Alec Reed CBE, founder and former chairman of the Reed staffing and learning empire, will receive a knighthood this year for services to business and charity.

Speaking exclusively to Recruiter, Reed said he was particularly pleased to have been acknowledged for both disciplines. “Without charity, what’s the point of business?” he said. “And without business, there would be no charity.”

The self-described ’social entrepreneur’ has not only supported hundreds of charities over the years but founded a few himself including the Big Give, a website where wealthy donors can choose from more than 7,000 registered charitable projects to which to contribute.

Asked what he looked for when choosing charitable causes to get behind, he admitted: “Actually, I’m a cheat - I look at it and think, ’Can I make it work?’ I choose something where I can make a difference.”

Founded by Reed in 1989, Ethiopiaid was one such example. In the late 1980s, he travelled to the African country, not expecting to have an ongoing involvement and wanting only to test a fund-raising concept he had come up with. But he soon recognised that Ethiopia’s immense needs, ranging from drought to education and health issues, were of such a magnitude that he knew he could muster help. Today, Ethiopiaid has an international presence and more than £25m has been donated to the organisation’s partners. “Ethiopia is one of the easier causes to raise money for,” he said. “It’s the Harrods of charity - whatever you want in a charity, it’s there.”

Closer to home, Reed believes that the current welfare-to-work system, in which Reed in Partnership has been involved since 1998, needs a change in focus.

What would be more appropriate is to cut out the ’welfare’ and do straight ’school-to-work’,” he said. “What I’d like to see is our consultants working in the schools with guys who aren’t academic and aren’t going to go to university and say, ’right, let’s give you some life skills and you’re going to study work.’”

“And we get you ready for interviews, and ready for work, and we get you interviews, and if you get offered a job, you leave school immediately. You don’t wait until the end of the academic year. You take the job,” he said.

If the young person then fails at the job, he or she should return to school “for a couple of months” and work toward obtaining another job, Reed said.

“I think we’re getting the applicants too late,” he said. “Some of the people we deal with are third-generation unemployed. It’s quite difficult to get people to change.”

He went on to say: “The trouble is giving young people the impression they’re all going to end up on Pop Idol or something. There are jobs a lot of people do that are more straightforward than that, and not as glamorous. So you’ve got to get young people recognising this, but also giving them pride in the job they’re doing.”

Asked if he had made his recommendations to the government, Reed said he had but was also exploring other ways of implementing his philosophy: “Just do it,” he said, “and if it works, people will copy it.”

Reed holds the title of Founder-at-Large within the international family-owned business.