Local employer engagement: Building corporate relationships

To ensure your local institute and council are at the forefront of the local market, its important to forge relationships with the key corporate organisations that operate within your region - our Corporate Development team may be able to help broker these relationships.

Positive connections with the local market will ensure that your institute can benefit in a number of ways; from attracting new members on to council through to utilising local contacts as a source of technical event planning. Furthermore it opens your local institute proposition up to a wider audience, including non-members.

One of the easiest ways to identify the key organisations within your region is to analyse your monthly membership data which gives an overview of your member’s place of work.

When you have identified any key companies in your region you can then seek out the main contacts or individuals you will want to contact in order to develop a positive relationship. This may require researching online, phoning up the organisations in question or through networking - don't forget to reach out to Matt Simmons matt.simmons@cii.co.uk in order to ascertain whether the team already have an existing relationship with the local businesses in your area.

Each Regional Membership Manager will be meeting up on a regular basis with the Corporate Development team member responsible for their region to discuss how institutes can support the corporate team and vice versa. Key local institute contacts are also now being shared with the corporate development team on a regular basis and though your first point of contact should be Matt Simmons, you can also find the rest of the teams regions and contact details via the 'CII Big Picture' presentation download below.

The Regional Membership team will also highlight key relationships / successes obtained by the Corporate Development team on a regular basis via Network News as well as brokering relationships where there is a mutual interest - ie: corporate team wanting local knowledge / local institute wants to develop relationship locally. Remember to also utilise your council members – they may already have relationships with the organisations in question.

The Corporate Development team will also be visible at key local institute engagement activities such as Network Conference, Digital Town Halls, Local Institute National Forum, and thematic group meetings.

Once you have engaged with key local organisations hopefully this should lead to the basis of a long term, mutually beneficial relationship, which can prove beneficial for the future succession planning of your local institute council.

Following feedback from institutes we have created a document that highlights the benefits that come from companies working with their local institute and how they can get involved. There is a print PDF file available if you wish to have physical copies printed, a digital version and PowerPoint template that can be utilised, please see the links below