Social value now decides the bid. The hard part is proving it.
Social value carries between 10 and 40 per cent of the score in public contracts, set alongside quality and price, so it increasingly decides who wins. The harder part has always been proving it: closing the gap between social value written to win a bid and social value that is actually delivered once the contract starts.
A paragraph scores well, the contract is awarded, and years later nobody can say what changed for the people it was meant to help.
That is the gap the Social Recruitment Advocacy Group is built to close, and last month the way it does that was recognised by the people who buy public services. The GO Awards named PeoplePlus Supplier of the Year, judged by senior public sector procurement leaders, with a further shortlisting for Excellence in Social Value.
Every contract PeoplePlus holds is designed to do more than deliver the service. We reinvest the knowledge, skills and expertise from every programme through partnerships with employers, providers, charities, the VCSE sector and, wherever possible, national and local government, so the value doesn't stop at the contract boundary.
It is how the model works, and it is the work the award recognised. The proof is in what organisations achieve through it.
More than 200 are now in the network, from Sodexo and Mitie to Currys, IKEA and Lidl, using the Charter Mark framework to embed responsible, inclusive recruitment in how they operate. Many draw on bid support that turns commitments into evidence, as M Group Highways did in scoring 100 per cent on the social value element of a critical bid.
Others use the Social Recruitment Framework to ringfence roles for people overcoming barriers to employment and bring them into work, as OMNI Facilities Management, Smart Solutions and others have done.
An increasing number partner with PeoplePlus to manage their social value delivery on complex contracts, such as G4S at Sizewell C, a contract we support, where the team's social value work recently won the Corporate Social Responsibility award at the British Security Awards, recognising over 2,500 hours of volunteering and support for nearly 3,000 local people.
If you are weighing up SRAG membership, signing the Social Recruitment Covenant, looking to strengthen the social value you already deliver, or working out who in your organisation should lead on it, this is the moment to act. Buyers are rewarding proof, and proof is built long before the bid. The organisations leaning into it now, for the right reasons, are the ones who will have something to show.
Pictured above, left to right: Jonny Boyden, Liz Squire, Laura Savage, Emma Grigson and Rachel Richards, from the PeoplePlus Social Value Solutions team.
