SUSTAINABILITY
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY is the buzzword of the Noughties , an integral and necessary part of any major company ’ s strategy . The Social Value Act of 2013 may have formalized the requirements for public bodies , but pioneering organizations such as PwC had already bought its ticket and found its seat on the train long before that point .
With a commitment to do what is right for clients , people , communities and the environment , corporate social responsibility is at the heart of the business , and in particular it is important to the people who make decisions about what to purchase and who to purchase from – the procurement team .
Jeremy Willis is Director of Procurement at PwC . He says : “ One of our commitments is clearly to try to spend more with social enterprise suppliers , and to do that we have to have more procurement practices and policies that are inclusive , that don ’ t preclude their involvement with us . But also we need to have trained and raised awareness of the people involved in purchasing decisions in the business , more broadly to raise awareness of the agenda amongst peer groups and networking opportunities .”
Clearly small enterprises work differently from multinationals such as PwC , and are often limited by what they can afford in terms of meeting insurance requirements , so Willis is aware that sticking to standard terms and conditions doesn ’ t work , but also that more needs to be done to assist social enterprises in learning how to engage with large organizations .
PwC has been very proactive in opening up communication with social entrepreneurs . Since 2011 it has had a Social Entrepreneurs Club , offering a full program of support to its 250 members across the UK . It also supports the School for Social Entrepreneurs , which supports people who are using entrepreneurial approaches to tackle complex social problems , running practical learning programmes and courses .
Willis explains : “ We have various panels and forums where we have sat down and said – let ’ s talk about how you would engage large corporates . Let ’ s talk about
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