The CEO of Cordant Group, the recruitment and services business, has praised the attitude and commitment of employees as the firm becomes a Social Enterprise. Chris Kenneally said he was very proud of the progress the company has made just six months into a “massive project that will help to change lives”.
In September 2017, the Group announced it would adopt a social enterprise model and would reinvest profits into a variety of initiatives to enhance society. This included work with educationalist Richard Gerver on learning and life preparation, building IT platforms at zero cost for the healthcare sector, and focusing on up-skilling and training temporary workforces.
Kenneally, pictured, said: “We set ourselves an ambitious target to make a meaningful difference across three distinct areas of life: education, the workplace and healthcare. We want to deliver genuine, measurable social impact and we want to deliver it over the long-term, that is why our strategy is based on a five-year programme.”
Over recent months, Cordant committed to an audit with an advisory law firm to understand where the business sits and to make recommendations. The report identifies how the company can further improve the working environment for its staff, as well as focusing on benefiting communities in which the organisation operates.
Kenneally added: “We wanted to find robust and widely-accepted standards to judge ourselves by. It is important for us to know that our work is not only benefiting the communities we touch but that we can quantify it in a way that stands up to external scrutiny.”
The CEO said: “It has been challenging six months as we have 11 different businesses and we are building a programme that will allow each employee, whether they are full-time or otherwise, to make a personal as well as company-wide contribution. Our group covers a wide range of industry sectors and types of employment – and that means the different businesses in our group are all at different stages of their evolution. However, I recognise just how hard everyone works throughout the group and I am proud of our progress to date.”
Kenneally highlighted a number of good news initiatives that have already made an impact. This includes raising thousands of pounds for various charities over recent months, working with the charity Unseen to put together care packages for victims of modern slavery, and making plans to double the number of apprentices across the Group to 500.
Kenneally added: “Our foundation as a Social Enterprise must be structurally sound and embedded with care and consideration. Our vision and mission must stand up to intense scrutiny, which is why we must be conscientious. We want to make a lasting and meaningful difference in all our endeavours.”
View also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHbGB1fFQ8o&feature=youtu.be.
