This month, we review what the CBI's work with its Trade Association members has looked like since the start of the year.
Following the release of our half year of impact report, here's how we have been working with our trade association members so far this year.
After our prospectus last year, we established several key principles to guide how we work with trade association members.
- Humility: Recognizing the unique sector expertise of Trade Associations while leveraging the CBI’s ability to integrate sector views into a broader economic context
- Clarity: Emphasizing the CBI’s role in defining crucial economic issues and providing comprehensive analysis to support your campaigns
- Honesty & Transparency: Committing to openness and feedback, and being transparent about policy decisions when the collective voice is not unified
- Additionality: Avoiding duplication of your work by using your insights to enhance our analysis, and sharing our findings with you where appropriate.
To put these principles into action, we identified several practical areas for collaboration:
- Sharing information: Enhancing the value we provide through better sharing of political insights and macro-economic analysis, including inviting TA leaders to key meetings and rejuvenating our TA economist network
- Maintaining expert coverage of key issues: Ensuring that TAs have a steering role in future workstreams and full access to policy formulation opportunities, enabling a forum for sectors with differing viewpoints
- The CBI as a host for your content: Promoting and integrating your sector work into our broader initiatives, such as our Business Manifesto and General Election Hub, to highlight and support your contributions.
How this has looked in the first half of 2024
Since the start of the year, we have made significant strides in evolving our partnership:
- Positioned the CBI's Trade Association Council in our governance structure to ensure that they, along with all Trade Association members, have the opportunity to be engaged in conversations to set campaign priorities and workplans, such as around fiscal events, future industrial strategy, business rates, regulatory reform and our resilience project
- Launched a new Trade Association Economists' group and re-established Trade Association policy groups to integrate into all our policy work, such as the Trade Association Future of Work, Net Zero and International trade groups, whilst also encouraging Trade Association members to participate in other CBI working groups
- Identified areas where the CBI can add value to sectoral work, and mapped key differences with Trade Association offerings, for example via our Trade Association Transport and Logistics group calls
- Held public affairs and campaigns calls every six weeks, inviting external speakers, sharing political engagement updates and channels through which we engage government stakeholders
- Provided member updates incorporating added value third-party content and highlighting the work going on across different associations
- Shared useful opportunities for Trade Associations to pass on to their own members, such as funding streams and access to growth programs.
In other news this month
The Future of Work and Skills Trade Association Group
Over the past six months, the Future of Work and Skills Trade Association Group has held meetings to discuss workforce-related priorities and issues.
It has developed into a very useful virtual engagement channel for specific policy related questions and input, as well as a channel to cascade messages to wider business community:
- At the first meeting, attendees discussed the government’s Advanced British Standard (ABS) proposals alongside representatives from the Department for Education. The ABS policy team have since been in touch with the CBI to engage with how the ABS could be made a success for businesses. They were particularly interested in exploring our consultation’s recommendation on new work experience frameworks that offer students’ meaningful insights into industry and are workable for a wider range of businesses.
- At the second meeting of 2024, colleagues from the Careers and Enterprise Company presented resources and insights that can support businesses in their engagements with young people and educational providers.
- Trade Associations have also played a key role in the policy sprint sessions underpinning the CBI’s Adult Skills Pledge, and subsequently the skills asks that the CBI will be campaigning for in the next Parliament.
To find out more about the Future of Work and Skills Trade Association Group and how to get involved, contact the CBI Trade Association team.
The Global Trade Association Working Group
In the first half of this year, we have had two Global Trade Association Working Group meetings:
- The first meeting of the year provided valuable insight for the CBI through a State of Trade update and members of the group also helped to shape the build of the Trade and Investment Strategy from the high level ask published in the November Business Manifesto. This is now a leading ask within the CBI’s pitch for a new government, for them to use the first 100 days to revitalise ‘Brand Britain’.
- In the second meeting of 2024, members heard from the Department for Business and Trade’s Free Trade Agreement Utilisation team, and gained early access to some factsheets which were not yet available online. These group meetings also help us to shape our ongoing work around the EU-UK relationship and the CBI’s role in multilateral forums such as the B7 and Business at OECD.
- Trade Association members have been valuable members of the CBI’s new Services Trade Taskforce, working alongside corporate members to shape a collective vision for the next government on the future of services trade. Representations from Trade Associations have provided helpful macro-level views on services trade, whilst also providing specific and technical interventions on topics like mobility and regulation.
- On Free Trade Agreements, Trade Associations have played a pivotal role in supporting the CBI’s interventions at the highest levels of government. From India to Canada, Trade Associations have represented their members’ concerns, providing thorough detail and context to equip CBI’s senior leadership to call on government to act.
- The first half of the year has seen us welcome back many trade associations into membership, as well as some who have joined for the first time. We have spoken at a number of industry sector events, including the Advertising Association and British Ports Association conferences, hosted over 25 working group meetings, councils and network and briefing calls specifically for TAs, and supported the fantastic Women In Trade Associations powerlist launch.
We are committed to continuously improving our collaboration and welcome your feedback as we move forward.
We are always open to ideas where the CBI can add value, both in terms of policy and campaigning, but also in how we support the development of resources that support the wider business community and your members and where the CBI can champion the role of trade associations to policy makers and the wider business community.
To find out more about the Global Trade Association Working Group and how to get involved, contact the CBI Trade Association team.
