5 Minutes With…Rachel Clift, chief executive of motor industry charity Ben

Because the motor industry’s own charity Ben marks its one hundred and twentieth yr of being here to support past and present automotive employees and their families, Automotive Management asked chief executive Rachel Clift to stipulate its strategic vision.

Ben is within the strategy of stepping away from provision of care homes to grow to be focused on the health of the automotive family in our every day lives. Tell us more about how that has come about.

With our decision to effectively divest and transfer our care services and retirement village to acceptable operators, effectively skilled providers of care services and retirement services, we’ll grow to be a single, focused health and wellbeing charity dedicated to the industry. Providing health and wellbeing support for all times in multiple other ways, whether that be through online, digital interventions, in addition to what we’re doing via the 24/7 support line, and thru our case management services, we have got a team of specialist provision, which incorporates life coaching and counselling. And that is where our digital platform, SilverCloud, sits.
But we even have a variety of economic services for employers to pay for within the health check and training space. It is absolutely, really essential for me personally that we’re here to serve the industry’s needs.

And quite truthfully, there’s an awful lot of unmet need on the market. To take into consideration our latest health and wellbeing survey, 99% of respondents have said that they’d a health and wellbeing issue within the last 12 months. Now a few of those issues can be really mild to moderate. It may be a small niggle, but actually, those are the kinds of issues that may spiral uncontrolled and worsen over time. So we would like to be doing more in that space of prevention, being proactive and nipping those things within the bud early, but all the time still be there for people if they seem to be a crisis point. And that is just a extremely essential message – we would like to be doing more to stop, more proactive support, but actually, when a lot of our industry colleagues are blindsided by a number of things like terminal illness, accidents, injuries, issues inside a family environment, relationship breakdowns, we’ll all the time be there for them and can hold their hands through that time frame, get them back on target and really, really make a difference.

A degree of difference for us, that we have never really said this as a charity before, is we expect we even have a job in helping to champion and influence a positive change within the industry, in order that the industry is a place where its people can thrive. In the long run I need the industry to recognise the importance of taking care of health and well being. There is a huge amount of evidence that investing in health and well being is definitely value it. So for each pound that is invested in strategic health and wellbeing initiatives you may get as high a return as seven kilos, in productivity, reduced absence, engagement. 
The best opportunity is definitely in that awareness and prevention space. The returns when employers take into consideration prevention and do training, health checks etc in addition to provide  support, are much greater, around six or seven kilos. Yet for each pound that you simply might spend money on support alone the returns are less, about three or 4 kilos. So it screams out that there is more you may be doing to stop things from going mistaken in the primary place.

Is not awareness of Ben a problem? The senior people within the industry know Ben and support it, but aren’t the lower rungs less aware? How are you tackling that?

We should be now taking a look at detailed plans around how we’ll spend money on awareness and what that appears like. But essentially, what we want to do is take a form of multi omni channel approach to it, since it’s quite hard to get out into pockets of the industry. That goes from top down. I take into consideration my role in that, having more visibility, raising the profile of Ben, senior leader engagement, being seen on the market, engaging with a much bigger audience. Then our outreach team, out within the Ben bus at events and other automotive activities, talking concerning the work that Ben does.

We actually need to then convert that into digital engagement, so we’re doing more around social media and email. Email sign ups, particularly, are hugely essential for us, because that is the best way that we will engage with what we’d consider to be potential service users, who might need us, and in addition inform people how they could support us, whether as a donor or to take part in event?

With regards to awareness, we all know that there is more we will do with health and wellbeing campaigns, with industry stakeholders collaborating to do more on specific campaigns. When you consider the the industry’s male dominance and the potential for issues around suicide,  that will be a extremely essential campaign for people to get behind, trying to stop suicide from happening.

Is it a challenge for Ben that ultimately you might be reliant on more people’s support to then have the opportunity to assist more people? What is the balance?

The levers are how aware individuals are of your cause and the way much fundraising you generate, but in addition from that what service demand you generate too. Now we have an ambitious strategic goal to triple our charitable impact by 2030, supporting thrice more individuals than we’re today.
Awareness is currently itting around one in six of those working within the industry, and we would like to maneuver the dial to a few. That fundraising bit is critical. There are such a lot of charities that folks can provide to, but people in automotive have gotten one automotive charity that is devoted to their health and wellbeing. Getting people to grasp that’s critical, and that they’ll play an element in supporting their automotive family themselves. So we would like to double our fundraising by 2030 as well.
Although we could have funds for investment from the sale of a care village, that’s about future-proofing Ben. We all know in the following 4 or five years we can’t have the opportunity to fundraise enough to deliver the charitable impact we’ll be driving, and we’re going to should fund the attention growth we want, so we could have to make use of a few of those funds to assist the income shortfall and to take a position in some fundraising initiatives. But we’ll develop an investment plan to yield returns from the funds on an annual basis.

What can dealer groups do to enable you to in the long run?

Now we have corporate campaigns through the yr, reminiscent of Ben’s Big Breakfast, Christmas jumper days, the industry leader challenge. There are other things coming down the road. Now we have packaged up all the pieces we do at Ben for employers as a product called Ben Life. There are additional advantages for organisations that grow to be Ben Life partners, providing insights and thought leadership and certain fast track access to a few of our services, while helping us to boost awareness of their organisation of the services and support available.
In a franchised dealer organisation the offering is hugely relevant because we realize it’s not a simple sector to work in, it’s highly pressurised, and other people need support that’s proactive and preventative. But it surely is absolutely essential that folks understand that, even when an organisation is just not a Ben Life partner, their people on this industry can have our support.

As a charity, you might be focused on helping the individuals within the industry, a part of which implies you would like those relationships with the employers, but you are there for the people, not the employers?

Yes, however the ethos very much is that ee all have an element to play.

Many modern employers do value the wellbeing of the workforce, surely?

It’s an actual competitive advantage. You are attracting a generation where that is massively essential. It is also about embedding it and having good basics as an organisation. Ensure you’ve got good leadership, strong management that’s supportive, clear communication so that folks know what is predicted of them, that you’ve got equity, diversity and inclusion in your radar.