Social Mobility & Purpose at Aviva

The Foundry – An initiative dedicated to building a digital workforce

What a first year for the Aviva Foundry. Our initiative to help people build the digital career of their dreams has gone from strength to strength.

Starting in Norwich, it has now scaled up across the UK & Ireland and has had some amazing results.

• Over 3000 Aviva colleagues and 200 T Level students engaging with ‘Digital skills for all’ learning
• 50 Aviva colleagues and 6 T Level students graduating from the Digital Bootcamps
• 85 colleagues embarking on their reskilling journey into Digital roles
• 11 companies and 19 apprentices supported through apprenticeship gifting
• 10 colleagues already in their new digital roles!

And watch out for more happening this year. First up we’ll get ready to launch in Canada!

The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood

We’re proud to be playing a role in the Princess of Wales’ work to support children in their earliest years through Amanda Blanc and The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood.

The Princess of Wales has brought together some of Britain’s most influential business leaders, to discuss how, by investing in early childhood, they can help create the societal change needed to transform lives for generations to come.

The Princess discussed the need to prioritise the creation of working environments that cultivate and maintain peoples’ own social and emotional wellbeing as well as a more concentrated effort in supporting the social and emotional development of our youngest children.

Inspiring session with young students in Norwich

I had an amazing time at Aviva in Norwich, where I had the pleasure teaming up with Amanda Blanc, Group CEO of Aviva.

We had an inspiring session with young students from local schools, where we discussed their career aspirations and Aviva's role in it.

During the session, Amanda Blanc shared interesting details about Aviva, including the meaning of the colour yellow in the company, her favourite hobbies, and her own experiences of doing jobs that she found boring while growing up.

It was a memorable experience for me to be able to interact with Amanda and the group of young, individuals who have bright futures ahead of them.

Amanda this will be one we will look at in years to come!

Jack Parsons - UK's Chief Youth Officer

Social Mobility Business Partnership Work Insight & Skills Programme 

Applications for this year’s Social Mobility Business Partnership Work Insight & Skills Programme are now open!

SMBP is a collaboration of over 170 commercial organisations, professional services firms and professional sports teams working in towns and cities across the U.K - which we're proud to be a participating partner. All are committed to supporting students from low-income backgrounds to build their career aspirations.

Students aged 16-18 in the U.K. who are looking to improve their key skills can spend time with 4 high-profile organisations and a professional sports club at no additional cost to them. This weeklong programme will give students an insight into different businesses, the career routes available, all whilst getting involved in business-like tasks alongside other students.

Find out more about the SMBP Work Insight Programme and apply today by visiting www.smbp.org.uk/students/

The deadline to apply is Friday 31st March.

2022

We are delighted to be a top 75 employer in the The Social Mobility Foundation’s Employer Index.

 It is promising that 11% of all entrants were from Banking, Financial Services and Insurance and that we placed 15th.

 But more can be done.

 We urge more firms to enter in 2023.

Take a look at the top 75 employers here. 

Thank you to Sally, Stacey and all our volunteers in York who came together to support the York Together Warm Weekend.

They donated over ten sacks of warm clothing and blankets to local MP Rachael Maskell, which will be distributed to local foodbanks and community groups helping those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis.

Our lovely colleagues Donna, Leila and Alan spent the day volunteering at the Norwich FarmShare, where they helped by weeding and preparing the vegetable beds for planting. FarmShare contributes to a diverse and resilient local economy by producing food for the local community and also providing training and employment opportunities.
 
Here’s what Donna had to say about the day: “Norwich FarmShare grows vegetables and fruit for their members on a 3 acre site, at Whitlingham. They are always looking for small groups of volunteers to join their growers on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. The tasks we completed on the day were mainly weeding and preparing the vegetable beds ready for planting.

"We had a great day, we were made to feel extremely welcome and also took away a pumpkin!"
 
Well done team and we’re glad you had a wonderful day!

Monday 5^th September was the International Day of Charity. The rising cost of living is increasing the strain on individuals, communities and the causes that support them.

Community causes are working tirelessly to meet this challenge, but they need support to keep their doors – and their arms – open. The Aviva Community Fund wants to bring people together to support those around us through the cost of living crisis.

So we're matching every donation up to £250 to help causes support those most affected.

Working together, we can make a difference to those in crisis in our neighbourhoods – and make giving go twice as far.

Find out more https://lnkd.in/e37YTGs4

Eligibility and match funding rules apply.

Norwich Soup Movement

Since switching to reusable cups, our catering team in Norwich has been able to donate a huge number of disposable coffee cups.

They've gone to great use at the Norwich Soup Movement where Aviva team member Abby Lake volunteers. 
 
'If anyone is interested in volunteering for the Soup Movement please get in touch, whether you can cook, bake or just help serve the meals any help is always greatly appreciated - come join our team of super volunteers!'

