Community Partnerships
Through the community strategy we will be seeking to build on these partnerships. This will include looking at ways to add value and opportunities to extend initiatives across regions or to other companies with the potential to develop nationwide programmes where appropriate.
Charitable Giving
A wide range of charitable giving takes place across First, through both the local operating companies and at Group level. This includes monetary donations but also extensive donations in kind such as the provision of buses free of charge for charitable events and initiatives. Through the community strategy we will be seeking to strengthen our management of charitable giving. A starting point has been the establishment of a national charity partnership with Save the Children which we will support through activity at both operating company and Group level. This will bring our employees together in a common cause and provide a greater focus to our charitable giving activities.
Through the Group national charity we will set fundraising targets and support the annual fund raising initiative.
This will be supported by ongoing activity at local level in support of a range of organisations which we will seek to monitor and co-ordinate more systematically through the community strategy
Employee Volunteering
Through the community strategy we will be seeking to extend the opportunities available to our employees to participate in volunteering schemes. We will seek to achieve this by building further on our relationship with Business in the Community. Previously through our relationship with Business in the Community we established an ongoing programme of community challenges as part of our supervisory training NVQ. This programme has been highly successful and has clearly demonstrated the positive benefits to our employees from volunteering. We will also be seeking to strengthen the link between our volunteering activity and our environmental conservation and biodiversity programme to strengthen the impacts of these initiatives.