Assessing social value based on how you're adding and improving is helpful if you've got somewhere to go. But it overlooks the organisations already doing great work. Isn’t it time for a new approach?

Social value scoring has its roots in procurement culture – where it's been helpful to ask "what can you bring that we don't already have?" 

But if you only ever count the "extra" good, you're missing so much – including the incentive to embed good work as a core part of business, rather than something that’s only switched on project by project. 

And you're discounting the sustained effort of organisations that do good every day, not because they've been asked to, but because it's simply what they do.

An organisation already employing 10 ex-offenders scores zero additionality for continuing to do so. Meanwhile, an organisation that currently employs none, but pledges to employ 5, scores highly. Honest disclosure of good current practice becomes a strategic liability. How useful is a framework that values growth more highly than proof of sustained impact?

Shouldn't we be encouraging organisations to make social value a permanent part of business as usual, rather than a performance that’s rolled out at bid o’clock?

How do we make the change?

It’s the age-old balancing act. Procuring bodies need a consistent, navigable framework. But we also need it to recognise everyone’s good work, beyond a simple “+1 apprentice” metric.

Can we create a more holistic, "net social value" approach, while still keeping it user-friendly?

Industry-specific benchmarks could be part of the answer.

Instead of measuring every organisation against baseline zero, what if we measured them against what good looks like in their sector? We know RIBA recommends 35 hours of CPD per year for chartered members. Are the architecture firms you’re hiring matching this, or exceeding it, already? That should be rewarded.

This would shift the tone from “what are you adding, beyond zero?” to “how do you compare to professional industry standards?”

It's harder to perform compliance with a published sector benchmark than it is to invent a pledge that sounds impressive.

And it gives commissioners something meaningful to evaluate – not just a vague promise.

But benchmarks alone won't solve everything.

Like everything in social value – blanket measures won’t work for everyone all the time.

They'd need to be developed with sector expertise, updated regularly, and applied with enough local flexibility to reflect different organisational sizes and geographies (possibly a good job for AI – if guided by an expert hand?). 

And, of course, none of this matters if we’re not looking at outcomes as well.

A reformed framework needs to give equal weight to what you have done (new thinking), not just what you might do (additionality, old thinking). Contract monitoring and consistent reporting need to be part of the strategy, not just bid commitments with no follow-up.

It’s time for a change.

A social value framework that recognises sustained good practice would send a clear signal to the market: doing the right thing every day counts – not just when there's a contract on the table.

We’re almost 15 years on from the Social Value Act and, yes, there is still a lot of learning to do. But there are now plenty of organisations out there that have outgrown the “baby’s first social value response” approach. 

It’s time to give them some recognition for leading the way.

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