Social Value Theme: Well-being

Experiences of well-being as a social value theme

At this month’s “Let’s Talk Social Value” discussion, we homed in on the theme of ‘Well-being’ – Theme 5 of the UK Social Value Model and a feature of other measurement models. We asked the audience to share:

·???????Experiences of well-being tender questions

·???????How they responded

·???????Hints and tips for responding.

The overwhelming view was that well-being is the ‘poor cousin’ (along with Covid-19 Recovery) and features far less often than Themes 2-4 (Economic Inequality, Climate Change and Equal Opportunity). Few people had received well-being questions.

On one central Government example, there was a cultural fit well-being question in a Stage 2 framework response, which did not need to be contract-specific. The company committed to their corporate policies and principles being fully implemented on the contract.

A civil and structural engineering consultancy company shared that a local government tender had demanded social value of 10% of the contract fee and requested a completed National TOMs spreadsheet. For a services company bidding a short-term ￡30k-￡40k contract, the well-being outcomes would have been highly appropriate but the values were too low to be useful. Also, wellbeing was integral to the contract deliverables (introducing active travel schemes, engaging the community on the designs), so there was no additional value. It felt as if the customer failed to understand what they were asking for and was simply grasping for a way to satisfy the mandatory requirement.

Interestingly, we had two examples of MOD tenders with well-being questions – surprising when they had presented their strategy last year as focusing on Themes 2-4. One tender asked about both Policy Outcomes - “Improve health and wellbeing” and “Improve community integration” - and requested a Method Statement but did not specify any MACs or MAC sub-criteria. The other asked the model question with no reference to the MACs. It was encouraging that the clients seemed to accept social value well-being delivered in the country of product origin (not the UK) and through an international supply chain.

In Scotland, well-being is covered in the Fair Work First policy. Questions appear in the mandatory compliance checks section of tenders and are for information or pass/fail. We wondered if social value might eventually find its way into PQQs and SQs as a tick-box exercise. Although this would reduce the effort and allow corporate policies and initiatives to carry more weight, it would be a missed opportunity for serious social impact on the ground.

Useful resources mentioned in the Social Value Model:

Guide for line managers: Recruiting, managing and developing people with a disability or health condition

Mental health at work

Thriving at Work

Voluntary reporting on disability, mental health and wellbeing???

And, for services companies: Social Value Portal Professional Services paper

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