Transforming Remploy through Social
Enterprises
BASE Conference
8th September 2010
Outline
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About Remploy
The Current Context
Our Approach
Progress to date
Our Opportunities
Opportunity for questions
Remploy
Mission:
To transform the lives of disabled
and severely disadvantaged
people through work.
• Non departmental public body
• Funded through block grant to deliver
Workstep
• Two approaches:
Employment Services
Enterprise Businesses
Context for Change
• Rationalised from 83 to 54
sites in 2008
• More than half the sites have
little or no work
• Cost per person supported in
the sites is rising, not falling
• Little or no progression from
Remploy to Open
Employment
• Impact of public sector cuts
on sales
Approach
• We researched the differences between Remploy and
Social Firms model
• We identified internal and external champions
• We identified 5 Remploy sites to test the model:
Aberdeen, Worksop, Bridgend, Haringey, Poole
• We employed dedicated, entrepreneurial management
• We are developing individual site propositions according
to local skills and markets
• We are exploring a number of different business models
Governance and Structures
Social Enterprise 1
Remploy Site
Social Enterprise 2
Social Enterprise 3
•Nationally Driven
•Centrally loaded
•Centrally controlled
•Strong Governance
•Part of Remploy structure and
systems
•Conformance culture
•Locally Driven
•Flexible,can do, customer focussed
culture
•Services and systems appropriate to
business and size and legal compliance
•Reduced overhead costs
•High local involvement
•Increasingly independent from
Remploy systems/processes
Progress to Date
• New Business and Governance model developed and
is currently being implemented (within Remploy
constraints)
• New site managers recruited
• Funding level remains flat at 09/10 budget for 10/11
• A Number of new enterprise opportunities identified
and implemented across the 5 sites
• We have identified the first 4 individual SE businesses
achieving minimum 50% commercial revenue, with a
minimum of 25% disabled people
Progress to date
First 4 businesses running to Social Firms model:
Full Year Forecast
Commercial
Sales
WS Tariff
Funding
GIA
Funding
%
No.
employees
Disabled
Employees
Aberdeen Textiles
£98,000
£28,800
£40,200
59%
6
100%
Bridgend Automotive
£760,000
£110,400
£97,363
79%
26
65%
WHALE Training
£48,000
£9,600
£8,600
73%
3
66%
EMA
£65,000
£14,400
£32,600
58%
4
75%
Next Steps
• As businesses become viable we can talk to
employees about business ownership
• We could offer this approach to more Remploy sites
• We can share our lessons learned with other sheltered
workshops
• We can use the expertise and experience gained to
support disabled and disadvantaged people set up their
own businesses across the UK without having to use a
Remploy site and outside of Remploy ownership
Questions
?