Every business, regardless of sector or size, has the opportunity to make a positive, tangible difference to the communities it serves – whether it’s by employing local people, relying on local suppliers, or regenerating local areas. That’s the essence of Social Value.
But when it comes to creating and measuring Social Value, there’s a lot to think about. Which metrics do you need to focus on to create the most impact? How are you going to report your findings?
At the 2024 Social Value Conference, the panel discussion Social Value 101 for Businesses offered practical advice for those starting to build their approach. Let’s take a look at our panellists’ top tips.
1. Take stock of the Social Value your business is already creating
There’s a good chance your organisation is already delivering more Social Value than you realise. If you’re just starting out on your journey, the best thing to do is take a critical look at your existing initiatives.
Ed Lang, Head of Strategic Advisory at Social Value Portal, suggests a helpful practical exercise:
- Get three bits of paper, each with a circle on it.
- In the first circle, capture your true capabilities. What makes your organisation unique? For example, you might be a consultancy with excellent cybersecurity expertise.
- In the second circle, capture what’s important to your stakeholders: your customers, your local community, your colleagues, and your suppliers.
- In the third circle, capture the societal issues that are pertinent to your organisation. These could be macro issues, such as an ageing population, or sector-specific, such as a particular skills gap.
By overlapping these circles to create a venn diagram, you should be able to visualise common denominators and find your ‘Social Value sweet spot’.
This can help identify the value of what you’re already doing – such as apprenticeship schemes or innovation acceleration programmes – and provide useful directions for new initiatives you might want to implement.
💡 Learn how to amplify your Social Value with our Success Factors guide
2. Dovetail into existing Social Value initiatives
Taking stock of what your organisation is doing is a great start. But what if you feel you’re not doing enough, or want to take your Social Value effort a little further?
Julie Phillips, Social Value Lead at KPMG, suggests thinking about local community activities that you can dovetail into, rather than starting from scratch.
It takes a lot of effort – both in terms of time and money – to create a programme, and it’s much easier to join with another organisation that can take away the logistical effort from you. It just means that you’re going to have way more impact for the beneficiaries.
Julie Phillips, Social Value Lead at KPMG
Contributing to existing community projects is more than just a way to enhance your Social Value without the time and budget commitment of a brand new initiative. It also provides opportunities to better understand the needs of your community for future initiatives.
3. Map your Social Value stakeholders
Social Value is a crosscutting topic, which means that you need to engage with both internal and external stakeholders when developing a successful strategy.
Internally, we advise mapping out key functions within your organisation that will be involved, and encouraging them to discuss what Social Value looks like from their unique perspectives.
For example, procurement will be involved in unlocking Social Value in the supply chain, finance teams will need to understand why budget is being allocated to specific projects, and sales teams need to factor Social Value into their proposition.
Moving to external stakeholders, your clients will of course play a big role in influencing your Social Value agenda - especially if you deliver government contracts. But it’s just as important to liaise with local organisations that can help you understand the needs of the local community and structure your Social Value proposition accordingly.
4. Know your ‘why’
The exact shape of your strategy will depend on your motivations. That's why we'd recommend first defining the reasons you want to enhance your organisation’s positive impact.
- Do want to win more public contracts?
- Do you want to do better by your immediate community?
- Are you keen to attract and retain the best staff?
- Would you like to enhance your brand image and improve your reputation?
Knowing the ‘why’ behind your strategy will help you focus on the right metrics and deliver real, long-lasting value.
Think not just about the present moment, but also about the long-term consequences of your ‘why’, and the kind of legacy you’d like your organisation to have.
5. Embed Social Value into your commercial strategy
Social Value can't be an isolated programme - it needs to integrated into your organisation's overall strategy.
Belinda Goodman, Head of Responsible Business & Environment Advisory at Business in the Community, notes:
Lots of companies start out by having a commercial strategy, a responsible business strategy, and maybe also a Social Value strategy – but the dream is that those all come together into one piece.
Belinda Goodman, Head of Responsible Business & Environment Advisory at Business in the Community
We would suggest first mapping out responsible business priorities – such as inclusion, social mobility, or climate action – and then considering which Social Value initiatives will help you deliver against them. When this is done right, business and Social Value priorities can feed into one another.
For example, you might be unable to meet your commercial growth targets without filling a specific skills gap, or might not be able to engage with certain clients unless you up your sustainability game. By targeting these Social Value priorities, you'll not only create positive outcomes, but also give your organisation a strategic advantage.
💡 Need help building a Social Value strategy? Our team can help.
6. Know what Social Value success looks like for you
A successful Social Value strategy starts with having a clear idea of the impact you want your organisation to achieve.
“It’s really hard to measure and evidence success if you don’t know what success looks like,” explained Belinda Goodman. “And it’s also hard to measure and evidence success if you’re trying to do it at the end rather than building it in from the start.”
Businesses cannot have a successful sales strategy without clear sales targets – and the same thing applies to Social Value. The solution? Belinda suggests defining the kind of impact you want to achieve early on, and using established frameworks to assess progress over time.
Which leads us to our final insight...
7. Measure Social Value with the right framework
Choosing a few metrics to focus on is a smart choice when starting out on your Social Value journey. Pinpoint where your organisation could make a real difference, and avoid spreading your resources too thinly by trying to cover too many areas.
When it comes to identifying suitable areas for delivery, use established and flexible frameworks like the Social Value TOM System™, which aligns to a variety of other frameworks, including the government’s Social Value Model, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and all major ESG standards.
This will give you the toolkit to build a strategy and measure the results in a structured and consistent way.
More learning to support your Social Value journey
Following these practical steps will help your business build the right foundation to deliver truly meaningful impact where it matters most - in 2025 and beyond.
For more insights, check out the dedicated on-demand session: Social Value 101 for Businesses: First steps in developing a Social Value or ESG strategy
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