Why community should be at the heart of every socially responsible business

Why community should be at the heart of every socially responsible business  

The cost-of-living crisis has hit towns across the UK. Since the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, UK inflation has continued to rise, reaching a 40-year high in July 2022. Across the country, individuals and businesses have faced rising costs and inflation.

Traditionally, companies have always been the beating heart of communities, creating benefits for people within the community and ensuring that employment and entrepreneurship can thrive. However, a gradual shift has seen much of this innovation and opportunity shift first from urban centres and then overseas.

The beating heart of the communities

UK companies with strong economic roots in the community have become more valuable than ever. As the beating hearts of their communities, they create opportunity in tough times and ensure that people have the stability and support of a steady employer.

At Tharsus, we are committed to having a positive impact on our local community. We have held strong community values right from the start of our journey back in 1964. We had only a handful of employees then, but we always believed that to move forward you have to give back. That ethos has served us well. Today, many years later, Tharsus is a strong Northumbrian business providing careers to over 400 people.

From metal work to robotics and automation

When we launched the business, we specialised in welding and sheet metal. The skills and the craftsmanship of employees in the local community was fundamental in helping us to evolve from metalwork and manufacturing to robotics and automation. The North-East has always been at the forefront of manufacturing and Tharsus is proud to not only continue in the tradition but add to it with our robotics and automated machines expertise.

A broad pool of talent is required to win

Today, we are one of the UK’s most innovative companies. As we have expanded, we’ve delivered more jobs to people in the community and developed stronger links with local schools and colleges.  A business like ours needs to recruit people from a very broad pool of skills to fill the diversity of roles we have. From factory floor to finance. Software engineers to stores operatives. Business excellence engineers to business development executives. The variety is endless.

The importance of social mobility opportunities

We fill them by a combination of onboarding new people and giving training; nurturing and upskilling existing people; and outreach to schools — particularly local ones — to raise children’s awareness and aspirations around the career opportunities open to them right here in the North-East.  To us, this is about so much more than meeting the recruitment needs of the business. This is about real social mobility. Being able to take people with really varying skills levels and giving them real careers in which they can progress is very important to us.

Tharsus, Business of the Year Award 2022

We were proud to have our achievements in driving social mobility recognised by the judges of the North-East of England Chamber of Commerce when we were awarded Business of the Year 2022. We take pride in our unique ability to give people of all backgrounds sustainable and exciting careers in a in a thriving business that is helping to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Community and business go hand-in-hand

At Tharsus, we believe that businesses should not only benefit from local services but strive to contribute to the local economy. Community and business must work together and support each other for the entire town and its people to thrive. It is no coincidence that one of our core values at Tharsus is ‘Work Together’. This means having shared goals and building a team spirit. In practice, this includes collaborating with other North-East businesses to pool resources, support local supply chains and create a thriving business ecosystem where people can grow and develop.

Giving back to the North-East community in meaningful ways

We work hard to make sure that our people know what we stand for, where we are going and what we want to be. This includes giving back to our community in meaningful ways. That’s why, over the past few years, we’ve worked with public and private sector organisations in the North-East to help address some of the important issues facing our region.

Offering real opportunity to grow

From developing partnerships with local universities to tackling the UK skills shortage and deliver graduate-level job opportunities, to our apprenticeship scheme, we have always been passionate about offering the people in our community a great training and development programme that offers real opportunities to develop and grow. One example of this exciting personal growth is Sophie Laidlaw, a Tharsus electro-mechanical apprentice and a recent winner of the Make UK Rising Star award. Sophie left school at 18 and worked in various industries before deciding she wanted a career in engineering. As a Tharsus apprentice, Sophie is now getting her engineering qualifications and real-world experience creating tech for the global aerospace and logistics sectors at the same time.

Why creating links between work and community are key

We believe in the potential of everyone in our local community. Sophie is just one example of an employee who saw a fantastic opportunity at Tharsus to follow her ambitions and do what she wants to do. We also run work experience programmes with local colleges and universities because we know that for young people to be successful, they need the skills and opportunities to participate in the workforce from an early age. We teach them about the business and help them develop the skills needed for tomorrow’s economy. By creating links between our work and the community, we are helping to spotlight the many career paths available to people living in the North-East.