Greene King is strengthening its partnership with The Prince’s Trust with a new five-year agreement, a pledge to create 1000 opportunities for young people and an increased financial commitment to the charity directly linked to its workforce diversity aims.
Under the new terms of the partnership, funding will be increased by one third and invested into projects that will support Greene King’s commitment to raising the percentage of young people from BAME backgrounds it employs through The Prince’s Trust programmes. Greene King’s ambition is to support 1000 young people into its workforce over the five-year period, lifting the percentage of young people from minority ethnic backgrounds entering the business through the partnership from 24% currently to 40% by year five.
Greene King has worked in partnership with The Prince’s Trust for four years supporting 440 young people across the UK and kick-starting their careers by helping with training, work experience and employment, through its Get into Hospitality and Ready to Work programmes. In addition, it pledged a £20,000 donation to The Prince’s Trust Young Persons’ Relief Fund at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to help the charity provide much needed practical and emotional support to young people’s across as range of areas from wellbeing to education.
The new pledge forms part of Greene King’s wider diversity strategy and will enable the partnership to support more young people from minority ethnic backgrounds to begin a career in hospitality. The partnership will also deliver mentoring and talent programmes to develop future leaders.
The partnership will deliver the ambitious targets through a catalogue of programmes including ‘Get into Hospitality’ and ‘Ready to Work’ as well as recruitment through ‘Get Hired’ and The Prince’s Trust’s online Job’s Board.
Greene King made a commitment in June, as part of wider discussions about British companies with historic links to slavery, to accelerate its diversity ambitions and make a substantial investment to support the BAME community.
In addition to this new diversity linked partnership programme with The Prince’s Trust, Greene King is listening to a range of stakeholders, from customers and colleagues to charities and other organisations before announcing its full diversity and inclusion strategy. Several initiatives, however, are currently active including:
- A new employee led race diversity group which sits alongside established Greene King LGBT and Women’s networks
- A partnership with Diversity in Hospitality, Travel and Leisure’s Inclusive Leadership programme including sponsoring a series of webinars
- Implementation of a ‘comply or explain’ diversity target with partnering recruitment agencies
- A data gathering exercise among the company’s 38,000-strong workforce to capture ethnicity
Speaking about the partnership with The Prince’s Trust, Nick Mackenzie, Greene King CEO said: “We are really excited to announce this new partnership programme with The Prince’s Trust. We have a longstanding and excellent partnership with a track record in helping young people from all backgrounds get into a rewarding careers. Supporting young people into careers now is more important than ever as we face globally uncertain times.
“We care about building a diverse workforce that represents the society we live in. The young people we recruit into our business today will be the business leaders of tomorrow and so it is vital that we address the diversity imbalance across our business and create opportunities that encourage young people from BAME communities to join us. The Prince’s Trust delivers outstanding programmes and opportunities for young people and we are delighted that in strengthening our partnership with them we will together achieve our common goals.”
“We are committed to developing an ambitious programme on diversity, particularly focussing on welcoming colleagues into Greene King from BAME communities and we will be updating with more detailed plans in the coming months.”
Jonathan Townsend, Chief Executive, The Prince’s Trust said: “We are delighted to announce this new stage of our partnership with Greene King. The Prince’s Trust and Greene King already have an excellent relationship and we’re looking forward to working with even more young people through our partnership. Greene King offers excellent career pathways for young people and we’re pleased to be supporting their commitment to improving the diversity of their workforce.”