South Poland Business Link

Mission
South Poland Business Link is a private organisation with a strong sense of social responsibility.

Our mission is to support a partnership approach to social and economic development in the south of Poland and to promote the key role of responsible business in achieving sustainability.

We are engaged in facilitating links, brokering relationships and designing, developing and implementing programmes across a range of areas important to the social and economic development of the region. Key areas include labour market development, university-business links, transport, investment promotion, social enterprise, welfare to work and regeneration.

Platforms developed by South Poland Business Link include the South Poland Presidents’ Club, an informal grouping of business leaders of major investors in the region; the South Poland HR Directors Task Force, comprising HR functions of the same leading companies; the Business Process Outsourcing and Shared Service Centre Roundtable, bringing together directors of the dynamically growing IT enabled services sector, and the CSR Roundtable, which networks corporate and third sector professionals engaged in social investment activities.

We are also publishers of South Poland Business Magazine, an annual investor journal which promotes the region to new business. International business leaders are major contributors to the magazine which is presented free of charge to local authorities and promotion agencies to use as promotional material and is also distributed widely across the region in hotels, business centres and airports.

Our corporate partners include some of the region’s most significant businesses: ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel company and largest foreign investor in Poland; Tesco, the leading retailer in Central Europe; BP, one of the first multinationals to enter Poland and largest foreign petrol retailer in Poland; Slag Recycling, a pioneer in environmental waste recovery; Baker Tilly, one of the top ten global consultancies, and A4e, the UK’s largest private provider of Welfare to Work programmes, now bringing its experience to bear in Poland. We also work closely with many other leading international companies based in the region, such as IBM, Cap Gemini, General Motors, Shell, UBS and Valeo.

Our third sector and educational partners include the Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation, one of Central Europe’s leading environmental NGOs; the Autokreacja Association, one of the first NGOs in Poland to engage business in addressing social development issues; the ‘U Siemachy’ Association, a regional leader in addressing problems of disadvantaged youth; the Tischner European University, Kraków’s leading private university, and the Jagiellonian University, the oldest and most prestigious university in Poland.

We also run programmes in co-operation with the Małopolska Labour Office, which is responsible for administering European Union funds in the region, and co-operate closely with the City authorities in Kraków, Katowice and Kielce.
 
Our international partners include the University of Oxford, the Europaeum network of leading European universities, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and the International Business Leaders Forum.

South Poland Business Link is the author of the British Council report ‘Trading Places: intercultural communication in business’, the first study of its kind to be conducted in Poland.