Today we're talking to Sarah Stone, Founder & Director at Samtaler. Sarah shares her views on social value, why she started Samtaler and where to begin on your social value journey.

Today we're talking to Chris White, the MP behind the Social Value Act that began life in 2010. Find out why the legislation is so vague; what role Labour's Hazel Blears played; and how it almost didn't come to pass as a Private Members Bill. We also discussed how the Act might come into its own post-Brexit.

If you’re a private sector organisation, good social value is about thinking about how you operate and what non-economic value you can create for your own stakeholders as part of your operations. These stakeholders can be external customers, such as the communities you serve or the people living in the places where you operate, but they also include internal stakeholders - one of the most important groups of which is your staff.

The public sector is one of the last to adopt new technologies, but what if it became an early adopter? The impact could be transformational, with a trillion pounds spent on procurement annually.

Rebuilding trust amongst consumers about the construction sector’s ability to deliver on its promises is a wider and ongoing challenge, and until its addressed, it won’t matter how much social value construction projects create. Having said that, the problem isn’t that construction firms don’t want to do the right thing; they often don’t know what to do or how to do it well.

Here are ten practical ways that construction companies can create genuine value for society as well as build economic value for their company:

Towards the end of 2020, the Ministry of Justice changed legislation to remove some ex-offenders employment barriers. Yet there is still a massive stigma around employing people with a criminal record; just 17% of ex-offenders manage to get a job within a year of release. If real change is going to happen, it needs to occur in the boardroom, not the courtroom.

More than ten million people volunteered in their community during the Covid lockdown, yet as the pandemic rumbles on, it’s easy to see how volunteering might become the last thing on your to-do list. When times are tough, and your life is increasingly busy, why should you be the one to give up your time, or the time of your employees, to volunteer? Because volunteering is not just about helping others.

Frank discusses how COVID-19 has uncovered the fragility of some supply chains, how buying from local businesses and social enterprises can help mitigate that risk, SAP's own approach to a more ethical supply chain and why he is hopeful that other large companies will follow suit.

If done correctly, it can enhance the commercial value of your company. But, on the other hand, it can be a costly, damaging exercise that can blow up in your face. So how do you do it properly?

It can be hard to move from talking about something to doing it, especially when you work for a large or complex organisation. Depending on your workplace culture and hierarchy, your passion and drive to create more social value might lead to frustration than action. But there are things that you can be doing, however small, that could influence genuine change.

From 1st January 2021, Social Value becomes mandatory in all Central Government procurement. This article will explore why the new model is so important and why private sector organisations should embrace it.

Climate change is a global issue affecting every single one of us, which means it's no surprise that it sits alongside ‘economic inequality’, ‘wellbeing’, ‘equal opportunities’ and ‘supporting communities most impacted by Covid’ as one of five priorities that UK central government departments will be expecting to see their suppliers address in their bids from January 2021.