In 2023, Mars UK created more than £88m in Social Value across its three UK consumer packaged goods businesses - and they're just getting started!
We sat down with Mars Inc's UK Corporate Affairs Director Naomi Jones to talk about their approach to Social Value, their partnership with Social Value Portal, and what they've learned so far.
What does Social Value in Action look like at Mars Inc?
I think the big thing for the food and beverages industry - a £134 billion industry a year in the UK alone - is moving together.
The private sector's been a bit slower to come on board with the Social Value movement, whereas the public sector has been involved for a while.
But we need the private sector to get involved in order to really realise a Social Value Economy, where government and the public and private sectors all work together.
So for us, it's about us learning from each other, sharing and not just going as one company. What we want to do is to create a movement where all of those in our various private sector industries go together.
How does Social Value fit into your ESG strategy?
Mars is the largest family-owned business in the world - we're going into our sixth generation of the Mars family.
People think of the Mars bar and Snickers and M&Ms, but we also have a massive business pet food business and produce food products from Dolmio's sauce to Ben's Original, and we employ 140,000 employees globally.
So we're obviously an organisation that takes its ESG program extremely seriously, and has a very thorough and developed science-based program with purpose at the heart of everything we do.
But here it's about how we take those big global commitments and bring it into the countries in which we operate and work with others to collaborate on those efforts.
So in the UK, we have a really unique opportunity with Social Value to work together with the public sector and the private sector to collaborate on a Social Value Economy.
So for us, that's what it's all about. We have our global program, our commitments and a lot of work that we're doing - how do we bring that best practice into countries like the UK, learn from others, and collaborate with industry?
How do you make Social Value measurable and reportable for stakeholders and investors?
Before we even started the measuring, we did nine months of sort of work internally - talking to everybody, aligning everybody, getting feedback.
We didn't want this to be a project on the side. We wanted everybody to be involved, not just the corporate affairs or sustainability teams.
Then it was about building the program and the measurement system with our partner in Social Value Portal. Not just rushing straight to the solution, but really working on the problem together and shaping what it looked like for the business.
And now we're taking a true triple bottom line approach, where it's threaded through every conversation, every discussion, every decision has been fundamental. When you use the reporting and measurement system, you can really genuinely show how integrated it is through everything that you're doing as a business.
Social Value for businesses: What's your advice for starting out?
Particularly for the private sector, working with others and looking at other industries where it's gone really well is really import
We're partnering with Social Value Portal and the National Social Value Taskforce to create a task group where others in the food and beverage industry can work together.
If you've not done it before, join a task group, get involved and learn and absorb before you start the work - because it's all about collaboration. And there is lots of help out there to help you shape your programs.
Before I worked in this industry, I worked in waste management, which is where my huge passion for Social Value comes from. And it took one company to start, and everyone followed and learned and shaped things together.
That's what I've learned about the power of Social Value: if you go together as an industry, that's where the connections and the magic happen.
Why did you choose Social Value Portal as your partner?
One, because of the Social Value TOM System™, a really well recognised and fantastic framework and system.
But what we really loved about working with Social Value Portal was that we were coming in as a brand new industry, and it was a real collaborative effort to look at what Social Value actually meant within the food and beverages industry. How did we really accurately measure it? How did we kind of make it meaningful?
So there was a huge amount of partnership, working and collaboration. And that's what was really important to us.
What we really loved about working with Social Value Portal was that we were coming in as a brand new industry, and it was a real collaborative effort to look at what Social Value actually meant within the food and beverages industry.
Naomi Jones, UK Corporate Affairs Director,
Mars Inc
What is next for Mars Inc and Social Value?
This is our first year of reporting, so it's important for us to look at the results and our figures, working on continual integration of Social Value within our business. It's really important to get it done right and properly.
The second aspect is: How do we now create a movement throughout our industry, get others involved, and share our learnings? This is a big focus for us, working together as an industry to learn from each other.
Extra resources for Social Value in business
Want to understand how Social Value fits into your ESG programme? Explore our in-depth guide: Creating Real Social Value in the CSRD Era
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