How to Create Local Community Benefits with Smarter Procurement

Amazing local community benefits can be created by embedding social procurement. The public sector’s lead is there to be followed.

Socially-conscious procurement may be today’s hot topic among corporate brands. But for public sector procurement types, the idea of delivering local benefits is nothing new. Since 2012, for example, relevant UK bodies have had to consider local social and environmental wellbeing (alongside economic benefits) when awarding public contracts.

In 2022, I expect more private sector organisations than ever to embed ‘social value’ into their buying cultures. Thanks to the public sector, they’ll have great examples to follow.

So when it comes to buying services, how can procurement teams ensure their local communities benefit? Public sector experiences tell us it’s a two-pronged approach.

First: you need a strategy.

What’s important to the business? And what does the community actually need?

When it comes to supporting local communities, it’s important to understand and articulate why this is important to the business – and what kind of support is needed most.

What is procurement expected to achieve from the switch to a more socially-conscious approach to buying? And how will success be measured?

Priorities and ambitions will vary depending on the nature of the business and the specific issues facing the communities in which it operates.

But for local authorities they often include things such as:

• Helping to provide jobs for local young adults leaving care
• Creating job opportunities for long-term unemployed residents
• Supporting community groups and small businesses, or
• Protecting the local natural environment.

Again in the UK, the introduction in 2017 of the National Social Value Measurement Framework gave local authorities a consistent way to measure and report on social value.

It also gave them a way to embed local priorities into their strategies and understand areas of community need, where their concerted efforts would add the most value.

Private sector companies must identify exactly where and how they want to make a difference, and establish their own measures of success.

With an understanding of what you want to achieve and how, you can design more ethical and socially-conscious recruitment practices and KPIs – and start putting them into action.

Which brings us to our second learning from the public sector:

Specialist sourcing partners have been crucial to turning plans into actions.

Sourcing and the community: partnering with a managed service provider

Organisations that successfully deliver social value via procurement are those that know, done properly, it can make a real difference to real people. It’s not about box-ticking.

When it comes to effectively sourcing talent and people-based services, local authorities typically partner with an experienced managed service provider (MSP) to benefit from:

• Access to hard-to-source or hard-to-attract skills
• The agility to flex their workforces on demand, and
• Enhanced compliance around worker classification.

But these same MSPs have also ensured that public sector organisations meet their social value obligations – and that they record and measure their success appropriately.

At Comensura, for instance, we work with our public sector clients to ensure their strategies are tailored to their specific objectives for the local community, such as:

• Finding suitable roles for, and advertising them to, local residents
• Identifying training opportunities to get local people into work, or
• Giving local SMEs the opportunity to take part in sourcing supply chains.

Without these partners, most public sector bodies would lack the expertise and capacity to reach the local people and businesses they want to engage with and support.

Private sector firms should consider a similar approach.

An MSP who knows how to target specific segments of the workforce, recruitment suppliers and service providers will prove invaluable in the pursuit of a more locally-beneficial approach to sourcing.

There has never been a better time to engage more meaningfully with the communities in which your business operates.

Your buying power and need for talent can be used to create opportunity and prosperity for local people and local businesses.

Get it right, and the benefits can be wide-reaching and long-lasting for all involved.