Isn’t it great to be able to give something back through volunteering? At Aviva we offer our people in 21 hours paid volunteering leave every year and recently our Group Executive Committee used some of theirs to support our partner WWF-UK at Wendling Beck Environment Project in Norfolk.
 
They had a busy day planting at this project which is pioneering habitat creation, nature recovery and regenerative farming. And they didn’t let a bit of rain stop them. Well done all!

Find out more about Wendling Beck here www.wendlingbeck.org

Well done to our very own Gerry Curren who, during his time volunteering with Transition Woodbridge, helped with a tree planting programme.

Transition Woodbridge are committed to combatting climate change and have planted 70 fruit trees across Woodbridge and Melton so far

Richard Gregg, Workplace Contact Lead, and his team, have been volunteering as enterprise advisors.

In their efforts to build a strong careers programme for every school, they met with students from Forge Valley School and assigned them three projects, during which they learned about Aviva and gained valuable skills such as leadership, teamwork, deadline-keeping, and creating a presentation for the first time.

Great work Richard and the team.

This National Volunteers Week 2021 we’re celebrating all our fantastic people who go out and help in their communities.  From providing support during the pandemic to helping refugees settle, our people do some amazing things. We’re very proud!

Our people really do take advantage of the 21 hours paid volunteering leave (pro rata) they receive each year. That way, we give back, our colleagues give back, and together we make an even bigger difference.

2019 Round-Up

Last year, our people at Aviva did some smashing stuff to reduce our impact on the environment and boost positive changes in the world. Here are some of the stats we want to celebrate:

• Spent over 35,000 volunteer hours helping out local community causes
• Filled 1,700 Christmas giftboxes for refugees
• Cared for 300,000 bees in our office apiaries
• Waved goodbye to single-use plastic across all our UK offices
• Raised over £1.1m in employee fundraising

Strengthening Communities:

Partnerships help us do more good for more people.

In 2018, our community investment totalled £17.6 million and our community programmes helped 1,554,000 people and supported  3,100 projects around the world.

We have now helped over 7,000 projects since 2015, exceeding our target of 5,000 projects by 2020.

Aviva Community Fund (ACF)

Our online ACF invites the public to nominate and vote for inspirational projects in their local communities to win funding.

British Red Cross partnership

We have renewed our global partnership with the British Red Cross for an additional 2 years allowing us to work together to help communities around the world prepare and respond to disaster.

Our people making a difference

Aviva’s people continue to make a difference in communities around the world. Over 7,000 employees contributed more than 57,500 hours of volunteering time and gave or fundraised over £2.1 million.

Not only is this great news for our communities, but it also helps us attract and develop talented people.

Our 2017 people survey shows 88% of our people believe that Aviva is a good corporate citizen (15% more than the industry benchmark, and up 8% since 2015). These employees are also 58% more likely to be proud to work for Aviva and 41% more likely to recommend our products to friends and family.

Climate risk and environmental impact:

Taking a long-term approach.

There is no greater collective risk we face today than tackling climate change. If we do not take urgent action to limit global temperature increases to within 2°C, the impacts upon the economy, society and our business will be nothing short of devastating. Aviva is determined to make its own contribution to tackling climate change. This is not at odds with business or investment. In fact, it is a business imperative.

We were the first carbon neutral international insurer in 2006. We continue to offset any remaining operational carbon emissions today. Our offsetting projects have improved the health and lives of more than 1 million people globally since 2012, through actions like provision of clean cook-stoves in Kenya.

This year we were awarded the United Nations Momentum for Change award in recognition of a decade of work reducing our environmental impact and helping inspire action on climate change.

To date we have achieved a 60% reduction in CO2e against the 2010 baseline, meeting our 2020 target (of 50%) early. We continue work towards our ambitious long-term target of a 70% reduction by 2030.

2018 stocktake

In 2018, countries from across the world gathered in Katowice, Poland to join an “initial stocktaking exercise” on progress to deliver the Paris Agreement.

We have also performed our own stocktake to assess what we have delivered on the different elements of our 2015 strategy. As the stocktake shows, we have made significant progress in addressing climate change across our business. But there also remains significant work to do.

We plan to follow this stocktake in 2019 with a new forward-looking climate change strategy. This strategy builds on the progress made so far and the climate scenario analysis we are currently undertaking as part of our reporting against the recommendations made by the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD).

Lower carbon investment

In 2018, Aviva assigned £1.8 billion of new investment in wind, solar, biomass and energy efficiency.

With now over £3 billion invested in low carbon infrastructure since 2015 we have achieved our 2020 target of investing £2.5bn investment between 2015-2020, two years early.

Aviva also hold nearly £1.3 billion in green bonds to support the transition to a low-carbon economy.