Read: Amazon delivering the goods for positive destinations post-16+

Amazon has become the latest organisation to feature in the Levelling Up Goals seminar series, discussing how it is delivering opportunities for communities across the country and how business more broadly can drive social mobility.

The Purpose Coalition has brought together the best private and public sector leaders in the country to identify the gaps in accessing opportunity. As anchor institutions in the areas they serve, their organisations can make a huge local impact in understanding and breaking down the barriers in underserved communities.

Amazon is partnering with the Purpose Coalition on a set of Levelling Up Goals, a 14-point framework designed to tackle the challenges around opportunity in the UK at key life stages, from early years to fair recruitment and from good health and wellbeing to closing the digital divide. The company is also part of the Levelling Up Goals Measurement Task Force. It is contributing its data-led expertise towards the creation of a set of metrics and indicators which can be used by organisations to focus their social impact efforts where help is most needed.  

Amazon is leading on Goal 3: Positive destinations Post-16 which aims to ensure that every young person and adult has the choice of a high-quality route into education, employment or training. The seminar is the latest in a series which considers each Levelling Up Goal and features the organisations which are leading the work in that specific area, examining how they are bringing opportunity to their communities. Led by the founding co-chairs of the Purpose Coalition, Rt Hon Justine Greening and Seema Kennedy OBE, it looks at positive destinations post-16 with Beth Knight, Europe Leader of Amazon in the Community, and Nicola Drury, Amazon’s UK Apprenticeship Manager.

There has been a fundamental shift in the jobs landscape over the last two years and employers have a duty of care to help demystify that so their current and future employees understand the opportunities that are now available and can make the most of them. With its countrywide reach and brand visibility, Amazon is at the leading edge of providing the access, skills and careers that have the potential to transform lives. The seminar provides a further opportunity to hear about some of its initiatives which are already making a real difference and about its longer-term strategic plans.

Amazon’s approach centres on harnessing the talent that is available post-16 and enabling people to fulfil their potential, whether that is in academic education or vocational training. That is key to levelling up those communities which are furthest away from a level playing field and the individuals who are most disadvantaged and need the most support. Barnardo’s Amazon Academy, for example, supports care leavers into education, training or employment with advice on the skills they need and an emphasis on confidence, resilience and self-esteem. Its community investment work also sees partnerships with Magic Breakfast on food security and the Digital Poverty Alliance on digital poverty through device donations to schools across the UK.

Its industry leading apprenticeship programme is open to people from 18 to 60, highlighting the company’s commitment to lifelong learning, acknowledging that it is not only young people who may need help in accessing a job but also women returners, those wishing to change careers or the long-term unemployed. It gives people entry to a wide range of careers including HR, logistics, fashion and broadcasting – jobs they may not have previously associated with Amazon but which its apprenticeship scheme offers based on a candidate’s motivation and potential.

The Amazon Future Engineer programme aims to provide equal access to careers in computer science for primary and secondary school children, offering bursaries to provide financial security for higher education and focusing on under-represented groups including women and ethnic minority groups.

In a visit to Amazon UK’s distribution centre at Tilbury - Justine and Seema were able to see first-hand how its people are the best advocates for the company’s ability to lead the work for Goal 3. It understands the importance of sharing employees’ stories to provide role models and encouragement for potential employees so that they can see others like them in a wide variety of rewarding careers where they can accumulate the skills they need to get on in life.

Amazon will soon be launching their Levelling Up Impact Report with the Purpose Coalition, mapping the company’s activity against the goals, and setting out how it plans to go further in its contribution to levelling up the UK. Its strategic approach is already making a meaningful difference for its customers, colleagues and communities. Its commitment to measuring its progress will allow it to explore the gaps in its data and reflect on how it can do better. This transparency will also mean that it can share its best practice and its challenges so that others can benefit from its experience and develop the levelling up conversation.