The 3 Pillars of Social Value

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The general term social value, describes changes experienced by people during their day-to-day lives, and those changes can be positive or negative dependant on the individual experiencing the change.

Providing social value focuses on ensuring that the effects experienced are positive and adds value by contributing to the long-term wellbeing and resilience of individuals, communities, and society.  Procurement is key to creating social value by ensuring that purchasing decisions taken by a business creates benefits for society.

To understand the best way to add value and sustainability through procurement, we need to focus on the 3 ‘pillars’ of social value; Environmental, Societal and Economic Value.

The 3 Pillars of Social Value

Societal Pillar

This is when an organisation will consciously prioritise adding value to society through its operations, supply chain, and customer care.  An organisation that adds social value using the societal pillar will actively protect human rights, physical rights, and social wellbeing.  This will be through their own organisation, the supply chain, through the stakeholders and the contracts they deliver to support the wider community.

The organisational focus of the societal pillar should be to always look to address the supply chain and how to combat the wider issues within the community.
 Within a societal focused workplace there is equal opportunity and treatment of all workers through inclusion and ensuring that there is no discrimination.  This will include the health and safety of the employees, keeping the working conditions secure and not overworking or burdening employees.  Businesses will have initiatives that focus on physical and mental health and wellbeing.  This is done by creating an environment where employees feel comfortable being open and honest about any problems they may have.

Both the employees and supply chain should feel nurtured through actively encouraging fair labour pay and conditions and a conscious effort in preventing modern slavery through closely examining suppliers to ensure they are ethical.

Businesses will also support the surrounding communities through charity, volunteering, and other incentives to good local causes.  Organisations would support the wider community through funding activities to improve inclusions, life skills and employability, through such events as sport incentives for local communities.

Environmental Pillar

Organisations that prioritise the environment will have a focus on minimising waste and pollution.  This should be done through recycling and re-use initiatives and encouraging employees to take part.  This could be done by setting up weekly/monthly goals to hit with an incentive for the workers.  Another strategy would be to go carbon neutral, this can be done through various groups that offset your emissions by planting trees.  An organisation we work with annually, Carbon Footprint, ensures we offset our emissions against community projects and tree planting.

Sustainability is vital, having initiatives to combat climate change should be a priority.  An example of this would be to encourage employees to ride a bike to work if they can.  Organisations can become more aware of how the manage sustainability and consumption of resources such as water, electricity, and gas through their organisational practises.  Sustainability should filter through all aspects of your business and supply chain, such as sustainable mining and extraction, harvesting and fishing.  Aim to reduce the impact to the surrounding environment and human settlements by utilising sustainable procurement and transparent reporting.
 Make improvements to what already exists through the protection, restoration, and creation of new habitats to strengthen ecosystems and maintain biodiversity, this will support an improved access to sufficient food, energy, clean water, and sanitation for all people.

Economic Pillar

The best way to be economically sustainable is to invest in the future, this can be done through creating training and employment opportunities.  Investment in innovation and new sustainable technologies that will benefit your business in the future.

Ensure that you offer fair payment terms and prices for the goods, services or works that you offer.  By providing open access to supply chain opportunities through a transparent and non-discriminatory bidding process it will provide economic suitability through your supply chain.

Your organisation should aim to provide close monitoring and support of supply chain diversity, and providing support for micro, small and medium entities such as social enterprise and civil society organisations.

Organisations must also be conscious of consuming and purchasing responsibly, taking responsibility of the consumption of resources.  This will include a sustainable development focus as part of the criteria for supplier selection.

Value Match offers CPD accredited, online training courses with a focus on procurement, bid management and social value.  Our courses are developed by experienced procurement professionals for the procurement community and suppliers, to practically help and build capability based on ‘real life’ experiences.  Our 45 – 60 minutes ensures learning objectives can be put into practice in a typical working environment.  Find out more here.