Read: Pertemps and the Purpose Coalition publish report on levelling up impact

Recruitment specialist Pertemps has launched a Levelling Up Impact Report highlighting its social mobility across the country.

The report, developed in partnership with Rt Hon Justine Greening and the Purpose Coalition, sets out best practice and makes recommendations on where further action can be taken.

Pertemps has worked in permanent, contract and temporary recruitment for over 60 years. It is now one of the largest providers of staffing solutions in the country and is owned by its employees.

With over 200 offices across the UK, Pertemps directly employs 1,550 members of staff and manages up to 40,000 temporary workers for clients at any one time. It places around 12,000 candidates in permanent roles each year.

The Levelling Up Impact Report was launched at an event at Pertemps’ head office in Meriden with speeches from Pertemps Chair Carmen Watson, Justine Greening and Lord Walney. 

The report benchmarks the organisation’s work against an innovative set of 14 Levelling Up Goals. Launched in 2021, the Goals provide a framework for organisations to identify gaps in access to opportunity, covering key life stages as well as barriers to people getting on. 

It highlights the key strengths which demonstrate Pertemps’ commitment to delivering opportunity countrywide. It is making a particularly significant impact on the following:

Goal 2    Successful school years

Goal 3    Positive destinations post-16+ 

Goal 4    Right advice and experiences 

Goal 5    Open recruitment

Goal 6    Fair career progression

Goal 14  Achieve equality through diversity and inclusion.

That work includes providing cost-effective recruitment solutions for teachers and support staff in schools and colleges. Its core operation sees it placing thousands into work with schemes such as Give Someone a Start and its Sector-Based Work Academy programme. 

The company also provides the right advice and experience for those looking for work by engaging in Mentoring Circles for people aged 18-24 who are out of work, and by supporting the National Career Service through volunteering within the company.  It helps to attract and retain diverse talent for the company itself and for its clients, including women, those who have served in the armed forces and ex-offenders.   

As well as highlighting these key strengths, the report makes recommendations for further action. These focus on setting targets for the number of people recruited from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, ensuring that the company’s efforts particularly reach social mobility cold spots and considering ways it can benchmark, measure and report on its impact.

Pertemps Network Group Chair, Carmen Watson, said: “We know that we do a lot of things well and have many pockets of excellence but wanted an independent impact assessment to inform where we are now, where we might go in terms of scale-up and what opportunities exist for the future. 

“Importantly, we wanted to see where we might share our journey with key stakeholders to help our customers, candidates, suppliers and own employees, as well as the people in the communities in which we live and work.

“It has been an inspiring journey and I am grateful to Justine, Lord Walney and their colleagues for their commitment and enthusiasm throughout.”

Chair of the Purpose Coalition, Rt Hon Justine Greening, said: “It has been great to work with Pertemps to learn about the range of work they do to promote social mobility. Its approach to building inclusive and diverse workforces, for its own business as well as client businesses, is ambitious and thorough – its senior leadership team understands that this is the way towards more engaged and productive staff. 

“Above all, Pertemps is the connector between people and opportunity, leading the way in the skills agenda. Its work with underrepresented groups and with those who, for a variety of reasons, have not been able to follow traditional education and career routes enables it to mine for talent in every community and in every part of the country. It also allows it to match those talents up with the new opportunities that exist alongside new ways of working, with the high tech and digital skills that are most in demand from employers. 

“The best practice highlighted in this report will help to inspire other businesses and I hope it will also encourage it to go even further, helping to deliver opportunity where it is most needed.”

The full report is available here.