Tarmac, the UK’s leading sustainable construction materials and solutions business, launched its Levelling Up Impact Report this week, in partnership with the Purpose Coalition. The report was launched at Next Gen 2030+, an event hosted by Tarmac to discuss business solutions to climate change in the construction industry.
With Tarmac the first organisation in the materials or construction sector to publish a Levelling Up Impact Report, the new report highlights the areas where the business is delivering significant social impact, using the architecture of the Purpose Goals. Created by the Purpose Coalition, the 14 Goals cover key life stages as well as the barriers that can prevent people from accessing opportunity. They also help to identify the gaps where organisations can extend their work to provide support where it is most needed.
The Impact Report recommends ways that Tarmac can further build on the work it is already doing to promote opportunity. They include sharing its best practice more widely with others in the sector and in its supply chain, the development of a strategic employment pipeline delivering social value, making further progress on gender equality including in its top pay bands, introducing socio-economic measurement and tracking and evolving employee support to address cost-of-living challenges and the development of digital skills.
Tarmac’s Act sustainability strategy is incorporated into all aspects of its work. The Act strategy focuses on three pillars – people, planet and solutions – which support levelling up and harnessing the energy transition in its journey to net zero. As a result of the strength and breadth of its operations, Tarmac is already successfully meeting many of the Purpose Goals, particularly in its efforts to attract and retain talent from every part of the communities it serves.
Highlights include:
- Outreach work with schools and local stakeholders focuses on those without contact networks, using an anonymised and inclusive recruitment process with staff trained in unconscious bias;
- Early Years Support Plan recruits early career entrants, often from low socio-economic backgrounds, and continues to support them with mentors and learning programmes;
- An apprenticeship scheme which currently employs nearly 300 apprentices, supporting those who lack specific qualifications or necessary soft skills;
- Comprehensive employee journey and development plan, offering targeted schemes and courses through its Leadership Academy and the chance to work on small projects to identify and progress ideas to help the business and its customers through its Employee Development Programme;
- Research and development to ensure that the materials and processes it uses are sustainable, also supporting its supply chain partners to net zero, with an Innovation Challenge to find better ways of doing things.
Chair of the Purpose Coalition and former Education and Transport Secretary, Rt. Hon Justine Greening, said: “Tarmac has a huge reach across the country. That means it also has huge potential to deliver purposeful impact on the communities where it operates, not just in terms of the company itself but extending that to its supply chain and to the local projects it supports. As a people-focused anchor institution, it has the capacity to create a pipeline of talent that starts with its outreach in schools and continues with its nurturing of employees, demonstrating that a large business can produce social value through employee engagement and development programmes. Its willingness to ensure that it recruits from every part of the community and to measure and evaluate its progress means that opportunity is spread much more widely.
“I am delighted to take part in today’s event which is another example of Tarmac’s willingness to develop collaborative and workable solutions to the challenges the construction sector is facing. Its people-centric approach is balanced with its planet-focused strategy, using the very best of its research to ensure sustainability and the achievement of net zero within its own organisation and that of its supply chain. I’m looking forward to continuing to work in partnership with them to promote meaningful social impact.”
Graeme Boylen, HR director – Europe West at Tarmac’s parent company, CRH, said: “We’re incredibly proud of the work we’ve done so far on delivering tangible social impact, and that it’s been recognised today by the Purpose Coalition. In particular, we welcomed the findings about the work Tarmac is doing in schools, through our apprenticeships and our engagement with both our staff and the communities we operate in.
“We’ve found this a really valuable process and, as the first in the sector to publish its Levelling Up Impact Report, we hope that we can encourage other parts of the construction industry to take part. However, we recognise that we can go even further, and plan to take action on the recommendations in today’s report to create even more opportunities, build communities and continue our journey to net zero.”
Tarmac’s Levelling Up Impact Report is available at: https://www.purpose-coalition.org/impact-reports/tarmac
