Is your company actually making an impact?

Being able to evidence you've invested time, money and resources in making a difference is the only genuine way to show your business is a force for good.

In recent years, it has become common for companies to signal that they intend to do something. They buy badges, memberships, or sign letters of intent. This intention is great, but it isn't evidence.

Tonight - for the third year in a row – Rhotic Media will again receive external validation and acknowledgement of its social mobility achievements.

A panel of highly knowledgeable, external, independent, judges decided Rhotic was worthy of making the final five in the start-up category at this year’s UK Social Mobility Awards .

Whether we win or not, it is an enormous honour just to be a finalist alongside the outstanding companies in this category.

In 2022, we won the John Caudwell ‘Blaze Your Own Trail’ Award at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards & Community and the year before that, we claimed the SME Apprentice Employer of the Year at the BPP Apprenticeship Awards.

Rhotic has a commitment, in its mission statement, to create opportunities for talented individuals who otherwise may not have a pathway into the industry. Our people – at all levels of the business – are expected to play their part in delivering against this commitment.

Over the past five and a half years, our team have surpassed expectations. Our multi-award-winning degree apprentice programme has created journalists, marketers, and content writers.

Our participation in industry initiatives has transformed professional lives, with interns trained by us, paid by us, and subsequently employed by well-known employers such as the Financial Times and Incisive Media .

We also understand that being an agent of change means that sometimes, the talented individuals that we nurture may need opportunities beyond what we can offer as a small business, at that particular time.

But we are also proud to see first-jobbers who joined us subsequently move on to technical writing roles at renowned employers such as Delinian and Future .

Here’s the thing about being real. If you are truly committed to “impact” or making a difference, you have to be honest about the investment it requires It is an investment and it is a long-term play.

Sometimes casting your recruitment net wider means granting opportunities to people who subsequently realise the industry, or the role, is not for them.

But this isn’t a gamble, it’s a measured risk. And the more you offer the opportunities, the better your training pathways, development techniques and positive outcomes.

Bringing it back to tonight, the small gaggle of Rhoticians that are going to the SOMOs will again have the opportunity to reflect on the financial and emotional investment our entire business has made over the past five years in creating a springboard for individuals to get in, and get on.

Our commitment to social mobility runs deep. All the way through the business. You have to be a special type of person to work here. But if you can see the potential that exists in changing the game, that belief can generate powerful outcomes.

Crucially, we have the evidence to prove it.