Tim Jones
Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Tim Jones is Managing Partner of Freshfields' London office and responsible for co-ordination of the firm’s eight practice groups across London, and the interaction of the London office with the rest of the firm. He specialises in equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, privatisations, and other corporate work. He was previously managing partner of the London corporate practice. He co-ordinates our involvement with LOCOG as Official Legal Services Provider to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.
Born in 1957, he has been a partner since 1990. He speaks English, French and Spanish and was educated at Wadham College, Oxford
He is a member of Freshfields' Community and Pro Bono Committee which oversees the firm's broad range of activities in the areas of homelessness, social exclusion and education.
Tim also chairs the London Steering Group of Business Action on Homelessness, which brings together the expertise of the private and voluntary sectors to run the Ready for Work scheme, offering work placements, mentoring and support to people from disadvantaged groups. A number of major companies participate offering placements and the involvement of their staff.
Freshfields is a long time member of Business Action on Homelessness and runs a scheme which has offered work placements to over 150 people from disadvantaged groups.
We asked Tim about his leadership role at Business in the Community and why responsible business is important to him.
Why is responsible business important to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer?
Freshfields is an international business but we have a long history in London, where we have been active since 1743, and the prosperity and welfare of the city is therefore critical to us from a business perspective. We have a responsibility as members of the London business community to the city we live in and the people within it. As a result we tend to focus our community activities on our immediate surroundings – for example we are Olympic sponsors because we want to play a role in a project that has regeneration capabilities and also gives London prominence in the international community.
Why did you decide to take a leadership role at BITC?
The more I saw of BITC programmes, particularly Ready for Work, the more I realised that I could do something useful to help. It’s not always easy when you’re immersed in business life to see how you can bring skills to bear in a broader context, but this leadership role has allowed me to do this. It’s been an opportunity for me to give my business skills a broader application and do something useful with them outside of my day job.
What difference do you think the London Team can make?
London is always going to be the place where there is a responsibility to innovate and test things. It’s the largest regional operation and I think we should therefore accept this responsibility.
What is your vision for London?
I would like to see broader business involvement in our activities. We have expanded the membership, but it would be great to continue to do this and find new connections - particularly within the SME sector. We should harness the whole power of business across different sectors, sizes and scales and see a joined up business effort to address key social issues in London. We should get business doing the things it’s good at through BITC programmes.
When we surveyed our Leaders in 2010, they said that an important part of their role was to support future business leaders to have a wider appreciation of business responsibility, how are you supporting the future leaders at your company to be responsible leaders?
This is a critical question. A lot of businesses have, like us, been involved with BITC for a number of years and the succession issue is becoming real and immediate. This is something we need to address very soon to ensure that the programmes we’ve been committed to (particularly around education and employability) are programmes that the next generation of leaders will be motivated and inspired by. We can’t assume this will be the case, but have to try and hand on the responsible business baton. This is work in progress at Freshfields, but something which is very high on our agenda.
What are the future challenges facing your industry, and how can responsible business practices help to address them?
Retention of people and talent is always a challenge. We are competing in a global market place, making attraction and retention ever more difficult. The opportunity to grow employee engagement through responsible business practice is a very important element in getting people to stay.
Now BITC is in its 30th year how can it scale up its activities?
I would like to see BITC engaging with a broader range of business – in particular how can we engage SME’s? Some sectors are currently under-represented so we should broaden and deepen membership.
Additionally I feel BITC should continue to focus on the programmes it does well in. It should be careful about being too ambitious and stick to things it knows business can deliver. I think BITC should be proud of the things it does well in and continue to do them.
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