Airedale school visit
Sutton in Craven Community Primary School students visit Airedale Chemical.
To have no local or regional profile is not a good idea for any business. For a chemical company it can be particularly damaging. Daniel Marr, commercial director at Airedale Chemical, explains why they have invested heavily in community engagement in the last five years and transformed the business and urges other similar organisations to do the same.
Transparency and inclusion
Secrecy and silence are not recommended ways to operate when you are a speciality chemical company surrounded by residential properties as we are at Airedale Chemical. The absence of communication and engagement can lead to suspicion and inaccurate representation. Silence breeds rumours and when handling potentially sensitive materials close to a close-knit community, we knew we had to invest in communicating with our neighbours.
Utilise local media
We found a great way to engage with communities is through its local media. It provides a way of communication through a voice that people trust. Stories don’t always need to be product related or over-complicated regulatory issues. News about company milestones such as an anniversary or positive sales figures show that you’re open with information and have nothing to hide.
Invite journalists and editors to your site. It’s a great way to build relationships with local influencers and will often result in positive news coverage of the visit. Creating a trusted relationship with local media outlets means they are more likely to come to you for comment on relevant issues but also more likely to engage in two-way conversations in the event of negative stories, issues or crises.
Friendly not faceless
Find ways to profile your employees and have them seen by your community. By attending local events on behalf of the company it puts a human face to the corporate branding and breaks down barriers between a business and its audiences.
We have found that by using photography of our staff in regional press and marketing material we create a much warmer profile for the business and as many of our team members are employed from the local community it creates another great connection between us and our neighbours.
Open days
Nothing demonstrates a willingness to nurture relations more than physically opening your doors to the public. We have found that open days have been warmly welcomed by curious neighbours. It instantly dispels any myth or rumour surrounding your chemical production and allows the chance for staff to meet communities and neighbours face-to-face to find out what really happens behind closed gates. The more open you can be the more trusting your neighbours are and eventually they will feel a sense of pride in your business forming part of their community.
Airedale school visit 2
Pupils get hands-on science lessons at Airedale Chemicals.
Worthwhile projects
Every community will have its own projects looking for support and to contribute something really valuable for them is a really effective and relatively low-cost way of building meaningful relationships.
At Airedale Chemical we found the perfect way to provide a valued service to our local parish council with regular deep cleaning of the public conveniences. It was not a labour-intensive task and we were able to use some of our industrial cleaning products to great effect. The village was thankful, we provided a genuinely helpful service and the ensuing media coverage was overwhelmingly positive.
We have since gone on to provide defibrillators in three of our surrounding parishes. These potentially life-saving donations will have a huge and long-term impact on our communities and demonstrate the genuine care that the business has for its neighbours.
School partnerships
One of the highlights of our community engagement programme is the partnership we’ve formed with our local primary school.
Each year we host a group of 30 eight-year olds on site for a day of experiments with our in-house new product development chemists which ties in with their science curriculum. We also show them around the site and allow them to explore fleet lorries and follow the journey of an order from receipt to despatch.
The objectives were to share our skills and knowledge with young people in our area, but also to inspire interest in STEM subjects before pupils made choices about which subjects they opted for. The feedback from the first visit was so incredibly positive it has become an annual event and the highlight of our CSR calendar each year.
One pupil survey after the 2018 visit found that 100% said they were more interested in science following the event and 90% of female students revealed it was now their favourite subject. Almost all (96%) felt the trip had helped their understanding of science.
Engaging with locals schools has been one of the most rewarding ways to connect with our community and the effect has also been felt internally with staff looking forward to the days as much as pupils.
The relationship with the school is continued throughout the year and past exercises have included a donation of science-themed books, a competition to celebrate International School Library Month and involvement in their careers week.
Other community activities planned for the coming months include a charity community golf day and the selection of a nominated charity for future fundraising.
Our core activity will always be the manufacture and supply of speciality chemicals, but our community engagement programme has become an integral part of our business’ personality and reflective of our core values. It has led to a strong bond between the business and our neighbours which is more than just a nice-to-have or box-ticking exercise. To be misunderstood by the closest to us could have irreparable damage to our reputation and to have our surrounding communities on our site is invaluable in the successful future of Airedale Chemical.
For more information, visit www.airedalechemical.com or call 01535 637876.
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