By leaving his name on art galleries and libraries across Britain, the Victorian philanthropist Sir Henry Tate has indelibly linked the name of the company he founded with good works and community service. The Tate Gallery in London, the biggest and best known, still retains links with the company, but today the focus has moved on from municipal munificence towards more intractable issues like inner city regeneration.
As the name suggests, Tate & Lyle was formed from a merger. In 1921 two separate companies founded in Liverpool and Greenock in the 1870s came together. Now it is an international concern, operating in over 50 countries throughout the world. It employs around 15,000 people, 2,500 of whom are based in the UK, and has annual sales of £3.8 billion worldwide.
Focused approach
From the early altruistic approach, Tate & Lyle’s community involvement has become increasingly focused, especially in the last five years or so:
– more focused on business objectives,
– more focused on specific policy areas, and
– more focused on geographical areas close to company sites.
The policy focus is in four main areas and the split in the worldwide spending of £1.3 million last year was:
– education and youth 38%,
– civic and environment 31%,
– health and welfare 18%, and
– the arts 13%.
The geographical focus in Britain is mainly in east London, in the Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney, where the company’s Silvertown Refinery on the Thames is the largest private sector employer. The main involvement is through the East London Partnership, an agency promoting links between business and local communities.
In the education and youth category, Tate & Lyle also has links with the Newham Drugs Advice Centre and Young Enterprise, through which it is sponsoring 20 students. Also in education, the Tate & Lyle Cambridge Commonwealth Scholarships enable 12 Commonwealth students to study at Cambridge University.
In the civic and environment category, the company works with both the East London Partnership and London Enterprise Agency (LEntA). On international environment issues, it supports Worldaware and the Royal Geographical Society. Health and welfare projects include support for CARE, Community Links in Newham, Sight Savers and Shelter. Despite the historic connections, the arts are not seen as a top priority today; apart from sponsoring of the Friends of the Tate Gallery, other arts events are local and socially focused, such as Docklands Sinfonietta’s Music for the Elderly programme in Newham.
Personal involvement
On the face of it, Neil Shaw’s involvement at a national level with BitC would seem to contradict this strong local focus. In fact, from the company’s perspective, it combines the best of both. His motivation in accepting the post stemmed from a personal interest in community issues as chairman of the East London Partnership board in Newham. He brings a practical experience of grass roots activity to the senior councils of BitC. In parallel he brings back to the company ‘state of the art’ thinking on the management of local programmes.
So this involvement has not led Tate & Lyle to seek national prominence. Other than co-sponsorship of the Per Cent Club and the Dragon Awards, it is community involvement at ground level, with strong links with specific local agencies, that is the hallmark of the approach in the UK.
Organisation
The community affairs programme is overseen by a board sub-committee composed of the Deputy Chairman and three non-executive directors and chaired by Lady Prior. This Corporate Affairs Committee approves annual plans and budgets which must meet Per Cent Club guidelines. In drawing up the programme, operating companies have a large measure of discretion within the overall policy objectives. UK charitable donations are handled at a group level through the Charitable Appeals Committee, chaired by the Group Corporate Affairs Director. Local sites and offices retain only small budgets to respond to strictly local approaches.
Volunteering
One area that has shown marked growth recently has been staff volunteering. After a pilot exercise in early 1992, a Volunteers in the Community scheme has been launched nationwide. Personnel departments issue a registration pack to staff in which they record their interests and skills, and line managers add their comments. The company helps provide suitable placements through contacts with local charities while staff are able to request their own too. Each project undertaken then has a project agreement form, specifying the objectives, which is approved by the project manager, the employee volunteer and staff member’s line manager.
The line management input in project selection is a distinctive feature of Tate & Lyle’s approach, but has not been extended further: for example, a test on community involvement is not included in annual staff appraisal as such. The feeling is that not all staff can or indeed want to volunteer. The company should properly support someone who is willing, help decide on a suitable project and evaluate it afterwards. Going beyond that moves from volunteering to ‘being volunteered’.
Each quarter the numbers involved and the types of project are monitored centrally. Senior managers are also involved. For example, John Walker, managing director of the European Sugar Division, chairs the Newham board of the East London Partnership. David Tate, Group Corporate Affairs Director, chairs Newham Education Business Partnership. The initiative is backed by a grant awards scheme, under which £250 can be claimed per project per annum.
Communication
With a relatively small number of UK staff, internal communication presents few problems – staff are kept informed via the company newsletter. A new pocket guide to community involvement is about to be produced. Externally, Tate & Lyle’s corporate affairs activity is directed more at key decision-makers than at the buying public. For example, a recent brochure, describing corporate activity, has been distributed externally is sent to around 4000 key people.
Evaluation
In keeping with the ‘business case’ rationale, a start has been made on formal evaluation. Traditionally, community involvement was measured only in terms of financial donations; such input evaluation is now extended to include employee volunteering. However measuring outputs and then the impact of initiatives is still in its infancy. For example, the success of GCSE revision courses held in the Easter holidays, made possible in four east London schools by the company, has been measured in terms of improved exam pass rates.
Such clearly demonstrable data helps to reinforce the message that community involvement has moved on from philanthropy. It also provides useful evidence that there can be a business benefit. But it falls short of proving a direct business benefit. That would come by showing the educational standards of local recruits had increased over time, improving manufacturing and product quality and saving retraining costs later. Of course most companies, including Tate & Lyle, do not need such hard direct evidence to know they are doing the right thing in supporting local schools. However, having the evidence, albeit on a limited case study basis, would help persuade sceptics in the wider business world.
International
Most of the group’s overseas employees are located in North America and continental Europe; in the developing countries, commercial involvement is mainly through contracts and management agreements rather than production facilities in direct ownership. Community involvement abroad follows very similar lines to the UK programme. In the US, support is given through United Way and other projects, with staff very involved in their own local communities. In Zimbabwe for example, an educational trust offers scholarships and bursaries, a ‘school on the shopfloor’ initiative arranges student visits to give industrial experience and a combined arts/health promotion scheme raises awareness of AIDS.
Global responsibility
So Tate & Lyle has built a modern community involvement programme on its early foundations, now extended beyond the home base to embrace the worldwide operations. Sir Henry Tate would no doubt be pleased to see that charity may have started at home, but has not ended there (the real meaning of that often misused Victorian phrase)! But in many companies like Tate & Lyle, the home base activities, having been in place longer, may be more developed, for example through the availability of experienced people such as a group chairman like Neil Shaw.
No one could dispute the need in Newham for an educated and skilled population nor the contribution made by local employers. The wider question for all international companies is how to help meet the even greater need in developing countries for a workforce capable of taking advantage of industrialisation and world trading opportunities. Some like Tate & Lyle have made a good start – many have yet to face up to the full implications of global social responsibility.
FactFile
Tate & Lyle plc
Year ended 25 September 1993
Chairman: Neil Shaw
Main business: sugar, cereal sweeteners and starch processing mainly in Europe, the USA and Australia
Turnover: £3.8 billion
Profit before tax: £222.5 million
Employees: 15,834 (2,500 in UK)
FT UK Top 500 ranking: 108
Charitable donations: £300,000 in UK
Total community contribution: £1.3 million (£690,000 in UK)
% of profits: 0.6%
Memberships: BITC, Per Cent Club
Group Corporate Affairs Director: David Tate
Address: Sugar Quay, Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6DQ
Phone: 071 626 6565 (fax: 071 623 5213)
Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 15 – April, 1994
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