A pioneering deal between supermarket giant Tesco and national charity Shaw Trust will help to revolutionise the employment industry.
The UK's leading food retailer has named Shaw Trust and Remploy as its preferred providers of disabled workers in a move that will mean a vast wealth of new opportunities for people desperate to get into employment.
The Trust is hoping that other big companies will follow Tesco's lead by using expert help to fuel their employment diversity programmes, opening doors for 3.68 million people of working age without employment due to poor health or disability, compared to 800,000 jobless non-disabled people.
Tesco's move will immediately impact on the Trust, which currently has 129 clients across the country in a supermarket chain that employs 221,000 people and has 1,982 stores across the UK.
"The potential is absolutely enormous," explains Shaw Trust's Head of Workstep, Malcolm Goldsby. "Up to now employment service providers like ourselves have had to work from the bottom up, by knocking on doors to try to place people who want retail work in local stores. Clearly that takes time and what we need is for big companies to take the initiative as Tesco, and recently Barclays, have done.
"This national agreement with Tesco is tremendous news. Tesco employs hundreds of thousands of people across all kinds of geographic and employment areas, and now they are all open to us. The company offers a wide range of career prospects, from in store work to management, marketing, warehousing - you name it and Tesco will probably have a job-opening to match it."
The Tesco initiative follows an in-house investigation into its employment diversity provision under the Supported Employment programme. Its experts were shocked to discover that they had upwards of 19 different organisations providing placements for disabled people alone.
Judith Nelson, Tesco Stores HR Director, said: "Our staff come from all walks of life, which is a real benefit to us in being able to serve our customers better. There are lots of talented people with disabilities who want an opportunity to get into work and this agreement with Shaw Trust will help us to tap into their potential. We will continue to support disabled workers throughout the business and welcome their enthusiasm and skills."
Shaw Trust has been in close consultations with the company for eight months, and continues to target other large businesses. A recent contract with Barclays is providing UK-wide opportunities for job tasters that could lead to permanent jobs.
"There are a lot of large companies who are on paper doing everything they can to ensure employment diversity, but when they scrutinise their Supported Employment programme, they discover the same problems with results," Malcolm explains.
"Employers are switching onto the fact that it is vital to have preferred suppliers, in whom they have confidence and who offer a guaranteed consistent level of service."
For further information, please contact Jan Hunt on 07967 671918.
