Introducing the HE TOMs (Higher Education Themes, Outcomes and Measures)
Whilst we all aspire to do better, sometimes knowing where to start, and how to demonstrate social value is a challenge that delays progress. We are pleased to introduce, free for your to download and use locally, a new tool which will help you: The HE TOMs.
A national task force made up from the Social Value Portal, UKUPC and member institutions has been working collaboratively to identify a solution which enables organisations to procure, measure, manage and maximise social value in procurement activity in a consistent way and define the benefit in £’s.
The Background
Social Value is considered to be the wider benefit gained by a local community from the delivery of public contracts. For the HE TOMs, social value is separated into four key areas, the THEMES:
- Jobs: Promote local Skills and Employment
- Growth: Supporting Growth of Responsible Regional Business
- Social: Healthier Safer and More Resilient Communities
- Environment: Decarbonising and Safeguarding our world
These THEMES are then broken down into possible OUTCOMES, in effect the strategic objectives. A list of 11 OUTCOMES is provided, for example, under Jobs you may select “More local people in employment” or “Improved Skills for disadvantaged people”.
Each of the outcomes is then further broken down into a MEASURE. The measure explains which element is to be considered: for example, under “More local people in employment” we would look at the “Percentage of local employees (FTE) on contract”
Using nationally recognised and agreed values, a GBP value is then allocated to each measure to enable a calculation of social value to be made and reported (see Table 1 below).
