Implementing a planning and delivery approach that ensures creating social value, whether through social procurement or otherwise, becomes everyone’s responsibility can have significant long term benefits.
Key tips:
- Develop a strategy or action plan clearly outlining your social and financial goals and how you will achieve them.
- Involve the whole organisation in developing your plan.
- Conduct an audit of existing spend to identify social enterprises in your supply chain and areas for improvement.
- Provide organisation-wide training on social procurement, empowering employees to identify opportunities.
- Get leadership buy in for your plan.
- Appoint an executive-level champion to lead change, hold others accountable, and set an example.
Responsible buyers consider the impact on people, place, and planet throughout the procurement process, shifting focus from price and spend to community outcomes.
Key tips:
- Assess community challenges and areas of need and identify areas where your influence can make a difference.
- Clearly define your desired social, environmental, community, and financial outcomes in your plan.
- Engage with key stakeholders to understand their priorities.
- Establish a measurement and reporting framework to track and share progress towards desired outcomes.
Update your risk management framework to include aspects related to social procurement.
Key tips:
- Apply the same decision-making and risk management approach used in other parts of your business to procurement decisions.
- Set aside certain procurement activities as safe spaces for social procurement innovation and risk.
- Collaborate with suppliers to identify risks and develop mitigation plans.
- Conduct scenario planning exercises to prepare for potential disruptions and assess the effectiveness of your strategies.
Support your procurement team to prioritise social value alongside value for money considerations.
Key tips:
- Clearly outline the social value goals of procurement alongside financial objectives.
- Incorporate a weighting for "social impact" into procurement decision-making.
Provide training to the procurement team on social enterprises and Australian Disability Enterprises, emphasising their unique value and cost models.
Agility is the ability to quickly reorient the organisation toward valuable opportunities. To achieve agility in planning, companies should combine elements that promote both stability and flexibility. Stability elements include setting clear strategic priorities and defining closely related objectives. Dynamic elements include continuous improvement and regularly revisiting budgetary items as new opportunities arise.
Key tips:
- Embed social procurement goals into the broader organisational strategy.
- Include flexibility clauses into supplier contracts to adapt to changing conditions.
- Build contingencies into social procurement planning and establish alternative sources to mitigate emergency disruptions.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement in your social procurement strategies, reflecting on outcomes and making necessary adjustments.