Social Enterprise Wants You To Steal Its Staff

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27 September 2019

BECO, the social enterprise soap brand, is taking a new approach to business by launching an employment drive calling on employers to #STEALOURSTAFF and help close the disability unemployment gap.

BECO's founding charity, Clarity & Co, has supported the employment of people with disabilities for 165 years. BECO (whose campaign launched at the beginning of September) highlights their staff in the hope that those who want to, will go on to secure jobs outside of the organisation and free-up opportunities for new staff in need of employment.

Staff profiles have started to take over the brand’s packaging in key retailers Waitrose and Sainsbury’s and on the BECO website showing consumers and would-be employers the chance to get to know the talented workforce.

BECO is also calling on competitors and UK employers to take a stand when it comes to recruitment. 80% of BECO’s workforce is visually impaired, disabled or disadvantaged. BECO wants to show big corporations the value and skillset in every person by encouraging employers to follow suit and see workability, not disability.

1 in 5 people living in the UK are disabled and an estimated 48% are unemployed – that’s over one million jobseekers looking for opportunities and a disability unemployment gap of 30% (only 52% of disabled are employed vs 82% of the general working population).

How you can help make a difference

Keep buying BECO soap for your homes and offices. Everyone can create real and sustainable change, just by washing their hands. Every bar of soap and bottle of handwash BECO sell helps to provide real jobs for people with disabilities. If every person in the UK switched to BECO soaps, the brand could create 45,000 new jobs for people with disabilities.

Walk the walk

Camilla Marcus-Dew, Head of Sustainable Growth at Clarity & Co, said: “We want to give people who want to work, the opportunity to work. It’s as simple as that. Some of our staff at BECO have been at the organisation for more than 30 years. As much as we love our team and their loyalty, we want to help them and others to have further opportunities. We want to show that as a society we can close the disability unemployment gap.

On average, there are over 250 applications for any corporate role in the UK, so it’s hard to stand out. The only way we were going to make a difference was to go big and reach the millions of supermarket shoppers through the CVs on our products and calling on big corporations to make a stand and change their hiring policies.

"We need people to start acting and living their values, not just talking about it.”

Picture: A staff profile on a box of BECO soap.

Make a new hire

Take a look at BECO.’s employees and their CVs on beco.co.uk/stealourstaff.

Article written by Cathryn Ellis | Published 27 September 2019

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