Social Value: Embedding, Measuring,
and Communicating Impact
Across the UK, businesses are under growing pressure to demonstrate the social impact of their operations and value chain, from fair labour practices and inclusion to community wellbeing and supply chain resilience. With investors, customers, and regulators demanding greater transparency, it is a critical time to advance how your organisation is embedding, measuring, and communicating social impact.
Many organisations are still working out how to move from high-level commitment to operational practice. Social value provides the tools to make that shift. It provides businesses with the frameworks, measurement methods, and business language needed to embed social considerations into procurement, governance, and stakeholder engagement, and to communicate the difference they are making with confidence and credibility.
Once associated primarily with public procurement and the Social Value Act, social value is now emerging as a broader business tool, one that helps organisations make sense of, take responsibility for, and credibly demonstrate their impact.
The series consists of four webinars and two closed-door roundtables which will equip participants with practical tools, real-world case studies, and expert insight they can put into practice immediately, building the confidence and capability to operationalise social sustainability through a social value lens, wherever they are starting from.
Past Sessions
Webinar 3
Embedding Social Value Across Governance Structures
Wednesday 04 November 2026 - 10:00 - 11:30 GMT
This session examines how organisations can move beyond isolated sustainability initiatives to make social value a permanent and systemic feature of how they operate, with clear ownership, decision-making frameworks, and measurement embedded throughout.
SPEAKERS
Lauren Bailey
Head of Social Value
Ridge and Partners LLP
Lauren Bailey is a senior social value and sustainability leader with over 13 years’ experience specialising in embedding social impact into major regeneration, infrastructure and master planning programmes.
With experience across the UK and overseas territories, she advises public and private sector clients on social value strategy, stakeholder engagement and place-based impact, with particular expertise in integrating socio-economic outcomes from the earliest stages of design and development.
Her work is focused on ensuring sustainability delivers measurable, meaningful and lasting value for people and places.
Caron Dunlop
Regional Head of Social Value
Mott MacDonald
Caron Dunlop is Regional Head of Social Value for Mott MacDonald in the UK and Europe, with more than 15 years’ experience leading change across infrastructure and construction. She translates responsible business ambitions into practical strategies, governance and delivery models that create measurable value for people, communities and the environment.
As the architect of the UK and Europe responsible business approach, Caron has strengthened how social value and CSR are understood, embedded and reported. She connects executive ambition with delivery, aligning leaders, business units, clients and supply chains around shared priorities. Through inclusive leadership, clear accountability and evidence-based reporting, she builds ownership, improves decision-making and embeds lasting change. Caron is passionate about showing how purposeful change can strengthen business performance while delivering sustainable social impact.
Elizabeth Heath
Head of Social Impact and Social Value
Severn Trent
Elizabeth developed and is now delivering Severn Trent’s ambitious 10-year social impact strategy to support 100,000 people across the region who are in, or at risk of, water poverty. She introduced Social Value to measure impact which now forms part of the executive remuneration framework. She also sets strategy and direction for Severn Trent's corporate volunteering programme across people, place and environment.
Webinar 4
Measuring and Communicating Impact
Wednesday 18 November 2026 - 13:00 - 14:30 GMT
This session provides practical guidance on navigating the social value reporting landscape, selecting appropriate measurement approaches, and communicating performance effectively.
SPEAKERS
Charles Smith
Assistant Vice President - Responsible Business & Integration
Crown Agents Bank
Charles Smith is a Responsible Business and sustainability leader at Crown Agents Bank, where he has helped build the bank’s Responsible Business function across reporting, policy, ratings and integration. He manages CAB’s ESG ratings, including achieving EcoVadis Platinum for two consecutive years, and developed its Sustainability and Human Rights Categorisation within Transaction Monitoring. He is also leading the development of an innovative Social Impact Scorecard that embeds SDG aligned development impact into client onboarding and commercial decision making.
Eleanor Boyce
Social Value Advisory Technical Lead
Arup
Eleanor is Technical Lead for Arup’s Social Value Advisory team in the UK. She has over 10 years’ experience working with major clients from markets including energy, water, transport, and property. She has extensive experience developing and delivering strategies that create measurable social, economic, and environmental impact. Eleanor is skilled in stakeholder engagement, social impact measurement, and embedding social value across projects and organisations to deliver meaningful and lasting outcomes.
Why Participate?
- Build the confidence and business case to move social sustainability commitments from aspiration to operational reality;
- Learn how to bring together disconnected activity across CSR, ESG, community investment and employee engagement into a coherent strategy;
- Gain practical social value tools and frameworks to embed, measure and communicate social impact across your organisation;
- Strengthen your approach to integrating social value into procurement, governance and day-to-day decision-making;
- Learn from expert speakers and connect with a growing community of practitioners applying social value tools across sectors
Who Should Attend?
Sustainability and ESG professionals, HR directors, social impact practitioners, supply chain managers, human rights and compliance leads, and senior decision-makers with operational responsibility for embedding social sustainability within their organisation. Open to both UN Global Compact Network UK members and non-members at no cost, and suitable for those new to social value as well as those looking to deepen existing practice.
ROUNDTABLES - MEMBERS ONLY
Deep-Dive Roundtables
Building on the foundations established through the webinar series, we are pleased to offer a programme of thematic deep-dive roundtables for UN Global Compact Network UK members. These closed-door, in-person sessions bring together a small group of senior practitioners for a peer-led discussion that provides an opportunity to explore specific dimensions of social value in greater depth.
