There isn’t one, agreed and consistent definition of social value; and nor should there be.
Social Value is about people. It is the positive and negative impact your actions have on people.
Social Value is a skills and talent crisis that will only grow; the health, wellbeing and productivity of our workforce; the diverse thinking, inclusion and success of a business, the loyalty of a community; the opportunity for new business and innovation to thrive; and the legacy we create and leave in a community.
Social Value is not just about charity, philanthropy or “doing good” it's about the value you, your business and your industry creates for our environment, our economy and our society. All decisions and actions have an impact; following a set of principles, processes and questions allows you to generate the most value for your investment.
Creating and enabling good social value requires continuous consideration of some key principles. Adopting these key principles into your business or project strategy, can ensure that social value opportunities are realised and the tangible positive outcomes achieved.
We enable you to answer the following questions. Informing your social value strategy, delivery, measurement and culture.
Social Value is the positive and negative economic, environmental and social impact your actions have on the health and wellbeing of your employees, your customers and stakeholders, and the communities within which you work.
We breakdown your social value into 3 areas of influence:
What does success look like? It’s a culture of empathy within your organisation that impacts on your stakeholders, your customers and the communities within which you work.
Meeting the current needs of the industry and the communities in which we work; improving the quality of life for generations to come.
Social Value is currently disjointed, output driven and incomparable.
Social value is predominantly focussed on employment (new jobs), skills (apprenticeships, training) and enterprise (local supply chains). Social value themes covered across policy are focussed on the mitigation of negative impacts, concentrate on outputs and tend not to consider diversity, inclusion and accessibility to opportunity.
The monitoring and measurement of social value achievements is predominantly based on outputs i.e. number of jobs, number of hours volunteering etc. Measuring social value in financial terms is still relatively new to the market and uses outputs to inform the financial calculations. There is a lack of consistency within both the public and private sectors in how social value is measured and evidenced, this means it is difficult to show “what good looks like.”
Although these issues create some concern, what is more important is that these issues have come about as more businesses strive to deliver and illustrate their social value; which is good news. The better news is that we are always collaborating, sharing and pushing to support industries to continually evolve and improve.
Social value has become the focus of many businesses and institutions that have all come to the same headline conclusions; social value needs to be:
What does success look like? It’s a culture of empathy within your organisation that impacts on your stakeholders, your customers and the communities within which you work.
The focus has also been driven by current societal demands from the growing inequality between wealth and poverty to an increase in, and awareness of, mental and hidden illnesses.
These demands have moved those within the social value sector to design strategies and their ongoing interventions that achieve long term sustainable outcomes for communities and individuals. This has led to an approach to redefine value to include the long term positive and negative social impact of projects, products and services. Using socio-economic financial forecasts during the options appraisal process to inform value-based decisions.
As market expectations have grown, the social value sector and market collaborators have begun to focus on “What’s next?” The societal demands will only grow as the digital movement continues to exclude disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, the economic prosperity continues to favour those with financial stability and the immediate 24/7 communication cycle of information intensifies civic and cultural ownership and pride.
The future direction of travel across policy, strategy and assessment includes:
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