In 2022 we established a Social Value Strategy. This commits Ashe to creating reportable social impact outcomes that are equivalent to, or greater than, 25% of our turnover by 2025.
It’s a strategy that takes the best elements of what we were doing already and raises them to another level. While also committing us to an ambitious timeframe, reflective of the importance we attach to delivering social value.
We have set objectives in five target areas that relate to our core activities as a business:
- Responsible Leadership
- Regenerating Communities
- Developing Young People
- Investing in Wellbeing
- Sustainable Environments
We have many fantastic examples of programmes and initiatives in each of these target areas. These range from the nature reserves we create at schools to support students’ learning on biodiversity.
To our education programmes that encourage young women into construction. To Ashe volunteers taking on the painting of a refurbished building for a local community group that didn’t have the funds for decoration.
The introduction of the Thrive and Loop social value measurement system, is enabling us to gain independent measurement of the wealth of ways we contribute to communities and people’s lives, whether through client projects or our own independent initiatives.
One of our most important programmes is increasing the number of apprenticeships we support in our own business and in our supply chain. We want to invest in young people’s careers, recruiting talent from the communities in which we work, while also tackling the skills shortage in our industry.
There are many exciting elements to our Social Value Strategy, which can be read in full via the link below.