Catching up with James Birch, managing director of Highways at Kier Transportation, is tricky because he is in great shape after running 5km every day last month for Kier's Moving through May charity event.
However, Highways managed to find out more and celebrate his fantastic achievement - just one of many inspiring stories at the company as it raised over £220,000 this year for good causes.
How long has Moving through May been going and what was the inspiration behind it?
Moving Through May has been our annual fundraising challenge for five years. It was started in lockdown, which was a challenging time for many. Moving Through May encouraged our people to take time away from their desks, get outside and raise much-needed funds for charities that were struggling at the time.
How much did you raise this year and how many people took part?
This year, we raised £224,422 and we had 1777 people taking part
Tell us about this year’s main challenges for Moving through May and what Kier staff achieved?
Across Kier it’s been brilliant to see our people get involved with a variety of challenges. This year, we did a group-wide challenge where we connected the country – this is where we grouped the UK into five regions and our people had to work together to move the baton across as many sites, depots and offices as possible in their region.
It was great to see how creative everyone got and how much our people worked together to move the baton.
As well as this, people were able to set their own personal challenges, we had Peter Ingram, our contract director in transportation, cycle between the contracts in his remit – he cycled 300 miles in three days: from Northamptonshire to Birmingham to Shrewsbury on day one, then Shrewsbury to Gloucester on day two and finally cycling from Gloucester to Glastonbury on day three.
We had people from our A417 contract conquer the National 3 Peaks Challenge within 24 hours, which is an amazing achievement. As well as these challenges, it’s just really good to see people push themselves everyday and get out and about with walking meetings, lunchtime walks and cycling after work – it really does encourage you to move and get out a bit more.
What are some of the main charities the event supports?
We raise funds for the Kier Foundation, which looks after our Kier charity partner. This year, our charity partner is Trussell, which is an anti-poverty charity and community of food banks. Last year alone, Trussell distributed 2.9million emergency food parcels, so it’s been a really worthwhile charity to support.
As well as our charity partner, our regions nominate charities that are close to their hearts and they all vote on which charity they would like to raise money for. We supported 14 different charities, including Prostate Cancer UK, Sands, regional Air Ambulance charities and The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
Do charity events support company morale and how do you involve staff in your charity planning?
Absolutely. We have a working group that supports on Moving Through May throughout the year, and our charity champions who support the promotion of the Kier Foundation are able to get involved in the planning of the challenge.
Our people vote on the charities we support, and when we get a new charity partner our people also vote on which charity this will be, it’s really important that everyone at Kier has their say on who they raise money for.
Did you accomplish your goal of running 5km every day through May – totalling 155km?
I did achieve my goal. You may be aware from the videos, running isn’t my thing, but getting out and about and moving through may really was enjoyable.
Personally, it was a great sense of achievement by the end of that last run, but more importantly it showed how Kier and those in our networks make a real difference to people’s lives when we get together and raise money for really inspiring causes
Kier has done a lot of work in charity – OnSide Youth Zones being another a well-known example: what is the corporate approach to charity and how did you achieve it?
Social sustainability is in everything we do, it’s really important for us to leave a lasting legacy in the communities we work in.
We’re often working in communities for a number of years, so we can see where they might need our support, and we encourage our project teams to do this through their social sustainability colleagues, who we have working across the group.
Pic cap: James Birch (front row left) with Group MD for Kier Transportation, Joe Incutti (front row right) and other members of the senior leadership team.
