When organisations align their social impact vision with actionable strategies, they can create significant benefits for both communities and the business. Explore how PwC UK used social procurement to drive measurable societal impacts in their journey toward sustainability and social equity.

Challenge:

To enhance its social impact by promoting diversity, inclusion, and social mobility while empowering vulnerable communities, PwC UK needed to address the challenge of setting measurable goals, creating impactful community investments, and quantifying its contributions to a sustainable, net-zero economy.

Solution:

In 2016, PwC UK joined Social Enterprise UK’s ‘Buy Social Corporate Challenge,’ committing to spend £10 million with social enterprises over six years, until the 2023 reporting year.

To effectively measure and manage the impact of these investments, PwC UK adopted the B4SI Procurement for Social Impact Framework. This allowed PwC UK to progress on their business commitments—such as advancing a net-zero, circular economy—while positively impacting communities by directing opportunities for vulnerable populations.

PwC UK was already using the B4SI Framework to assess Community Investment, and by expanding its application to procurement activities, the company could gain a more holistic view of its overall impact on communities and the environment.

Impact:

By using B4SI’s Frameworks, PwC UK gained a comprehensive understanding of its social and environmental contributions. This enabled detailed reporting and showcased the power of targeted social procurement.

In 2023, PwC UK exceeded its £2 million annual social procurement target, investing £2.3 million in social enterprises.

Collaborations with social enterprises led to significant outcomes, including:

• Creating jobs for vulnerable populations.
• Facilitating over 8,000 hours of consulting work for autistic adults.
• Reducing 428kg of CO2 emissions through sustainable practices.

Capturing the impact of these activities through B4SI’s Procurement for Social Impact Framework alongside their Community Investment provides PwC UK with a holistic picture of their business’s positive societal impact on communities through different avenues. By reporting to the B4SI Community Investment benchmark, PwC is able to compare their year-on-year performance, and against their peers for continuous improvement.

Learn more about B4SI’s different routes to measuring impact. 

Read more about PwC UK’s Buy Social Corporate Challenge.