Social Value People: An interview with E.ON's Benjamin Tuck

Making a meaningful difference in the lives of people and communities is at the heart of E.ON's business. It goes beyond providing energy solutions; it's about fostering positive change, supporting local initiatives, and building strong partnerships that uplift and empower.

As E.ON's Social Value Programme Lead, Benjamin Tuck is playing a key role in the business's Social Value strategy. We spoke to him about Social Value in action, his top tips for starting out in Social Value, and what's next for E.ON.

What does Social Value in Action look for businesses like E.ON?

 At E.ON, we operate across multiple industries, from energy supply through to net zero solutions, and everything in between. So Social Value for us means a different thing depending on what business area and what industry we are delivering in.

I sit in the Cities team, so my role is taking everything E. ON can offer and focusing it in one geographical location. Through the Coventry Strategic Energy Partnership, I'm the full time Social Value Lead. Social Value in action here means driving net zero city energy transformation with a focus on skills, employments, and the benefits you can drive for communities.

Why did you choose Social Value Portal as your partner?

The key thing around a Social Value partner is credibility and recognition. Social Value Portal is recognised within the market, not only as a tool to enable the monitoring and verification of Social Value, but also as a framework and guide to help you craft, bespoke Social Value initiatives, and propositions.

What's your advice for businesses just starting out in Social Value?

Social Value is a broad topic and sometimes quite hard to grasp. For me, it's 'keep it simple' and start to build some momentum.

I think you can spend a lot of time waiting on the development of a perfect Social Value project or Social Value program. It's actually working as an organisation with your supply chain to start to develop some grassroots initiatives that you can then scale up, recognising that you're not going to get it right the first time.

The ability to flex and listen to the communities in which you're delivering work and then tailor your solutions to those communities will really help differentiate yourselves.

The key thing around a Social Value partner is credibility and recognition. Social Value Portal is recognised within the market, not only as a tool to enable the monitoring and verification of Social Value, but also as a framework and guide to help you craft, bespoke Social Value initiatives, and propositions.

Benjamin Tuck, Social Value Programme Manager, E.ON

What's next for E.ON and Social Value?

We've been great at delivering Social Value without necessarily monitoring it. That journey started about four or five years ago and we're part of the way along that journey now.

I think for us, it is going big, going bold, recognising that we are a big business. We have a very large supply chain, we have a number of colleagues and the appetite is there to do some great things in our communities that we work and deliver projects. It's setting the bar high and seeing what we can achieve.

Learn more about Social Value in business  

Interested in how your business can use Social Value to empower communities? Then be sure to check out our Social Value success stories.