Social Value: all price, no value? Webinar

Tags:
ICRS Fellows Hub ICRS Hubs Events Social Value

Social value is a chameleon in the CR&S space. To some, social value is the same as community investment, supporting local communities and creating positive social impact. While to others, it’s a government defined requirement that incentivises local investment through contracts and is measured through financial proxies. The truth is likely somewhere in between and varies depending on a company’s approach, sector, and level of senior engagement. How can social value practitioners navigate this wild west landscape, avoiding the risk of social-washing and instead focus on delivering impact?

The ICRS Fellows Hub hosted a webinar on this topic to discuss the results of the ICRS Member Survey on social value and to talk through some of the challenges and opportunities with a panel of expert practitioners.

 

Panellists

Eloise Sochanik FICRS, Sustainability Manager, RSK

Ben Tucker, Social Value Manager, Qinetiq

Penny Anderson FICRS, Head of Social Impact, Akerlof

Claire Louise Chapman FICRS, Founder, The Shared Value Business

Overall, the panel spoke to the immense opportunity that social value presents to create positive social and economic impact at scale. In addition to creating this value, there’s a further opportunity for companies to demonstrate their corporate citizenship values as good customers and suppliers in the local community to a wide range of stakeholders.

The panel agreed that taking a strategic approach to social value is the aim of most practitioners, but there’s a tendency for bids and work winning to influence an organisation’s approach. When coupled with the wide range in maturity of practices and lack of standard metrics across different companies and sectors, this can often muddy the water of what a programme is actually trying to deliver.

One question to ask yourself as a practitioner is ‘why?’ Why are we doing this? Because it’s part of our overall social sustainability strategy? Because a customer or client has approached us? A combo of both? Keeping the ‘why’ front of mind is key to delivering value and being able to measure the outcomes and impacts that demonstrate it.

Social value may be a chameleon but it’s one that will continue to evolve in the social sustainability space and has immense potential to deliver positive impact.

How do companies see Social Value?

  • Creating impact for communities
  • Compliance exercise
  • Work winner
  • Value creator

How do you / your company measure social value?

  • Internally defined metrics
    • Set by the business, often linked to a wider SV or Sustainability strategy
    • Includes or feed into other functional KPIs like training and development, apprenticeships, volunteering, etc.
    • Includes project-specific metrics as well annual targets
  • Externally defined metrics
    • Some use metrics aligned with Social Value International principles, some just to TOMS, some to both
    • Some are set by the customers
    • Others are developed / agreed in collaboration with customers after a bid is won

What are the barriers and opportunities?

  • Barriers
    • Lack of standardisation in measurement, approaches, ‘what good looks like’
    • Limited resources in-house
    • Skills shortage for new practitioners
  • Opportunities
    • Scale of positive impact
    • Collaboration across sectors and organisations
    • Ability to deliver localised community change