For the last PPMA Lunch and Learn of July, we supported a panel discussion about delivering Social Value and a more explicit role for HR & OD.
At Matrix SCM, Social Value has been an important part of our business to help our clients meet their business goals of supporting their local communities. This led to us to bringing in Siobhan Goss as the Regeneration Manager, who for almost 3 years has been delivering social value outcomes alongside our customers and partners. She has been working with them to help them improve the lives of residents and their local communities.
Chaired by Chris Grimes, Sales Director at Matrix SCM, our panel included a range of professionals providing different perspectives and insight into the world of Social Value:
Karen Grave, President at the PPMA, providing insight from a HR perspective.
Moira Skinner, Founder and Direct at 3D Change and ProcureCo, who has worked across both the public and private sector driving social value and impact with her work.
Gary Dursley, Economic Development Officer at Redbridge, who has been working with Siobhan on a series of projects to drive Social Value in their local community.
Siobhan Goss, Regeneration Manager at Matrix SCM, who has been working with our clients to support their Social Value goals.
Unfortunately, Deen from Westminster Adult Education Service (WAES) could not join us, however he has provided some written insight into the great Social Value work they have been delivering with Siobhan.
Siobhan started the conversations here, stating that the official definition of Social Value is any economic or environmental impact that an organisation makes when working with clients. Applying this to Matrix SCM, Social Value is about using our assets and tools to give back to our customers communities. As a market leader in Managed Services, our role is to support our clients to help them meet their goals, so Social Value is a fantastic way for our organisation giving back and supporting our clients.
From here, Moira built upon this by explaining how they work with housing associations across the board and local authorities to help support them driving the ethos to give back to the community. Since the Social Value act from 2012, there has been an emphasis to drive more impact. The challenge facing this and what makes these conversations about Social Value so important is trying to deliver as much impact as possible to residents – whilst costs are being cut in the public sector.
Exploring the impact from a Council’s perspective, Karen explained that PPMA members are social purpose organisations, so they are all about adding value to their local communities. Social Value therefore is important, as the services public organisations deliver, to Siobhan’s point, are creating economic and environment impact for their residents. The challenge they face is articulating what Social Value is and ensuring that everyone understands the terminology.
Siobhan added to this by stating that a lot of organisations don’t know they are delivering Social Value, which is why it is so important to talk about it. This was echoed by Karen as she believes it is only by talking and understanding Social Value, we can articulate what good value delivery is so organisations can track and quantify the impact.
Gary from Redbridge started this conversation by explaining how they have worked closely with Siobhan to host several workshops for employability. They were great sessions that were well attended. With the whole situation with the pandemic, the delivery of these workshops has changed to a remote model with workshops geared towards digital skills such as “How to apply for work and network on LinkedIn”. Siobhan added to this by explaining how online digital workshops have been great in some cases to help them engage with younger and large audiences than normal. This, in turn, helps to support more people.
In Social Housing, Moira explained how they too are making activities digital. Technology can be easy to access by allowing residents to attend in a safe and secure environment. Gary built on this explaining that although technology can be great, it can cause access problems, as not everyone owns a smartphone or has the necessary IT skills needed to take part. The online offer is brilliant; however, it is vital that, moving forward, we are flexible to ensure that we can support everyone with activities that are accessible.
Moving away from the focus on digital activities, Karen explained how Covid-19 has affected the majority of Local Authorities’ workforces as they have redeployed workers into Social Impact roles such as working at food banks. The proportion of people we are trying to help through public services now is a lot larger than it was before, so workers roles have changed to accommodate that.
Building on what Gary mentioned about access, the panel discussed how we can support individuals who may not be able to take part in digital activities. This could be due to limited access to equipment needed to take part, or as Moira added, they may not actually have the connectivity.
Siobhan started the conversation explaining how a couple of councils she is working with are running drives for donations of old IT equipment. Building on points talked about before, that Social Value is more than just activities like workshops, it’s important to think of economical projects as well that could help with problems such as accessibility or connectivity.
Karen added to this, stating that we need to recognise the difference between infrastructure problems and the policy issues. The old equipment idea is an incredible way to drive infrastructure change. Policy change is important as well, you can see the power of this in recent actions such as the intervention on homelessness. Here you can see the quick and efficient policy changes making a quick impact by investing money into hotels to get people off the street.
Siobhan talked through some of the insight from WAES here, who unfortunately couldn’t join the call. During lockdown, Westminster have been able to access more learners by transitioning from classrooms to hosting webinars. During these sessions, they have provided tools to help people develop soft skills, digital skills and transition from typical methods of applying to jobs in person by handing someone a CV, to now applying online.
This was built on by Moira, who mentioned that, with the current scenario, we have been adapting activities and moving them online. Although there are still some hurdles to jump through, it is the best way to continue to provide access during this time. From Gary’s perspective, they plan on continuing to focus on offering remote learning, keeping an eye on the future to when they can transition back to face to face delivery as well. Karen added to this explaining that for some parts of public services, they are overwhelmed by offers of help. This is not always good, as we must make sure we are offering the right thing and not in turn overwhelming residents.
For some of the London Boroughs that Siobhan works with, they have quarterly provider meetings to understand what organisations can offer Social Value. From Matrix SCM’s perspective, we can then support the great work they are doing by utilising the resources we have in our supply chain to help them meet their goals.
From Siobhan’s experience as a Social Value provider, when a client is looking to explore how we can help their Social Value initiatives, we have to sit down and understand what their goals are. Then we can give a list of offerings in a Social Value action plan so they can pick and choose how we can support the client and their residents. We then catch-up quarterly in business reviews to review those activities and explore how we else we could potentially help.
Gary agreed with Siobhan, having experienced this first-hand with Matrix SCM and other partners. A great example of this is a construction project they worked on with another supplier. What they originally thought would work well, was not having the impact needed. So, you need the flexibility and to really know the needs of your residents and what they will benefit the most from.
Moira added to this, having found that if you go right down to an operational level through resident research groups, you can sit down with them and understand what they need to deliver it further up. This was built on by Karen who explained that you need to have an internal conversation, identifying what it means to your organisation and how does it support your workforce strategy. If you are delivering something for your workforce that is not linked up to what our community needs, there is a disconnect. Social Value needs to be at the heart of our workforce strategies.
Overall, we had some great conversations around the importance of Social Value. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out in our contact form below: