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.
Webinar 1
The Business Case for Social Value
Wednesday, 14 October 2026 - 13:00 - 14:30 BST
This session provides an overview of social value frameworks and makes the case for why social value provides a powerful vehicle for turning social sustainability commitments into concrete business practice.
SPEAKERS
Jeremy Wyatt
Board Member
Institute for Social Value
Jeremy is a director of the Institute for Social Value. He chaired its Advisory Council for more than ten years and served for many years on Social Value International's Methodology Committee. His work centres on helping organisations understand, measure and increase the value they create for people and communities.
He has held senior roles in business, charity and the arts. He was on the senior management team at Optical Express and was managing director of Hall Aitken Consultants. For ten years he was chief executive of The Gaiety Theatre in Ayr.
Over 30 years as a consultant, he has advised clients in the public, private and third sectors on strategy and impact. His projects range from investment appraisals for deep-water ports to support offshore wind in Orkney and Shetland, to strategy development in Cape Town for an international charity. Clients include the Cabinet Office, the Scottish Government, the NHS, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the National Lottery Community and Heritage Funds.
He first worked with the Institute when he led a national evaluation of Social Return on Investment (SROI) for the UK and Scottish Governments fifteen years ago. He has since written several of its guides and tools on measuring social value.
Jeremy holds an MBA, is a Chartered Member of the CIPD and a Fellow of the RSA. He chairs the Wonder Fools theatre company.
Webinar 2
Effective Stakeholder Engagement
Wednesday 21 October 2026 - 10:00 - 11:30 BST
This session equips participants with practical tools and approaches to map stakeholders, build authentic relationships, and ensure that the voices of communities, employees, and supply chain partners are integrated into social value strategy.
SPEAKERS
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.
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.
Matt Richardson
Head of Social Impact and Procurement
GM Business Growth Hub
As well as heading up the Social Impact and Procurement service at the GM Business Growth Hub, Matt also leads on the wider Growth Company’s social impact agenda. He has worked in community development and social impact for 20 years, previously with local authorities and a national drug and alcohol charity, before joining the Hub in 2017. Passionate about value and societal benefit, Matt has fronted programmes that challenge ways of working more responsibly within businesses, championing good employment practices, community partnerships and, most recently, a more inclusive procurement landscape across Greater Manchester. Matt is the co-founder of the Greater Manchester Anti-Slavery Business Network and sits on various leadership groups focused on topics such as the real living wage, VCFSE development, work experience and is the former Chair of the Greater Manchester Social Value Network.
Jess Payne
Director of Social Value
Compass Group UK&I
Jess Payne is Director of Social Value at Compass One, Compass Group UK&I, specialising in embedding social value into organisational strategy, governance and accountability. Jess focuses on strengthening how social value is understood, applied and embedded across organisational practice, ensuring it is meaningfully connected to purpose-led outcomes. Alongside leading Compass One's social value approach, they are undertaking doctoral research at Glasgow Caledonian University into leadership behaviours that support active citizenship in purpose-led organisations, bringing together academic research and practical application to deepen understanding of how leadership can enable lasting social impact and more engaged, purpose-driven communities.
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.
Contact
For any questions about the series please contact Katie Stuart, Project Manager, Social Sustainability.