Motor business charity Ben is marking its a hundred and twentieth birthday this month with a public reiterance that it’s right here to help the wellbeing of anybody within the UK’s automotive sector.
And it has huge ambitions: to treble the variety of folks it helps, to significantly enhance its consciousness throughout the automotive group, and to ramp up its fundraising.
To mark a brand new chapter in Ben’s existence, and to introduce its senior management workforce and its imaginative and prescient for the long run, it invited virtually 200 business executives and Ben supporters to a particular occasion this week.
Ben is within the means of divesting of its retirement village and care houses, which it has operated for many years, to ensure that it to reinvest the funds raised and focus much more on the each day well being and wellbeing of extra folks straight linked to the motor business.
On the coronary heart of Ben’s evolution is its new imaginative and prescient assertion of the world the charity needs to affect: An automotive household that thinks nicely, feels nicely, lives nicely, and works nicely.
Steve Nash, who chairs Ben’s board of trustees, highlighted the immense modifications within the automotive business for the reason that level when Ben started, previous to the arrival of the welfare state and NHS, as a benevolent fund supported by beneficiant benefactors with a purpose to help employees who fell on arduous occasions.
“120 years is a very long time to be serving our automotive group, and we proceed to be totally dedicated to rising, evolving and assuring that we’re responding to the wants of our automotive household,” Nash stated.
Companies comparable to counselling and mentoring, supporting folks in creating wholesome existence and in managing their psychological well being are important on this business and Ben gives these and extra.
Ben’s annual well being and wellbeing survey, launched in Could this 12 months, highlighted that psychological well being scores had worsened 12 months on 12 months, with stress being attributable to lengthy hours, low staffing ranges and excessive workloads.
And plenty of within the automotive household are nonetheless discovering it arduous to deal with elevated prices of residing. One in 5 of the respondents is battling money owed.
Ben’s chief government Rachel Clift stated: “Our a hundred and twentieth birthday has been a time to mirror on the unimaginable affect Ben has had over time, in addition to taking time to look forward. We’re embracing the highway forward with ambition and function, launching a future imaginative and prescient that may empower our automotive household to reside their greatest lives.
“That is about driving a brand new period of well being and wellbeing throughout our business, specializing in the rising well being and wellbeing wants of those that work (or have labored) within the automotive business and their households.
“We’ve got dedicated to considerably scaling our well being and wellbeing providers over the following 5-10 years, enhancing our preventative help and persevering with to offer responsive help.
“Our care and village providers have been an integral and valued a part of Ben for over 70 years; nonetheless, our future now focuses on the well being and wellbeing wants of our automotive household.
“As we glance forward, we are going to proceed to work intently with employers, companions, and business leaders to make sure the well being and wellbeing of automotive employees stays a shared precedence. All of us have a accountability to take care of one another, our automotive household, in order that we are able to create a robust, resilient business prepared for the long run.”
- Coming later this month – AM’s full interview with Ben chief government Rachel Clift.
