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PART TWO: LEADING TOMORROW
with them. This enables us to build learning communities and to promote and facilitate
improvements in the ‘art of living’. Alongside our commercial developments this
approach will bring further investment capacity to the Group. These learning
communities can produce new currencies based upon exchange and mutuality:
individuals can trade their skills, experience and knowledge with each other but also
work together for collective gain. We are currently researching these alternatives and
how we will develop them.
We are now working with our supply chain and like minded partners to explore how we
can work with them to extend our people strategy to a greater number of individuals.
This work has begun with apprenticeships and our pre-employment programmes.
Our ‘Orange Box’ group (see above) has recently examined how we can further enhance
the use of our extended human resource by developing the type of momentum which
characterised the ‘Civil Rights’ movements of the 1960s, for example:
• We have used social media to achieve society change overseas. We are currently
harnessing support for our URHU project in Africa to replace the use of kerosene
lamps for health and environmental improvement.
• A recent meeting with 69 of our suppliers on apprenticeships began by exploring a
vision of the part they could all play in eradicating youth unemployment in the North
East. We believe young people can also make a contribution to this cause themselves
by working with us.
The pursuit of these cause-based projects will form the next steps for us. We see it as a
way to increase our operations and expand our business, to build upon our mission and
values; and to meet the societal and economic challenges of the future.
Key points
• Values drive Gentoo’s business.
• People are its primary resource.
• Work must be of value to staff and the businesss.
• Invest constantly in staff.
• New ways of working with customers will provide future human resources
to achieve our vision.
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