Social value now plays a central role in the way we all do business. The ‘S’ in ESG (environmental, social and governance) is often the least understood and most often ignored of the trio. In busy companies, it can fall by the wayside as being too hard or expensive to deliver. But, as an important driver of business culture, talent development and community collaboration, social value could be the key to winning business now and in the future.
On the other side of the coin, failure to recognise and invest in social value principles could mean you don’t win the contracts you’re bidding for – there have been a few high-profile examples of this recently.
Why we can’t avoid it
The United Nations has identified 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The UK government is keen to push organisations to strive harder to meet these standards and in doing so has developed its Social Value Model, which supports 12 of these Goals and against which government contract bids will be measured. This model pushes businesses to focus on the ways they can support their workforces and the wider community as part of their bid. Similarly, OEMs place significant weighting on social value when assessing bids.
SME businesses are often a little way down the food chain, particularly on large, complex and long-term projects. That means that your contract is likely to be with a customer who is themselves bidding to the OEM or government department. Your customer will have to prove its own social value – and part of that will be to highlight the social commitments of the suppliers it works with. So, by making social value part of your everyday business approach, you’re not only helping your own business – you’re helping your customers to win the contracts you want to be involved with.
Social value doesn’t have to be frightening
Arguably the engineering sector is more comfortable with clearly defined specs, specific goals and measurable outcomes than it is with ‘vague’ requirements. When it comes to developing a framework and measuring success or even ROI on something like social value, it can feel uncomfortable. Where do you start? What activities align with your business? How can you demonstrate and measure success? Finding the time to plan, invest in and manage social value projects is difficult – especially for SME businesses – and so it often falls to the bottom of the to-do list.
Yet adapting to the emerging importance that your customers are placing on social value is not only a good thing to do for your people and your community, it is now critical to attracting new talent, securing investment and bidding for new contracts.
How do we manage our social value approach?
As an article for the Association for Consultancy and Engineering says, SMEs are often doing many of the required social value activities. From sponsoring the local youth football team and offering work experience, to raising money for nearby charities and running volunteer schemes, SMEs can often list a wide range of ways they are working with the wider community.
At Cascade Engineering, we have always been involved with both our local and professional communities. Like many SMEs, we talk about our commitments and support on our website and our LinkedIn profiles. That makes it easy for our potential customers – whether governmental or commercial OEM – to see exactly what we do. We have also found that, for SMEs like Cascade, defining social value is made easier and more focused when we work in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and UK Government’s 12 corresponding goals in their Social Value Model. That way our focus is efficient and valuable, both as activities that are important to us, and as activities that bring value and we can positively affect.
A few examples of these activities are:
Mentoring – our Engineering Sales Manager, Gren Williamson, is a registered IMechE mentor. As well as Cascade employees, he also mentors and supports a wide variety of people in other organisations around the UK who have employees looking to achieve various levels of accreditation with this professional association. He is also a mentor for STEM Returners and supports people who have taken a career break to find a way back into an engineering career. Gren, our MD Ben Barrass and Technical Director, Rob Harborne are all Fellows of the IMechE demonstrating their contribution and ongoing commitment to the field of Engineering.
Professional work experience – we understand the importance of encouraging more young people into engineering. We know what a fascinating and rewarding career it is, and we know that we need to support the UKPLC engineers of the future. We offer work placement opportunities to A level and undergraduate students who have come from a variety of backgrounds and locations around the UK. We’ve recently taken on a graduate engineer toward the start of his career, who we’re supporting with a clear path for progression – a process that we’ll also develop into a standard route for future employees.
Project-related – where we can and when appropriate, we help our customers to develop in-house skills and create new job opportunities around their project. We tend to be selected because our skills and experience de-risk the task but we are conscious that reliance on outside support is not ideal for a core skill, so we also provide guidance and oversight to developing teams. In this way the client can meet their internal growth targets within the wider context of their business, which often means they retain our support on the resulting new projects.
Community engagement – we have strong links to our local community with both specific support and wider involvement. We helped The Ridgeway School, where our funding supported specialist work placements for disabled students, allowing each to be accompanied on their placement by a trained helper. Our Technical Director, Rob Harborne, is also heavily involved with the local and national scouting movement, leading a scout troop, and training future scout leaders.
Image credit: Sweco UK