BITC launches responsible business campaign alongside leading businesses   - Business in the Community

BITC launches responsible business campaign alongside leading businesses  

Business in the Community (BITC), The Prince’s Responsible Business Network, has today launched a marketing campaign that challenges businesses to be faster, braver, and bolder in their commitments to addressing the biggest issues facing UK communities.   

The campaign headlined Making Work Work, appeals to the private sector to not only be faster, braver, and bolder in their responsible business commitments but also to ensure that they work together to create a fairer and greener society.   

With recent global uncertainty, a climate emergency that needs urgent action and communities at risk of being left further behind, the Making Work Work campaign urges businesses to work together to scale up their collective efforts to help address these pressing issues. The campaign provides practical steps that businesses can take to ensure that they are making work work for people, the planet and communities.   

The multi-channel campaign, supported by our media partner JC Decaux, is part of BITC’s 40th anniversary and brings together a unique group of brands including Aviva, Axa, Barclays, bp, Diageo, Lloyds Bank, NatWest and M&S [1] all of whom have supported BITC for 40 years.   

Amanda Mackenzie OBE, Chief Executive of Business in the Community, said,    

“Businesses have made incredible progress against the responsible business agenda for over 40 years but there is still much more to do. Society is still grappling with racial and gender inequality, unequal pay, communities at risk of being left behind and the very real possibility of a planet polluted beyond repair for future generations.

“These issues and their complexities mean that no business can tackle them alone. This campaign urges all businesses to work together to create a fairer and greener society by taking practical steps at a scale that we have never seen before. Everyone has a role to play in making work work.”    
   
Impact     
Eight in 10 people (27 million) work in the private sector in the UK and 5.6 million people work in the public sector [2], showing that if employers were to take the practical steps to make work work, the impact on addressing inequalities could be substantial.  

As an example, if employers were to collectively take steps to address gender and racial inequalities, then progress against the following areas would be faster than it currently stands:     

  • Under current legislation and using latest trends, it will take until 2042 at the very earliest for the gender pay gap to close in companies that employ 250 employees or more. [3]    
  • 19% of companies captured their ethnicity pay gap in 2021. If this pace of reporting continues and mandatory reporting is not introduced, it will take 23 years (2051) for businesses to know what their own ethnicity pay gap is. Only 56% of those 19% companies publish their pay gap data so it will take until 2075 for the companies currently capturing this data to publish what their pay gap is. [4]   
  • With research showing that two-thirds of people don’t trust businesses will do what they promise on climate action [5], businesses must collectively work together and take practical steps to address the climate crisis.  

ENDS 
 
Notes to editor 

  1. Business in the Community’s anniversary partners are Aviva, Axa, Barclays, bp, Diageo, Lloyds Bank, NatWest, M&S and Salesforce.  The Making Work Work campaign is supported by our media partner, JC Decaux.
  2. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2021/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2021-statistical-release-html  
  3. This analysis was calculated using the latest available data and trends. The pandemic, alongside furlough and the pausing of reporting has impacted gender pay gap data, therefore we have used the latest data available – https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2021/c-March-21/Gender-pay-gap-closes-by-one-fifth-after-reporting-introduced  
  4. This analysis was done using data from the BITC 2021 Race at Work Survey – https://www.bitc.org.uk/report/race-at-work-2021-the-scorecard-report/   
  5. https://www.bitc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/bitc-environment-report-rightclimatebusiness-justtransition-jan2022.pdf  
  6. For further information about the Making Work Work campaign visit www.bitc.org.uk  

For further information, please contact Aoife Butler Nolan, Head of Media, Public Affairs and Policy on 07702 903 216.   

About Business in the Community 

Business in the community is the oldest and largest business-led membership organisation dedicated to responsible business. We were created nearly 40 years ago with HRH The Prince of Wales as our Royal Patron to champion responsible business. We inspire, engage and challenge members and we mobilise that collective strength as a force for good in society to:   

  • Develop a skilled and inclusive workforce for today and tomorrow.   
  • Build thriving communities where people want to live and work.   
  • Innovate to sustain and repair our planet.