Q&A: Anwar Ali, CEO of the

THE ONLY way is up

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Anwar Ali, CEO of Upturn, tells us how he’s unlocking individual’s potential, supporting business and enabling social mobility

WHAT IS UPTURN?

There are three distinct arms to our business – people, community and enterprise. The people side includes ethical recruitment, our apprenticeship academy and helping specific sectors to find the right people to fill their roles.

On the community side, for example, we have just acquired £195,000 from the National Lottery to help 700 disadvantaged people into employment. Oldham has some of the highest unemployment rates in the country – two thirds of youth are out of work in the town. The funding we sourced will help to improve people’s self-esteem, mental health and life chances through employment.

Our enterprise arm is all about guiding entrepreneurs through key stages, from having an idea, to starting up a business, growing it and prospering. We help ordinary people with passions and ideas to build a successful business.

WHERE DID YOU GET THE IDEA FOR UPTURN?

The idea came from the question: can we use our business and life experience to make people’s lives better? My background is in the private sector – in business development strategy and marketing. My co-founder Maria’s background is in HR. We love solving tricky problems by getting people together. We bring our commercial experience, our connections and partnerships to the table and we try to solve society’s problems and help people. We might be guiding them back into employment, or helping them build trade and skills, or we could be trying to ensure that people feel less lonely, or supporting those living in poverty.

WHAT IS YOUR IMPACT?

We’ve got 800-plus people into training, education or employment in the last two years alone. We’ve funded £2 million for outreach programmes working in disadvantaged communities. And 127 new businesses have launched in the last year thanks to our support. But the potential cost to society that we have saved through these actions runs to the millions.

HOW CAN YOU SOLVE UNEMPLOYMENT?

For one thing, helping people into work who might not usually be considered. Most employers looking to fill entry level roles ask for four GCSEs, but 60% of kids leaving school in Oldham – and places like it – don’t have that, so they are immediately dismissing a huge chunk of the population, probably without even realising. We ask, why do you need someone with four GCSEs for an entry-level job? What we’re really passionate about is linking values. For example, our health and social care system is on its knees at the moment, so rather than asking for qualifications,

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perhaps it’s better that they ask someone – do you care about people? That’s the number one thing that they need in an employee. We can’t help people without helping businesses. Different sectors, be it social care or travel and tourism, approach us for help. The one thing they all have in common is people – they all need people.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CHANGE IN YOUR AREA?

Oldham currently has £500 million to spend on regeneration, but what if the town insisted that 50% – or more – of all the sub-contractors involved in this have to come from Oldham? That’s the way to stimulate the economy and provide opportunities for people.

CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF HOW YOU’VE HELPED A COMMUNITY?

We work in one of the most deprived estates in the country in Oldham, and one of the biggest blockers to its residents getting a job or staying in a job is the availability of affordable childcare. We noticed there were lots of self-employed child minders and we talked to them. We found that they were lonely and that they struggled with their self-employed status because, essentially, if they were sick they didn’t get paid. We brought these six child-minders together and helped them create one social enterprise. Working together and supporting each other benefitted them but it also created a source of affordable childcare in the community. Today they have their own nursery and it came from a single conversation.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE?

We need recognition that social enterprises could help solve society’s problems and we need support. Other companies should work with social enterprises, not purely to be good, but because it makes business sense. I believe that social enterprises are the future, and if the public and private sector work together we can solve society’s problems. The UK is not a poor country – we shouldn’t have food banks.

WHAT IS A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE TO YOU?

It’s not a charity, and I think a lot of people get that wrong. A social enterprise is like any business and every single business in the UK could be a social enterprise if it wanted to be. Just like a standard business, they can make a profit, but instead of giving that profit to shareholders, they reinvest it into their social objectives and into communities. If they are doing well there is nothing to stop them rewarding themselves and paying staff more. With all society’s problems, surely there is room for far more social enterprises? And at the very least, every business should aim to have a social enterprise in its supply chain.

We want to make Oldham a centre for social enterprises and make sure that those local authority contracts get picked up by these local businesses.

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WHAT’S NEXT FOR UPTURN?

I’m creating a social innovation hive to bring people, communities and business together. The idea is to have a hive in every town that is looking at solving the problems of that specific locality – a connected eco system that can learn off each other and support each other. The Oldham hive will go live in the next 12 months and I hope more will follow.

Create an upturn Find out how you can support Upturn and other brilliant social enterprises and create a fairer society for everyone. upturn.org.uk