Social procurement is a key driver in achieving ESG, CSR and sustainability goals. But how do you do it, and what are the challenges? We continue the conversation from part one, speaking to social procurement champions who’ve worked across Westpac, Microsoft, Australia Post and Major Roads Projects Victoria (MRPV) – to show us how it's done.
Here we'll unpack steps two and three in using your existing procurement spend, for good.
- Get buy in
- Start early
- Look beyond the spend
- Always come back to consistency
- Think outside the box
2. Get in early
“It can’t be an afterthought”, Joanne Kennett explains, from her experience in a senior diversity & inclusion role at Westpac. “One way to do this is to embed social procurement into category plans”.
Joanne is a social procurement champion and now Senior Manager Social Procurement & Workforce Development at Transport for NSW. She contributes her wealth of knowledge across several forays and shared her many industry insights as a keynote speaker on SEWF22’s global stage.
“I found that if you get in early, it’s going to drive a much more sustainable outcome – less of those sugar hits and more of the opportunities to have suppliers in the operational spend.”
“To do this, I analyse the supply market versus what it is that we’re buying. I focus on those high potential categories and direct my energy into influencing the stakeholders in there. Talking about social procurement, talking to them about the innovation that these suppliers can bring and being really specific about the questions that I’ve included in tenders because if you ask specific questions, you get much more specific answers.”
Kylie drove a similar approach, seeing great results during the 2021 Mordialloc Freeway project.
“There have been some really significant engagements with Yarra View Nursery, with a number of Aboriginal businesses, with Ability Works – many, many organisations benefited from that project.
“It’s a tribute to the fact that the McConnell Dowell Decmil Joint Venture actually looked at their supply chain from the very start and identified opportunities, right through their supply chain. The leadership and Director of that team had the decision-making power to allow the individuals who were working on the project to just do what they do best, which is to identify businesses who can just do the job.
“Now, they’re actually opening the road early and they’ve delivered all this social impact as well, so it’s been an all-round fantastic outcome.”
3. Look beyond the spend
In the first installment, we unpacked how change management, agenda setting and story-telling influence internal behavior change. Speaking from experience, Eliza (Australia Post) and Dave (previously at Microsoft) discuss how we need to look beyond targets and keep a consistent approach to enable success.
"Putting a target on a page and working towards it, just isn’t enough. Knowing the real, on-the-ground impact is essential to fuel the social procurement movement."
“One of the best things that Social Traders Membership has provided Australia Post is that really detailed and beneficial spend impact report,” Eliza says. “We need to go further than that target or that number, it’s about having the meaning behind what that spend actually equates to. The report that Social Traders now provides conveys the mission focus and the primary beneficiaries of where that spend is being attributed. It’s just so helpful in spreading the message and talking to the impact, rather than just talking to a high-level number.”
“Too often as a procurement professional, I’m very unemotional,” Dave adds. “I look at facts, I look at data. But I don’t use the emotional side of the conversation to really support people’s change in buyer behavior.
"I really think that we need to use all facets of the impact of this work to challenge our internal stakeholders to do more.”
Dave – and Microsoft – understand that spend isn’t the end of the game. It isn’t the only way to support the social procurement movement. At its core, social procurement is “relational”, rather than transactional.
“We need to use the platforms that we have in our organisations to advocate both internally and externally for changes with a focus on underrepresentation in our communities. And we need to support Social Traders in their mission to allow us to identify businesses that are equally as passionate and supportive of those communities.”
Image courtesy of the team over at certified social enterprise ReNew Property Maintenance.
Part three of this series will focus on creating consistency and creative thinking to build social procurement momentum.