To date, Britain’s fight against Covid-19 has largely been fought on two fronts: The Health of The Nation and The Wealth of The Nation. But now there’s a third front and its looming fast – the challenge to Feed The Nation.
The stark reality is that up to 90,000 seasonal workers are required to pick the British harvest. Recently over 95% of these labourers have been sourced from abroad, but despite this enormous influx, labour shortages have sky-rocketed over the last five years. Now, due to a less welcome political landscape and C-19, this crucial external labour supply has effectively been cut off.
This chronic lack of frontline food key workers poses the very real prospect of a critical shortage of fresh produce for the British consumer this summer. Indeed, entire industries – namely food & drink – and by implication, hospitality is massively dependent on the harvest. After all, there’s not a lot of Ribena without juicy blackberries, BLT’s are well… just B’s without L&T and you can forget about that perfectly hopped foaming IPA or refreshing pilsner, without the likes of Kent’s world-renowned hops.
In his excellent book, “Feeding Britain”, Tim Lang highlights that that Food is actually the nation’s largest employer. In addition, our world-renowned Food and Drinks sector is the UK’s biggest manufacturing sector – far bigger than cars – and at a time of deep economic turmoil, according to Defra, the UK food chain generates over £125bn annually to the British economy.
The media has finally woken up to this pending crisis. However, apart from a few planeloads of Romanians, so far there are precious few actual supply solutions
Fortunately, sourcing the supply of new – often hidden or marginalised – talent pools is the very DNA of Bridge of Hope, part of the Resume Foundation, a pioneering charity for inclusive employment.
The Bridge of Hope is the missing link between outstanding charities with job-ready clients and progressive employers with jobs to fill. These inclusive employees (previously excluded workforces) include, but are not limited to – veterans, care leavers, homeless, BAME, neurodiverse and disabled, LGBT+, former addicts, ex-offenders and refugees.
I co-founded the charity with a lifelong friend from Newmarket, George Freeman MP, as we wanted to turn our own traumatic personal life experiences into a catalyst for good. In March 2020, the Bridge of Hope and its partner network had successfully completed its first pilot year in the British racing industry, placing a number of incredibly resilient young people into work at top racing yards and racecourses. Then C-19 happened and the lights went off.
The Bridge of Hope, with its unique links to racing, is now looking to help redeploy recently laid off or ‘at risk’ racing staff – initially from racing yards and stud farms – all of whom are used to hard physical work, inclement weather and unsocial hours. Vital seasonal work on a local farm will hopefully help buy time for these highly driven workers to return to their original careers in racing when the lights finally go back on.
Inclusive employees are our second core talent pool, referred by our rapidly growing network of over 50 wonderful charities and social enterprises. These referral partners have all committed to handling the duty of care for their clients throughout the process and for the duration of any seasonal role. Thereby ensuring proper safeguarding for the candidate and mitigating any potential employer concerns. Research from the CIPD demonstrates that inclusive employees work harder, stay longer and are indeed excellent for your company’s reputation. Just ask the extraordinary Timpson organisation.
Finally, on the supply side, we will look to source other potential frontline key workers from shuttered industries – such as hospitality and leisure – as well as tapping the extensive student and newly retired talent pools. Indeed, anyone who is keen to roll their sleeves up to play their part as a vital frontline key worker to earn the cash to feed their own families and also help feed the nation.
To simplify and streamline the farm demand side, the Bridge of Hope has partnered with Feed The Nation. An emergency collaboration of the three major ethical labour suppliers in agriculture: Concordia, Hops and Fruitful. Together they cover > 95% of the indirect labour market. They now offer a streamlined process & video interview, along with a guarantee of benefits and accommodation. Crucially they see both racing staff and inclusive employees as ideal candidates; after all, they all arrive at the farm with baked-in tenacity and proven resilience.
Will unearthing these new talent pools fix the pending crisis? Absolutely NOT. However, can such an approach to source new, highly resilient frontline key workers make a dent in the problem? Unquestionably. Just how big an actual dent – depends largely on the support received to help make this ambition possible.
This is a new – and completely unbudgeted – C-19 emergency initiative from the Bridge of Hope to urgently unearth frontline key workers to help avert a national food crisis. The goal is to raise £250,000 to develop the necessary scalable digital infrastructure, build out a regional network and implement a powerful and compelling marketing campaign to encourage potential key workers across all talent pools to help Feed The Nation.
To support or donate please visit: resumefoundation.org.uk
