Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
Your industry news - first
The original and best - for over 20 years!
We strongly recommend viewing Cleanzine full size in your web browser. Click our masthead above to visit our website version.
Social enterprise Beco wants you to steal its staff
Beco, the social enterprise soap brand, is taking a new approach to business, calling on competitors and UK employers to take a stand when it comes to recruitment.
An impressive 80% of Beco's workforce is visually impaired, disabled or disadvantaged - Beco wants to show big corporations the value and skillset in every person by encouraging employers to follow suit and see workability, not disability.
One in five people living in the UK is disabled and an estimated 48% are unemployed - that's over one million jobseekers looking for opportunities and a disability unemployment gap of 30% (only 52% of disabled are employed vs 82% of the general working population). Beco. is on a mission to change that.
Beco founding charity, Clarity & Co., has supported the employment of people with disabilities for 165 years and this week Beco launched an employment drive calling on employers to #stealourstaff and help close the disability unemployment gap. Beco's campaign highlights its staff in the hope that those who want to, will go on to secure jobs outside of the organisation and free-up opportunities for new staff in need of employment.
Staff profiles will take over the brand's packaging in key retailers Waitrose and Sainsbury's and on the Beco. website giving consumers and would-be employers the chance to get to know the talented workforce behind the brand.
"You can help make a difference by buying Beco. soap for your homes and offices," says Camilla Marcus-Dew, head of sustainable growth, Clarity & Co. "Everyone can create real and sustainable change, just by washing their hands. Every bar of soap and bottle of handwash Beco. sells, helps to provide real jobs for people with disabilities. If every person in the UK switched to Beco soaps, the brand could create 45,000 new jobs for people with disabilities.
"Make a new hire. You won't regret it. Whoever you are looking for and whatever the skill, the Beco. team are some of the most passionate staff you'll come across, many with decades of experience. Take a look at Beco's employees and their CVs on beco.co.uk/stealourstaff
"We want to give people who want to work, the opportunity to work. It's as simple as that. Some of our staff at Beco. have been at the organisation for more than 30 years, and as much as we love our team and their loyalty, we want to help them and others to have further opportunities. We want to show that as a society we can close the disability unemployment gap.
"On average, there are over 250 applications for any corporate role in the UK, so it's hard to stand out. The only way we were going to make a difference was to go big and reach the millions of supermarket shoppers through the CVs on our products and calling on big corporations to make a stand and change their hiring policies. We need people to start acting and living their values, not just talking about it."
Michael, team leader, Beco. adds: "I wish other organisations would give people like us a chance. There are so many disabled people unemployed and I'm sure there are plenty of big companies that can do more to help."
Beco is available nationwide at Boots, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, selected Co-op stores and the Ethical Superstore.
The latest quarterly labour force survey finds that 1.1 million disabled people want to find a job, even if they are currently out of work. The 1.1 million figure is made of unemployed disabled people (362,122) and economically inactive disabled people who want to find a job (791,633).
362,122 + 791,633 = 1,153,755 (1.1 million disabled people who are out of work but want to work). That's approximately 3 in 10 of the out of work disabled people (31%).
T: +44 (0)2030 788950
E: [email protected]
W: www.clarity.org.uk
5th September 2019