Purpose has always been core to Hays’ mission, but the last few years has seen the business embark on an ambitious Social Value journey – ultimately delivering £1.2 million in Social Value in 2024 alone.
In this interview, we sit down with Karen Young, Director and Social & Environmental Purpose Lead at Hays UK & Ireland, to explore the journey behind the numbers.
Watch the full conversation below:
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Why is Social Value so important to Hays?
The first thing is that it's culturally there and it's always been part of our DNA. I've been fortunate enough to build my career at Hays for nearly three decades now, and it was certainly there in 1996 in things like charity fundraising.
We've always felt that there's an important connection between our business as a recruitment solutions provider and local communities, because we're a people-based organisation. Our people have always been willing to go out into local communities and get stuck in; they've shown that real appetite.
The other thing is the external element. We are dealing with some major societal challenges in our time. As a business, we feel that if we've got time and resource, that we've got a responsibility to provide skills and really try to tackle some of those societal challenges – and that ultimately is creating Social Value.
💡 New to Social Value? Read our 'What is Social Value?' breakdown
What has Hays’ Social Value journey looked in recent times?
Fundraising was what it used to be all about. We would always have had a corporate charity, as many corporates do, and we would have two-year partnerships. It would always be sticking your trainers on or climbing a mountain or doing cake bakes. That's always been there: our people giving their time.
The main change started to happen about three years ago. Lots of our people were out doing lots of great stuff, but no one really knew about it. We wanted to do a better job of telling our story and being able measure it.
I had a fortunate opportunity to attend the annual Social Value Conference, and so from about 2021 it started to be different for us because we realised the benefit of working with a partner like Social Value Portal.
We entered a Consultancy period, looked at our strategy, and had some great support. That really helped us to know our lane and realise what we could and couldn't do.
It was really important for us to be able to record and report – that's something that many corporates and businesses grapple with a lot. They might know that they're going out and doing lots of meaningful things, but it’s being able to capture it and measure it.
So that's what's really happened over the last three years. We've been really pleased with some of the things that we've managed to achieve, but we wouldn't have been able do it without other partners.
💡 Explore: The Social Value Conference
Are there any initiatives that you're personally really proud of?
Lots! But two stand out that I've really been personally involved with.
Professional services can be a tougher industry area to create Social Value sometimes. We're a people driven business: we haven't got lots of assets, but we have great people.
So one is how we’ve managed to move our volunteering on. Again, it’s about staying in your lane, working out what you can and can't do, being prepared to say ‘not now’ for some things, and focusing on the art of the possible.
We had a meeting with Neighbourly – again at the Social Value Conference – who are now a key partner for us. they’ve enabled 10,000 hours of volunteering and 10 working days in our first year of partnership with them. That was pretty special.
The other is Project Flourish, which we were really delighted to win the Creating Capability Award at the 2024 Social Value Awards for. That has been about using our skills and expertise to lift employability – and being prepared to try something completely different.
It involved working with young people who've been homeless or at risk of homelessness in the UK, helping them to secure jobs and go on and flourish in their young lives. That program is still in the early stages, and it’s now beginning to scale up. We're getting job offers for young people most weeks now, so that's really exciting.
How Project Flourish is changing young lives
What is Hays' approach to measuring Social Value and impact?
Measuring social impact has been one of our biggest challenges, and I suspect it is for many.
We've done a lot internally over the years around internal recording, reporting, and systems. So if you book your volunteering time, it’s getting that captured in terms of what area of society you're supporting, how many people you helped on that particular day, those type of things.
But we're not experts in that data recording, so it's been important to look at partners who can help us in that area. Looking at things like the measurement of our volunteering, Neighbourly has added a different level for us and enables us to look at which UNSDGs we're supporting. You've got to look at where you need to buy in expertise.
Coming back to Social Value Portal – we didn’t say, ‘We're going to try and deliver a million pounds of Social Value in our first year’ without being able to prove it from an external perspective. It's been really important to work with a partner who can help us to record and report and has a platform and technology to enable us to do it.
