Social Value UK

Tag: Wellbeing

  • Creating value through a workplace wellbeing strategy for all 

    Creating value through a workplace wellbeing strategy for all 

    Duncan Chapman, Senior People Partner, Reed in Partnership 

    In the Spring of 2022, Reed in Partnership set out on a mission to create a formal, structured employee wellbeing strategy. We recognised that, although we have many workplace benefits and reward mechanisms in place, co-members (Reed’s term for employees) were repeatedly feeding back that they were unsure what was in place, ultimately leading to confusion and low uptake of certain benefits. 

    Acknowledging that an individual’s wellbeing is much more than simply eating healthily and exercising for 30 minutes a day, we began to map out the pillars of wellbeing that make up an individual’s holistic wellbeing. 

    Our wellbeing strategy, My Wellbeing, focused on the five pillars of personal wellbeing: 

    • Physical Wellbeing 
    • Emotional Wellbeing 
    • Financial Wellbeing 
    • Career Wellbeing 
    • Social Wellbeing 

    By breaking the strategy down like this, we aimed to enable our co-members to take ownership of their wellbeing, to build a happy, engaged, and resilient workforce for the company. 

    We structured our company benefits so co-members could clearly navigate to each pillar of My Wellbeing and access the corresponding benefits directly from there. We are also able to more accurately identify areas of improvement required for our benefits package, and act accordingly to improve the offering and communication across the business. 

    Co-members are now clearer on what benefits are provided for them, enabling them to make use of them for personal and professional development. 

    The company itself has also seen value in the My Wellbeing programme. 

    We have more engaged co-members, with increased resilience and satisfaction at the company, boosting our chances of retaining the best talent. 

    The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Resourcing and Talent Planning Survey 2022 found an increased competition for talent last year. 

    The median cost of recruitment has also increased to between £1,000 and £3,000 per hire, meaning companies should be taking every step to retain their top talent (CIPD, 2022). 

    The are other benefits to investing in wellbeing, with workplaces that invest in employee wellbeing proving typically happier, healthier, and more productive. 

    Physically active workers take 27% fewer sick days. They are less stressed and report better morale than their less active colleagues. The potential economic return on investment (ROI) for a UK business that invests in workplace health initiatives is £4.17 for every £1 spent (British Heart Foundation, 2016). 

    We also offer wellbeing support for external organisations through our Reed Wellbeing subsidiary. 

    We provide a schedule of webinars, targeting each of the pillars of wellbeing in correlation with national awareness days. 

    These have proven very popular, and I would encourage any organisation that is looking to increase their wellbeing offering to their employees to get in touch. 

    In conclusion, the introduction of My Wellbeing has provided a clear and effective method for our co-members to access our workplace benefits. 

    It has maximised uptake and been structured so the company can assess impact and areas for improvement. 

    The value created for both co-members and the organisation is clear in theory, however, the true value created will be measured annually to ensure we are achieving what we set out to achieve.  

    Would you like to get involved…

    To contribute to our upcoming themes please contact Matthew Mckew, Advocacy Lead at Social Value UK. We are interested in hearing from both members and non-members.  

    Matt Eamer, founder of me&you said; “I’m excited that my creative agency can support Social Value UK in its mission to raise awareness and understanding of social value. We’ll be creating visuals and graphics to help bring Social Value Perspectives to life, making the themes accessible for new audiences.“

  • What is the difference between Public and Private accounting?

    What is the difference between public and private accounting?

    JEREMY NICHOLLS, 28 FEBRUARY 2013

    We need to rethink the way in which public bodies prepare financial accounts in order that we; the public, can better understand how and why money is being spent on our behalf. Going back to basic accounting principles suggests that we could combine financial accounting and social cost benefit analysis (SCBA) into a single more meaningful account.

    Currently accounts for public bodies are prepared along very similar lines as accounts for private organisations; income and expenditure, debtors and creditors, accruals and prepayments – job done. But these are not the only relevant issues for a set of public accounts. What is currently being included provides information from a very limited perspective of government accountability – has tax payers money been spent on the purpose.  But nothing about what value has been created or destroyed for everyone for whom the government is accountable (not only taxpayers).

    The real user of government accounts is the public, not that every member of the public will be spending Sunday afternoons poring over the accounts but the way in which they are prepared should be based on providing information to those with an interest. The public has two interests, one how was my money spent and secondly what happened as a result.

    Separating the answer to these questions has led to a difference between public sector accounting: how was my money spent, and SCBA: what happened as a result of that expenditure. However there is an accounting principle is that accounts should include the issues that are of interest to the user. Whilst this user is defined as the investor in private sector accounting, the investor for an account of a public body is the public and their interest will be much wider.

    I would argue that most of the costs and benefits arising from government expenditure should be included in government accounts. Most but not all for two reasons; firstly since SCBA does not generally consider materiality in deciding what should be included or excluded some things may be missed out and some may be included which are not material, secondly since a focus on what is of interest from the perspective of the public is likely to identify other issues that have not been included in cost benefit analyses. But SCBA, prepared as part of an assessment of government expenditure, is the type of information that should be included.

    One reason why these costs and benefits have not been included is that public accounting developed from private accounting with its focus on identifying the profits that can be distributed. In private accounting this has been comparatively easy. Most issues that are included are transactions between people who are parties to a contract and the contract sets out the value. There are some issues that may need to be included to allow for breach of contract (bad debts) or where there was no contract but someone’s rights were affected by the business (contingent liability) but these have been a small proportion of the overall issues.

    In the public sector, expenditure sets out to have effects on people with whom government does not have a contract. Consequently contract based issues are probably the minority of the issues that should be included.

    There is another reason why these are not included. There are two requirements for an issue to get into the accounts. The second one is that it should be valued. Easy enough if there are contracts, easy enough to estimate breaches of contract. Much harder to do in situations where there is no contract. But this is what cost benefit analyses sets out to do; to value these costs and benefits even though too often the benefits are valued from the perspective of the government department and not from the perspective of the public, affected by the policy, where the value will be the change in their wellbeing.

    But it is possible to value changes in wellbeing.  If public accounting had to start including values of costs and benefits experienced by the public as a result of government policy and had to this on an annual basis, it would be possible to improve how this is done very quickly.  In comparison to the amount spent by government, in the UK over £500 billion per annum and compared to what is being spend on SCBA and accounting at the moment, it need not be expensive.

    It is not that public and private accounting are different, it is that the user and therefore the interests are different. Thinking about the public as those with an interest would mean that financial accounting and SCBA could merge and we would get the information we are interested in.