Social value is defined in myriad ways, depending on the context, the desired outcome and who is providing the definition. Therein lies one of the biggest challenges of measuring and using it: there is not one standard, one definition or even one understanding of what it means.
With or without a solid definition, we know that the views, needs and aspirations of the community are an essential part of any holistic view. Our recent Engaging for the Future research and report shows that communities want to be involved in local decisions and insight. There is a huge opportunity for using digital tools to inform our understanding through engagement, and to create a longitudinal analysis that links place, design, planning, construction, post-occupancy, all the way back to place again.
The use and application of social value is in rapid expansion - and for very good reason: it has the potential to measure the impact of a development on a place and its community.
Whether you’re using TOMs, the Quality of Life Framework, the Social Value Toolkit or the UK Green Building Council’s guidelines, the impact is ultimately all about people. It is crucial that the perspectives of those affected by new developments are taken into account.
Referring back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, psychological needs are as important as physical needs, and so is the case in social value: subjective as well as objective outcomes must be understood and measured. Any measurement system is only as useful as the extent to which it captures improvement to the lives of a community.
The recent Institute of Economic Development (IED) report, From the Ground Up recommended that community engagement form a central component of measuring social value in all construction projects.
Despite the logic of communities being at the heart of social value, the methodology of collecting and measuring community data that informs social value is sometimes overlooked - often because the process is difficult and can be costly. This need not be the case: digital community engagement can yield highly valuable and cost-effective data.
Embedding engagement as part of social value has triple benefits: 1) An input: better understanding of what social means to a community; 2) An important element of social value measurement; 3) An output: better engagement with communities is part of delivering better quality of life through influence, control and empowerment.
The three following principles will help you to better understand community needs in your social value work:
There's no such thing as a perfect measurement for social value, but some frameworks will be better than others at helping you solve your organisation's goals. Here are some of the different methodologies that we have encountered in projects with our clients and partners:
This is a fantastic tool to track factors that typically deliver social value, based on the TOM (Themes, Outputs and Measures) framework. It is widely used, especially in the development sector, and delivers a £ value for social value.
(Source: Social Value Portal)
The Quality of Life Foundation has produced a framework that identifies six key areas of social value that are required for a high quality of life, Control, Nature, Health, Wonder, Movement and Belonging. Within each of these categories, the framework identifies several principles that contribute (for example, influence is a key principle of Control).
(Source: Quality of Life Foundation)
This toolkit is designed primarily for architects. It was developed by Flora Samual at Reading University and Eli Hatleskog. The toolkit makes heavy use of mapping social value, something that the Commonplace Community Heatmap can help deliver.
(Source: Social Value Toolkit)
The principles laid out in this methodology describe an approach to understanding and then measuring social value, which puts communities at its heart. It is recognised internationally and used by several companies in the UK include in Real Worth.
The UKBGC provides a Framework for Defining Social Value that was developed by 23 industry stakeholders in 2020, including Argent and Avison Young. It can be used to define social value for any project or space and takes account of social, environmental and economic contributors to social value.
(Source: UKGBC)
Community engagement is essential to understanding and defining social value because each community has a different view of what value means to them.
Embedding engagement as part of social value has triple benefits: 1) An input: better understanding of what social means to a community; 2) An element of social value measurement; 3) An output: better engagement with communities is part of delivering better quality of life through influence, control and empowerment.
As the leading community engagement platform for places, Commonplace is an ideal component of any project that seeks to understand, measure and demonstrate social value.
See how Commonplace can help you measure Social Value in your projects