In Serco, giving time and lending strength and support where local needs are greatest has always been a powerful element in team culture.
It’s written explicitly into Group policy, and we encourage it without reservation, doing all we can to help make it happen.
Community support and charitable giving are important dimensions of the UK Government 'Social Value' agenda and our own (alongside other priorities such as local environmental protection and job creation for under-represented groups), resonating strongly with Serco and its people.
There are three main factors in that. The first is that – as an employer of local people, customer of local suppliers and provider of local services – so much of what we do helps build local resilience and prosperity.
The second is that we are partners in the local community, and it’s only right and proper that we seek to repay local trust with our help and support when appropriate. Last, but by no means least: our people are the local community, bringing service to life with community-minded energy whilst striving to support those causes close to their hearts.
In the last few years, we have driven greater maturity in Serco across all dimensions of Social Value; this includes leading charity engagement and volunteering to new heights across the UK business.
A thriving partnership with the Children's Book Project
One of the charitable achievements by Serco UK & Europe in the last year, is the business' engagement with the Children's Book Project, a charity addressing inequality of book ownership in families nationwide.
In 2022, kicked off with an Executive Leadership Team volunteering day, more than 40 Serco-operated leisure centres around the UK invited patrons to donate unwanted books for children. c.17,000 books were collected and transferred to the CBP headquarters in London with support from the Serco Defence fleet. Dozens of volunteers from across the business mobilised to sort the books for distribution, while others built and decorated new 'book huts' for CBP, which are set up at distribution hubs on school sites. Serco also donated a van to the CBP, for school deliveries in the London area.
The team built and improved on all of this in 2023. The CBP set up book deposit hubs around the UK, which enabled us to get more of the business involved, taking a more strategic approach to collection and transportation.
For example, our Defence fleet colleagues stepped up again, joined by other Serco drivers from around the UK, including our Immigration business and VIVO joint venture.
At the same time, the UK business supported the CBP with a pilot project enabling prisoners to gift books to their children. Following the successful two-year trial, the CBP is now preparing to roll the programme out more widely.
Plans to support the CBP again in 2024 are already in development.
Building a new platform of strategic national charity partnerships
Serco's engagement with the CBP is one of a growing number of charitable partnerships at a national level. Others include Chapter One and Acacia Family Support, with whom Serco volunteers give their time to help disadvantaged primary school children and young parents with mental health issues, respectively. Colleagues from across the business also engaged in 'extreme fundraising' for Acacia through the Serco Wingwalk Challenge 2023.
Serco has a history of localised charity engagement at the contract level, greatly enhanced in the last ten years through the Serco Foundation. At the same time, countless colleagues engage themselves in personal volunteering and fundraising outside of Serco.
Serco UK & Europe are looking at the feasibility to build a sustainable new platform of strategic national charity partnerships atop these strong foundations:
Business-aligned charity partnerships – in which Serco can be more strategic about leveraging assets and maximising impact – have been emerging in recent years. The relationship between our Health Business Unit and Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity is one example. We would like to scale up to the Divisional level. Our work with the CBP is just a taste of what we can achieve with a more holistic 'one team' approach to creating longer-term value for causes that play to our strengths and resonate throughout the workforce.
Championing and facilitating charity partnerships across Serco
We hear from different charities quite regularly and we listen to everyone, thinking carefully on how we might be able to leverage Serco to support them. In some cases, that might mean connecting them with neighbouring contracts seeking volunteering opportunities, or with the Serco Foundation.
Recent examples, include the Breck Foundation, a charity dedicated to online safety for children, and the Henry Allen Trust, supporting children with terminal cancer.
The work of the Breck Foundation is highly relevant to parents across Serco, so we connected them with the new Serco Parents and Carers Network. Through that relationship, the Breck Foundation and our colleagues can support one another whilst securing funding through the Serco Foundation. For the Henry Allen Trust, we collected Christmas gift donations at several UK sites. Serco volunteers then distributed the gifts to children in hospital."
Volunteering and fundraising are extremely important to our people. It's not a coincidence, given that many of them have dedicated their careers to serving and supporting those in need.
Volunteering is a great way to connect with our communities, and it's not just about giving – it's about sharing, learning, making connections and building networks. Today, every Serco colleague in the UK has one paid volunteering day, every year. Going forward, we want to do more and more to make it easy for them to seize that opportunity for maximum community impact."