Another big thing for us has been the accreditation – that the data is trusted. Our board is really comfortable that when we celebrated the fact that we'd delivered £1.2 million of Social Value in the first year of trying, it was accredited by a trusted partner.
💡 Explore: Why you should validate your Social Value reporting
Do you have any advice for businesses that want to start delivering Social Value?
We're pretty humble about our experiences – we know that our journey is very early on and there's lots of people doing great things out there.
But I would say: just be prepared to start. Sometimes you can think, ‘Oh gosh, this is a really tricky subject, what do we do? What if we get it wrong?’ You can sit on the fence for too long and that that's just time wasted when it could have been helping to solve a societal challenge.
Just get stuck in, make a bit of a plan and be prepared to change it, rather than waiting for it to be perfect. Because it's always going to need some flex.
I also think making sure that you've got a senior leadership sponsor has certainly been important at our end: C-Suite, board, whoever it is, making sure you've got someone that really believes in it. But it doesn't need to be entirely led from that sponsor – they just need to back it. My experience is that it's largely started from someone within the business rather than around the board table.
So if you’re working in a business listening to this, and you’re already passionate about it – go and find a sponsor, make it happen, and present the business case.
And thirdly, as we've already discussed: if you need to, buy in the expertise. If you're prepared to make a start, you've identified a sponsor, you feel culturally that you've got a business that has the heart for it and you can win some hearts and minds, then find the best partner and work with them on it.
How has Hays’ partnership with Social Value Portal impacted your Social Value journey?
Three years ago, our people were out doing great things, but we wouldn't necessarily know about it – you'd maybe ring that office, and they’d say, ‘I've just been out to this charity doing this’.
We were struggling to tell our story in a consistent way with data. One of the early tasks was: how do we tell a better story of all the great stuff that we're already doing, with our DNA of doing the right thing. It wasn't just: go out and find a provider. That's been an evolution.
Where it's made a difference for us has been telling that story. Firstly, working with the Strategy team, who spent valuable time with key members on several occasions, face to face and online. They really took time to understand what made Hays tick, which was really important to us. And then helping us to realise we couldn't do everything and where is our lane as a global recruitment and workforce solutions provider, and how could we be most helpful.
It is hard to create Social Value in professional services. We have lots of questions most days – I can't say we're probably an easy member of Social Value Portal! But that's great. From the early days, real estate were the people that were going, ‘Well, what about this?’ and ‘this is creating value’. Now it’s professional services asking those questions.
And they're the right questions to ask with things like Project Flourish enabling us to really measure Social Value. We knew we wanted to do it anyway, because it's about changing young people's lives, but being able to put that into a measurement and framework and capture it makes all the difference.
💡 Spotlight: Explore our deep dive into Hays’ Social Value strategy
What do you think the future holds for Social Value at Hays?
I don't want to give all my secrets away!
Our main focus at the moment is Project Flourish. We believe that it's our most meaningful social impact program.
It's meaningful if you change one person's life, right? At first I was doing the usual recruitment and sales thing, thinking ‘how many young people are we going to place in year one?’, and I just had to stop myself and say, ‘if we change one person's life, it's been important’.
Now our time is being spent on scaling up and understanding what is needed from a resource perspective, if we're helping more and more young people to get that great job, to get into their independent accommodation and begin to flourish.
We've used our bursary, and all sorts of different things. It's been the first month's rent, for example, it's been providing bikes so that they could cycle to work, it's been driving lessons for some people because the jobs are going to require them to drive.
But we have to look at how we raise funds and the resources to run it. Because we believe it's got a great future and it’s one of those things where we're probably quite obsessive about that at the moment. We've now got the confidence to say, ‘not now’ to other things that you may be being considered. And that confidence has come from the last three years and the support we've had from the team at Social Value Portal.
There are lots of other things as well in the plans over a two-to-three-year period, but for the next 12 months, that's what's ahead.
Want to learn more?
See how Hays is driving positive difference for communities across the UK & Ireland in their 2024 Social Impact Report.
Or, to see how other businesses are creating impact, read more Social Value success stories.
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