Roundtable attendance is exclusively for UN Global Compact Network UK members. To express your interest click here.
Past Speakers:
Jools Townsend
CEO
Institute for Social Value
Jools is the chief executive of the Institute for Social Value, a not-for-profit organisation that exists to champion and advance social value. ISV is the UK’s membership body for professionals, organisations and change-makers striving to bring societal impact to the heart of decision-making, policy and practice. ISV supports and empowers 600 professionals and 75 organisations, while delivering policy and advocacy work to influence wider change for the good of people, places and our shared future.
Jools has 23 years’ experience in third sector leadership, policy and communications roles, developing organisations and networks, and driving positive societal change. Jools joined ISV after nearly a decade leading and developing Community Rail Network, a membership body for 400 community-based organisations and voluntary groups, aiming to help communities get maximum value from railways, stations and transport.
Prior to this, she spearheaded high-profile national campaigns and community engagement programmes at Brake, the road safety charity, and headed up communications and policy functions at family charity Better Start Bradford and housing association East Thames Group. She’s held numerous local voluntary roles, from chairing a new community garden group, to being a parish councillor, and is currently a trustee for the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations.
Jools holds a Master’s Degree in Political Communication and Bachelor’s in English Language and Literature.
Jools is passionate about empowering communities, the third sector, promoting sustainable development, and enjoying the great outdoors.
Marlo Keno Geldon
Senior ESG Programme & Insights Lead
Hays
Marlo is the Senior ESG Programme & Insights Lead Europe at Hays, where he leads the European ESG agenda and support the execution of the global ESG strategy. His role focuses on ESG governance, strategy execution, board reporting, and translating global priorities into practical programmes and roadmaps across the business.
He has global responsibility for Social Value, including the development of frameworks, governance, and measurement approaches that help create positive societal impact through workforce outcomes. With experience across both the staffing and logistics sectors, he specialises in ESG strategy, sustainability reporting, governance, and organisational transformation.
Professor Jo Meehan
Professor of Responsible Procurement and the founding Director of the Centre for Sustainable Business
University of Liverpool’s Management School
Jo’s research centres on modern slavery in supply chains, social value in public procurement, and the role of power in commercial relationships. She works closely with government bodies providing evidence to support responsible procurement legislation, guidance, and standards and was recognised in 2025 in the UK’s Top 50 Net Zero list. Her work explores commercial practices that allow social inequalities and environmental harm to persist, and crucially, what might be done to enable systemic change. Her work has won numerous international awards, and has been referenced by the World Bank, the UN, the WHO, the UK Government, CIPS, and numerous corporate organisations. Prior to joining academia, Jo had extensive procurement experience in the private sector working for a global blue-chip business.
Paul Vicario
Social Value Specialist
GM Business Growth Hub
Paul has 7 years of experience in the social value field, initially working for construction companies on public sector contracts across the North West of England. He supported bid teams with successful tender submissions and helped embed and deliver social value within project teams. He has worked for the GM Business Growth Hub for the last 3 years supporting businesses across all sectors to help them understand social value, it’s role in procurement, how to measure social value and providing guidance on bid submissions which have later proven to be successful.
Amelle Mestari
Procurement & CSR Director
Equans
Amelle Mestari is CSR Director at Equans UK & Ireland, leading the company’s sustainability, social value and corporate responsibility agenda. She is responsible for strategy across Net Zero, responsible procurement, supply chain sustainability and Scope 3 emissions reduction, supporting positive environmental, social and business outcomes for clients, communities and the wider business.
Passionate about embedding sustainability into everyday decision-making, Amelle has a strong track record of driving transformational change and creating lasting value through responsible business practices. An active industry contributor, she regularly supports mentoring, speaking engagements and professional networks, with a particular interest in diversity, inclusion, talent development and social impact.
Charlie Simpson
Chief Operating Officer
Cowshed
Charlie Simpson is Chief Operating Officer at Cowshed, an award-winning, fully integrated communications agency based in Cardiff. Having spent the first decade of her career working in advertising agencies in London and New York, Charlie brings extensive agency experience, a love of people and strong belief in the value of purposeful processes to her role.
Cowshed believes that in a changing world its work should mean something. Get it right and communications can change communities and even society. If that isn’t worth working hard for, nothing is.
Charlie is responsible for ensuring that this sense of purpose runs through how Cowshed operates, from the contracts it enters into to the processes that enable its people and partners to thrive. She leads Cowshed’s approach to delivering social value across contracts including Welsh Government and contributes to funded research and development projects focused on making the creative industries more accessible, inclusive and representative.
Richard Carroll
Head of Procurement, Sales and Business Services
Durham County Council
Richard Carroll is Head of Procurement, Sales and Business Services at Durham County Council and Chair of the award-winning County Durham Pound programme, which brings together anchor institutions and partners to maximise the economic, social and environmental impact of spending across County Durham. A strong advocate for social value, Richard has helped position Durham at the forefront of place-based procurement, with a particular focus on strengthening local supply chains and using procurement as a lever to deliver wider outcomes for communities and the local economy. He is a regular speaker at regional and national events and contributes to a number of regional and national groups, helping to shape procurement practice and influence wider policy.
Contact
For any questions about the series please contact Katie Stuart, Project Manager, Social Sustainability.