What is Social Value?
Social value is the network of positive social, economic and environmental impacts created from our activities. It is the long-term improvement of the areas we live and work in and the communities we serve.
At Concrete Repairs Limited we recognise that, now more than ever, businesses have a crucial role to play in shaping the future of our society. We embrace this responsibility and take pride in contributing to our communities, whether that is by working with social enterprises in our supply chain, helping local people get into employment, protecting surrounding environments, or through a variety of other ways.
For CRL, Social Value is collaboration...
As a medium sized company, we recognise that alongside our own activities, we have a role to play in helping our clients achieve their social value ambitions. It also means collaborating with our communities to develop longstanding relationships. By strengthening community engagement, we can understand their needs respond to the specific challenges they face.
We are members of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, an award-winning, industry-wide collaboration which offers a wide range of sustainability and social value resources and training.
We are committed to integrate social value into all aspects of our work and encourage involvement from everyone at CRL. From our sites to our offices we consider how we can maximise our positive impacts and find innovative ways to create social value and play our part in the communities we work in, as well as the wider world.
‘Social Value’ can be described as “anything we do to make a positive impact over and above the requirements of the contract”, this includes the wider financial and non-financial impacts of projects including the wellbeing of individuals and communities, social capital and the environment ...
CRL's Commitment
Social value can also be reffered to as the network of environmental, social, and economic impacts resulting from an organisation’s activities in an area. It is the long-term, sustainable improvement for society that can be gained by promoting positive social, economic and environmental impacts.
CRL believe that social value is important and is all about transforming services, creating new innovative approaches, building in sustainability, and delivering business with benefits for all.
None of this can be achieved in silos, in single departments, or by things being added on to existing practice/contracts as a token gesture. Rather, it comes from an understanding that effective services and business are inextricably interlinked with the health and prosperity of the people and communities in which we operate.
There is a clear challenge – creating social value is difficult and complex to achieve. Defining it is difficult, integrating it across services is challenging, delivering it with partners requires collaboration, and measuring it is tricky. But all achievable!
The first step in the creation of any social value strategy is an understanding of the local priorities which need to be addressed. Defining what social value is for an organisation in its local area is key. Achieving this definition and an associated clarity of purpose is a critical step in understanding how best to deliver and maximise such value.
CRL subscribes to the hierarchy of social value as set out in the diagram below:
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