Working Links - What’s our story?
Working Links was formed in 2000 to address the
challenges faced by long-term unemployed people and help them back
into sustainable work.
Initially our shareholders were the Government through the
Shareholder Executive, Cap Gemini and
Manpower. For five years, we
showed that the public-private model worked exceptionally well, and
in May 2005 we’d helped 50,000 people into work.
We’re a very ambitious organisation, and we wanted bigger and
better things – a larger workforce, wider presence in every region,
and we wanted to take Working Links abroad. We knew that to achieve
our goals we’d need a sound organisational structure and investors
who shared our
core values as a business so we could make a
difference to even more peoples lives.
So in 2006 Mission Australia joined our
shareholder group, and we became the first public-private-voluntary
organisation in Great Britain. Very much like us, Mission Australia
runs employment and training services for unemployed people. For
more information please visit the Mission Australia
website.
Through the addition of Mission Australia to our shareholder
board, we’ve been able to:
- strengthen our capacity to build long term value;
- help more disadvantaged people in lots of different
circumstances;
- become more established in markets, such as skills social
justice, health and communities; and
- begin our thinking on International markets through a new team
which we set up at the end of 2008.
We think that our blend of private, public and voluntary sector
expertise puts us in a great position to be able to deliver and
influence plans for welfare reform.
In 2008, we reached the milestone of having helped 100,000
people into work. And the way our business has evolved means we’re
ideally placed to take Working Links forward and continue
to change lives and create futures.