We’re well into the second decade of the social value era.
And while methodologies for measuring environmental performance have a long pedigree, many businesses still find it much harder to treat the “S” and the “G” in “ESG” – social and governance criteria – in a similarly objective way.
How do you measure and compare the impact of staff volunteering in a community food bank to creating apprenticeships for young people or spending money with local subcontractors for example?
And how do you keep track of the incredibly wide range of projects and activities that generate social benefits, let alone report it accurately as part of wider corporate requirements?
Since January 2021, contractors working with central government and its agencies have had to grapple with this challenge at the ground level – firstly under the terms of PPN06/20 and now under PPN02
It’s something that family-owned construction and refurbishment contractor Mulalley has had to think long and hard about. As Chief Executive Officer Eamon O’Malley puts it:
“Our aim is to improve the lives of the communities we work within, leaving them better than when we arrived.”
In 2023, Mulalley selected the Thrive Platform to record, organise, and present all of the data around the great social value work the company has been doing – which was published earlier this year in the company’s 2023-2024 Social Value Report.
Having this on hand will now make it easier to create an annual ESG report, with the S taken care of in a robust and repeatable format.
We spoke to Julian to find out how our platform solved the problems he was faced with.
Mulalley’s Social Value Wins for 2023-2024: The Big Picture
In the year from April 2023 to April 2024, Mulalley’s headline social value accomplishments were:
- £47.5 million in social and local economic value added
- 1,315 hours of staff volunteering provided
- £125,104 of in-kind and financial donations given
- 97 local jobs sustained or created
- 2,356 apprentice weeks delivered
- £30 million spent with local subcontractors
That’s on top of reducing carbon emissions by 22% over the 12 month period, in the context of a 57% reduction since the company was certified as Carbon Neutral for the first time in 2016.
How Julian Produced Mulalley’s Social Value Report with Thrive
When he joined Mulalley in 2023, Julian had to get to grips with recording, categorising, and analysing all of the company’s activities and their impacts in line with the priorities of PPN06/20 and the Social Value Model:
- TACKLING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY – The creation of new business, new jobs and new skills as well as enhancing supply chain resilience and capacity.
- FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE – On the one hand reducing consumption and waste; on the other dedicating time and effort to the creation of green spaces and other local environmental initiatives
- EQUAL OPPORTUNITY – Improving equality of opportunity and reducing inequality in outcomes, within Mulalley itself and throughout its wider supply chain
- WELLBEING – Supporting the health and wellbeing of employees and contractors, and promoting community integration through investment, volunteering, and education
These Themes are being replaced over 2025 with five Missions as part of PPN02, although there is a lot of crossover. Take a look at our point-by-point comparison
One of the first steps he took was to bring in the Thrive Platform.
“Thrive was a great tool for me to capture headline data annually for the entire company but also for an individual category – whether it’s health and well-being; employment and training; in-kind support or community engagement.”
“It made it super simple,” Julian explained.
As data was added from each project over the course of the year, the platform’s powerful filtering capabilities enabled him to zoom in on particular topics, geographical areas, work types, and more. For example:
“I needed data for employment and training. I just typed in ‘employment and training’, and was able to look at all the individual evidence that we had populated just by scrolling.”
And because the Thrive Platform has the Impact Evaluation Standard measurement framework built in, all of Mulalley’s data was tracked against more than 130 rigorously-defined and independently-validated metrics and proxies, which in turn are directly aligned with the Reporting Metrics set out in both new and old Social Value Models..
Julian was able to produce graphs and charts, as well as combining the results across different categories achieved for particular clients:
“It’s a really easy way for me just to have a quick flick through, rather than going through a huge amount of data logs that I’ve done, I can just scroll through each job and pick out case studies that I like. So that’s how we put the report together.”
Showcasing Key Achievements
Of course, social value is not just about numbers. It’s also about stories and the people or communities whose lives are affected.
By giving Julian control over the mass of data, narratives, anecdotes and pictures that Mulalley’s teams had collected, Thrive made it possible for him to pick and choose the most impactful stories to showcase in the report.
“We’ve got a lot of initiatives that we do as a company that we just implemented in the last year. I wanted to highlight some of these in this annual report.
We recently signed up to the Armed Forces Covenant. We’re signatories of the Care Leavers Covenant and the Employers Domestic Abuse Covenant. I wanted to make sure that people were aware of those.
So we pulled out some information on those case studies and highlighted what we do for them.”
Julian was especially proud of Mulalley’s efforts to hire and upskill local workers on its projects by collaborating with local employment and training providers, such as Lewisham Works, Lewisham College and YouthBuild Ventures UK in its multiple projects with Peabody and Lewisham Council.
He was able to show that in that London Borough, Mulalley and its partners had delivered:
- 9 apprenticeships
- 15 local jobs
- 5 site visits for colleges and universities
- 120 accredited training courses
- 72 hours of mentor support
Because everything is easily accessible in the system, Julian was also able to give prominence to less well-publicised achievements:
“We have a world-beating Management Trainee Scheme. Although it’s very well known within Muallely I wanted to give it the recognition and prominence it deserved. So, I mentioned quite a lot in the report about our training and employment activities.”
And Thrive made it easy for Julian to find the perfect pictures to illustrate the report.
“We uploaded images to the platform so I’ll often just scan through Thrive before going to every client’s data and go ‘Oh yeah, I like that one’.”
What’s Next?
Mulalley’s next step is to produce a consolidated ESG report, and the experience of putting together the 2023-2024 Social Value Report has gone a long way to informing that work. Julian explained:
“I think that’s really important actually, because that’s where reporting and regulation and governance is moving. And so, to have that wrapped up without having to think about ‘gosh, how do I bring all these different strands together?’ is helpful.”
With Thrive’s help, Mulalley will continue to be able to show how its work – in ever-greater detail and across an ever-broader landscape – improves the lives of the communities the company works within, leaving them better than when it arrived.
If you’d like help understanding how to best report the S in your ESG reports, get in touch with one of the team, we’d be happy to help.
Alan Boyce
Senior Researcher More articles by Alan >
