How businesses operating in the built environment can embed social value into their organisation
By
Emily Binning
Credit: Thomas Graham
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In the 13 years since the Social Value Act came into force, the landscape has changed enormously. Public sector bid requirements, employee demands, ESG pressures and the understanding of the role of the built environment in both creating and reducing carbon emissions have all evolved and have a bearing on how we understand and deliver social value.
Our sector has long been familiar with these concepts and drivers and has a head start on other industries. But this doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. We all face challenges around how ESG, social value and decarbonisation relate to each other, how to track and monitor progress and how to embed activity in local communities and within teams.
At WSP we understand that our work and stance on social value has the potential to influence our clients and supply chain. To make the most positive possible use of that influence, we need a range of partners, from charities to matching platforms and monitoring tools. Earlier this year, we started working with volunteering and corporate giving platform Neighbourly, which enables us to meet a range of our requirements around social value.
The platform helps us to match our teams to community groups, volunteering opportunities and philanthropic causes local to them. The partnership helps address one of the key priorities for embedding social value successfully: understanding what a local community needs and focusing in on that.
For a company of our size, identifying the community organisations that are providing support locally across all our areas of operation is a challenge. Working in partnership with Neighbourly, we can identify a local need and then determine what skills and experience are needed to support the charity or grassroots organisation from within WSP. One recent volunteering example is a Bristol-based employee providing accessibility audits for a community group’s buildings. That’s an example where their professional expertise matched local need – but this could just as easily be completely unrelated to work; so long as it meets the needs of the community.
Setting an overarching target and being accountable to meeting it has also helped to embed social value as part of WSP’s business-as-usual. And rather than being a side-issue, delivering £120m of additional social value by 2024 is central to our overall growth strategy. This means a commitment to create social value beyond the work we do for clients, through community and supply chain engagement to skills development and much more. Having a clear target helps start conversations and engage teams, and aids internal understanding of what social value is and how it fits into how we view ESG as a business.
Measurement is another area where social value can be embedded and it’s certainly one of the most significant challenges. WSP’s approach to measurement uses existing frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and nationwide indices of deprivation to capture data about employee volunteering. We also work collaboratively with the Social Value Portal to help evolve what measuring social ROI means and how it can sensibly be applied. What indicators are not being featured? How are proxy values calculated, and do these accurately reflect the work undertaken and value created? Are these keeping pace with the wider landscape of corporate reporting? By collaborating and questioning we identify gaps, as well as increasing trust in the metrics we use.
Recent research found that the UK construction industry delivered £1.08bn of social value in 2022 and, as the authors note, momentum is being sustained indicating 2023 will see further growth. But that doesn’t mean we can be complacent and assume this means it is understood across the board and at every level of every business in the sector. This takes time. From WSP’s experience, the following tips will help embed social value as part of business-as-usual:
Bring activity back to local need.
Work with well-regarded and passionate partners such as Neighbourly and Social Value Portal – don’t go it alone.
Set a public target and make it part of daily conversations with employees and clients.
Interrogate measurement and share best practice to help metrics evolve.
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How businesses operating in the built environment can embed social value into their organisation
By
Emily Binning
Share this:
In the 13 years since the Social Value Act came into force, the landscape has changed enormously. Public sector bid requirements, employee demands, ESG pressures and the understanding of the role of the built environment in both creating and reducing carbon emissions have all evolved and have a bearing on how we understand and deliver social value.
Our sector has long been familiar with these concepts and drivers and has a head start on other industries. But this doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. We all face challenges around how ESG, social value and decarbonisation relate to each other, how to track and monitor progress and how to embed activity in local communities and within teams.
At WSP we understand that our work and stance on social value has the potential to influence our clients and supply chain. To make the most positive possible use of that influence, we need a range of partners, from charities to matching platforms and monitoring tools. Earlier this year, we started working with volunteering and corporate giving platform Neighbourly, which enables us to meet a range of our requirements around social value.
The platform helps us to match our teams to community groups, volunteering opportunities and philanthropic causes local to them. The partnership helps address one of the key priorities for embedding social value successfully: understanding what a local community needs and focusing in on that.
For a company of our size, identifying the community organisations that are providing support locally across all our areas of operation is a challenge. Working in partnership with Neighbourly, we can identify a local need and then determine what skills and experience are needed to support the charity or grassroots organisation from within WSP. One recent volunteering example is a Bristol-based employee providing accessibility audits for a community group’s buildings. That’s an example where their professional expertise matched local need – but this could just as easily be completely unrelated to work; so long as it meets the needs of the community.
Setting an overarching target and being accountable to meeting it has also helped to embed social value as part of WSP’s business-as-usual. And rather than being a side-issue, delivering £120m of additional social value by 2024 is central to our overall growth strategy. This means a commitment to create social value beyond the work we do for clients, through community and supply chain engagement to skills development and much more. Having a clear target helps start conversations and engage teams, and aids internal understanding of what social value is and how it fits into how we view ESG as a business.
Measurement is another area where social value can be embedded and it’s certainly one of the most significant challenges. WSP’s approach to measurement uses existing frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and nationwide indices of deprivation to capture data about employee volunteering. We also work collaboratively with the Social Value Portal to help evolve what measuring social ROI means and how it can sensibly be applied. What indicators are not being featured? How are proxy values calculated, and do these accurately reflect the work undertaken and value created? Are these keeping pace with the wider landscape of corporate reporting? By collaborating and questioning we identify gaps, as well as increasing trust in the metrics we use.
Recent research found that the UK construction industry delivered £1.08bn of social value in 2022 and, as the authors note, momentum is being sustained indicating 2023 will see further growth. But that doesn’t mean we can be complacent and assume this means it is understood across the board and at every level of every business in the sector. This takes time. From WSP’s experience, the following tips will help embed social value as part of business-as-usual:
Emily Binning, director, corporate ESG at WSP
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