Beyond Assumptions: How Crown is leading informed, place-based social impact

Olivia Sheridan
Senior Sustainability Consultant
As Senior Sustainability Consultant for Crown UKI, Olivia has been proudly working for the organisation since October 2022. She firmly believes that businesses have the power to drive positive change and contribute to creating a more sustainable and responsible society. Her passion for sustainability extends across various areas, including social impact, the circular economy, the built environment, and nature stewardship.

As part of Crown Worldwide, Crown UK & Ireland has always had a strong ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) ethos since the business’ inception 60 years ago.

We have a long history of supporting our communities through philanthropy, volunteering, and local employment, but since the development of our three-pillar responsible business strategy in 2021, have been more carefully considering what CSR really means to us.  What can we take real responsibility for?  How can we genuinely have a positive effect on our communities?  And how do we do this without making assumptions about what they need from us, and possibly getting it wrong as a result?

In 2023, we began what turned out to be a more than two-year journey to developing a social impact strategy that addressed these questions and is designed to support our communities in a way that is impactful, targeted and measurable.  Working with the guidance of Business in the Community, we set out to identify our community, their needs, and our capabilities as a business to meet those needs.  We carried out a needs analysis and engaged with stakeholders including employees and charity partners, to ensure we got the best insight and advice possible; from individuals with lived experience of the challenges we wanted to address.

This in-depth, place-based approach led us to focus our social impact strategy initially in Enfield, where approximately half of our employees are based.  Enfield has one of the lowest employment rates of any London borough, and one in three workers are paid below the London Living Wage.  25% of Enfield’s population are children and one in three live in poverty.  Enfield council states that “the council, schools and businesses should work together to ensure a line of sight to a decent job for all pupils… matching young people to the jobs of the future”.  Our approach allows us to play a role in achieving this.

Through all of this work, research, and collaboration, Crown UK&I has defined our mission statement as: “we will improve the employment and skills opportunities for young people in Enfield by 2030”.  Our strategy is initially focused on redirecting our existing activities (including our volunteering, donations, apprenticeships, and employment, training & development) to be more effective at addressing the challenge of employment and skills in Enfield.  We are aiming for 80% of the work we do to impact the 20% most deprived areas of the borough, in order to reach those in greatest need.

We are developing and integrating metrics and reporting structures to review our progress and impact over time to ensure that our strategy delivers the best outcomes for young people in Enfield.

We recognise that there are limits to the change that Crown UK&I can generate but believe that by having a targeted, place-based approach, we can meet the specific needs of our communities and working with others towards the same goals, maximise our impacts and positively affect the lives of those that most need our support.

Read the full strategy here.