Read: Leonardo is propelling the levelling up solution

Research by the Purpose Coalition highlights a dramatic 50% expansion in defence and security company Leonardo’s UK-wide early careers intake in 2023.

The increase is being driven by high tech future projects such as Tempest, the UK’s next generation fighter jet project, which will require a new generation of highly-skilled engineers.

With sites in socially disadvantaged regions, Leonardo is providing life-changing opportunities for young people through its apprenticeship schemes.

Aerospace company Leonardo, in partnership with the Purpose Coalition, today launched a Levelling Up Impact report at Farnborough International Airshow 2022. It reviews the business’s current contribution to the levelling up agenda across the country and recommends where it could make an even wider impact.

Leonardo is a top ten aerospace, defence and security company and is also one of the UK’s biggest onshore suppliers of high-tech equipment to the MOD. It has seven sites across the country, in Basildon, Bristol, Edinburgh, Lincoln, Luton, Southampton and Yeovil, employing over 8000 people. For every 100 jobs within the company, it supports 355 jobs across the UK. Its engineering-driven activities include the development of digital fighter jet technologies and the production of military helicopters. It is also one of the founding partners of Tempest, the project to create a next generation combat air system for the UK and its allies by 2035.

The report identifies Leonardo’s social impact against an innovative framework of 14 Levelling Up Goals. With a strong tradition of delivering social impact in the communities it services, the report highlights the 50% increase in Leonardo’s UK-wide early careers intake in 2023.

The report further highlights the work it is doing which meet four of the Goals in particular:

Goal 3  Positive destinations post-16+

• Its apprenticeship and graduate programmes, the work placements it offers and its academies in London and Yeovil see it providing positive destinations through a range of education routes which contribute to a high wage, high skill economy.

 Goal 6  Fair career progression  

• It runs a variety of initiatives that help to ensure that it retains its talent, targeting particularly women and those returning to work through its Springboard programme, runs leadership programmes that mentor and advise and ensures a work/life balance that still enables progression through its Navigator programme.

 Goal 13  Harness the energy transition

• It incorporates sustainability into every part of its business and every project, with a positive environmental impact for the company, its key stakeholders, its customers and the communities where it operates.

 Goal 14  Achieve equality through diversity and inclusion

• Its Inclusion & Diversity Strategy and Action Plan 2021 focuses on a series of robust ambitions which are committed to equality of opportunity.

The report also includes recommendations which challenge Leonardo to go even further to extend the impact it has on levelling up. These are principally focused on its position as a leading global company which can deliver skills and jobs into communities that need them most – scaling up its best practice on gender representation to social mobility and ethnicity; focusing its community impact on the most deprived areas; and using its expertise to help shape the wider levelling up agenda with thought leadership and advocacy .

Rt Hon Justine Greening, Chair of the Purpose Coalition, said: “Leonardo has always been purposeful in delivering social impact in the communities where it operates. Its commitment to making a difference is shown by the work detailed in this report and by its willingness to continue to challenge itself to go even further.

“The war in Ukraine has raised the profile of the defence sector and the important role it plays in our domestic and national security. That is likely to continue as diplomatic alliances shift in the face of aggression from hostile regimes. This report clearly demonstrates that defence companies can be part of the solution in improving social mobility in this country. Not only do they make a significant contribution to the economy and provide highly skilled jobs, they can also create opportunity in areas where they have traditionally been scarce.

“I’m proud of the Purpose Coalition’s partnership with Leonardo in assessing how its activities are improving social mobility in this country and evaluating how it can increase its impact in the communities where it is most needed. At the cutting edge of technology, it can harness the opportunities afforded by the aerospace sector in particular to develop new career paths for the future. I hope that it will set the standard for other purpose-led aerospace, aviation and defence companies to follow and help shape the levelling up agenda in that sector.”