Guest blog by Frank Spraggs, Head of Social Value, Serco UK & Europe
I’m often asked how we measure the impact of our social value activities. It’s a good question, and something many organisations struggle to quantify.
What is social value?
Put simply, social value is a way of looking at our actions as an organisation and measuring their positive economic, social, or environmental impact. That could be impact on the communities we serve, the local economy, the environment or the people who work for us.
Social value is at the heart of what we do in delivering public services, but it also extends above and beyond that. Our social value activities help us engage with our communities, foster wellbeing, fight climate change, tackle economic inequality and promote inclusion, and at Serco I want us to lead the way.
Measuring our social value activities
Our Social Value Portal is a rigorous tool for measuring, recording, and reporting our social value actions, whether they be delivered as part of a client contract or charitable partnership. And what you can measure, you can manage, influence, and grow.
We have an abundance of social value activities taking place across the UK & Europe division, with incredibly varied projects – such as rehabilitating prisoners, helping out at local foodbanks, or supporting children to learn to read.
The Social Value Portal allows us to record all these activities in one central place, calculate metrics, measure quality and report results.
Our social value framework
Everything we do at Serco under the banner of social value fits into our framework themes: responsible business, local skills and jobs, healthy, safe, and resilient communities, social innovation, and environmental action.
Our framework incorporates the UK Government’s social value model and aligns with many of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals such as: good health and wellbeing; sustainable cities and communities; and reduced inequalities.
What we do to deliver social impact goes beyond projects and volunteering. We’re measuring our social value activity to assess our social impact in the long term, against social and environmental goals.
So why bother?
Apart from the obvious Environmental, Social and Governance criteria driving any business’ corporate values, a focus on social value can:
- Increase employee engagement, wellbeing, and satisfaction
- Attract, retain, and develop talent
- Make the communities we work in safer, healthier, and more prosperous
- Support inclusion, making for a fairer workplace, and society
- Attract investment – our clients see us as a trusted partner with a track record for delivery and a legacy of social impact
Social value - the bigger picture
The sense of accomplishment colleagues get from delivering on our social action promises, going above and beyond, is not to be underestimated.
At Serco we see social value as the golden thread that runs through everything we do and I would encourage other organisations to see it in a similar way, rather than as an add-on or nice to have. If nothing else, it makes commercial sense.
We have entered a decade where ‘unprecedented’ has become the norm and the impact of global issues has never felt closer to home. ‘Big business’ has the ability to contribute to the big issues – our clients, customers and colleagues expect it.
