Context

The opportunity for businesses to be more than profit-making enterprises, going beyond economic outcomes to make a positive impact on people, communities and environment, is a possibility that has been explored for many years now. The most obvious form of this approach since the early 2000’s is ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’[1], a self-regulating business model that helps a business be socially accountable to itself, its stakeholders and the external contexts (people, places, communities, environments) in or with which it operates. Over the last twenty years ‘CSR’ as it became known proved problematic for a variety of reasons[2] and more recent thinking has shifted to the wider and more far-ranging concept of ‘Creating Shared Value’[3]. This is seen as a possibility to develop an approach to doing business that can have a deep positive impact[4]. Still the ability of a business to create Social Value through its day-to-day operation is seen to be problematic.

In 2011 the Harvard Business Review published an article[5] which reported that “business has increasingly been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental and economic problems” suggesting that businesses are widely perceived as prospering at the expense of the broader community. This view is still shared by many over a decade later and sadly there are plenty of examples to reinforce this view; businesses who achieve ‘success’ at the expense of people, community and planet. In June 2023 an article by Will Dunn in The New Statesman[6] drew on a range of data to show that businesses are increasing their operating margins as part of a deliberate strategy to transfer money from consumers and customers to shareholders. The newly published Grenfell Tower Fire Report[7] and the public reaction to it focus this criticism further, as does the degradation of the water quality in the UK by the water companies in order to provide increased value to shareholders; the focus of Will Dunn’s article. Despite all this pessimistic evidence, throughout the UK there are many small to medium sized businesses who are working in and contributing to the lives of the people in the communities they operate in. Their success shows that SME businesses can make a positive difference beyond the creation of healthy profit and healthy cash flow, creating shared value for employees and for communities; they might even be able to act as agents for social change. This is the story of one such business.

The History

Procure Plus started life as GM Procure in 2006 with the dual aim of providing decent housing in Greater Manchester through supporting quality planned maintenance and healthy supply chain management AND capitalising on this business activity to provide sustainable economic development to the communities in which the maintenance of existing homes was taking place. It was set up as a company limited by guarantee as a mutual organisation, owned by its members who were all registered social housing providers in Greater Manchester. Becoming a member of this organisation included a commitment to procure a substantial amount of planned maintenance collectively. So from it’s conception and birth, Procure Plus’s strategy has been to combine the collective buying power of groups of committed clients in support of the development of communities and the individuals living and working (or seeking work) in them.

Expanding the model beyond the Greater Manchester area was achieved through connecting outwards to set up additional Housing Partnerships in the wider Lancashire area as well as Cumbria, so extending networks throughout the north west of England. Over time the operating environment changed and in response to this the business decided to move away from the Mutual model to allow for a more flexible offer that allowed the organisation to engage with customers with different levels of commitment, thus creating a wider customer base. The expansion of business opportunities also included an expansion of opportunities for delivering social value and to this end Procure Plus Holdings (as it had become) set up Re;vision North in 2013 as a separate Charity operating in tandem with the main business which was also still using its business activity to provide social value. The charity focuses on specific priority groups, including ex-offenders, BAME, NEETs (16-24) and non-traditional gender roles e.g. women into construction. A main strategy to achieve the identified outcomes successfully is to build partnerships with community and support services of various kinds wherever possible.

So the Procure Plus model is proven over a number of years ‘in the field’ as a means of delivering successful business outcomes coupled with the creation of social value through a varied range of partnerships and projects run both through the business and through the charity. It has built and sustained a significant market share through combining the volume of business from the housing associations who are their main customers, all in the same market for the same services at the same time. Their approach also recognises the benefits of when to buy locally to support the local economy (contractors), when to source regionally (certain fabricated products) and when to source nationally, such as heating systems. Their success in the north west has also enabled them to extend their geographic reach to build other partnerships with clients around England and Wales including the South-East and London. The current annual value of transactions is £250,000,000.

Creating Social Value

Creating a successful business that is also successful at working with partners to create social value is something of a journey that has opened itself to experiment and learning, from the failures as well as the many successes. It sprang from the vision of the CEO Mike Brogan, born and brought up in the shadow of Old Trafford, who came from a previously successful career in Insurance. As Mike tells it in his own words: “when I used to come back home, I’d find that the kids I went to school with including some close mates were dead, in jail, or in a bit of a mess, one way or another. I thought, ‘well, this can’t be right’ so I asked myself, ‘can I do something about it?’ Because I’d done all right and I was pretty comfortable.” From the start of this journey in 2006, making some kind of positive impact in poorer areas to break the negative cycles of poverty, unemployment, and poor living conditions was the overall mission and purpose of all business activity….as well as creating and running a successful business to support this.

This growth over the last eighteen years has led from a small business of just four people to one that now has seventy employees; despite this growth the Procure Plus culture is non-hierarchical, fairly informal and based around teams of people who connect as needed to deliver the various projects and business outcomes. As one manager described it, it operates as an “adhocracy – a little bit ad hoc”. This in part is one of the reasons it is such a success because the flexible structure allows the business to respond quickly to opportunities, initiating discussions and planning action because each ‘team’ in the business is in constant contact with the other ‘teams’, often meeting together to manage the various projects.

‘Hierarchy’ is a word not in the Procure Plus vocabulary. Again, Mike captures the underpinning for this:” I don’t believe in privilege. I don’t believe in any kind of hierarchical stuff that conveys special benefits to particular people. I haven’t got an office. I haven’t even got a desk for that matter. I just come in and sit wherever there’s an available seat and then I work with and talk with people.” This is not just Mike, everyone in the business works like this – connection and communication are the base for all activity both within and outwards to clients, communities and other stakeholders. This equality also applies to the annual bonus, the ‘pot’ gets divided up by the number of employees and everyone gets the same whether they are part of the Leadership Team or working as an office ‘junior’.

There is some agreed structure; a Procure Plus Leadership Team has been created, each of whom is responsible for leading and facilitating the success of their area, acting as a hub around which the Procure Plus ‘wheel’ turns. There are also people who act as managers for particular parts of the work, for example the charity, the social value elements, the legal aspects and so on, roles that make sure what needs to happen happens and to facilitate others through clear information and data. As Katie Taylor, the Company Secretary puts it, their role is to “help people colour within the lines”. When potential business/social value opportunities arise, the hub will look at what the opportunity needs to make it work and then look around the people in the business to match them to the opportunity and then give them the support they need to succeed.

The rest of the core of business activity involves people self-managing their work in a culture that demands (one of the very few clearly expressed demands on people at Procure Plus) honesty and integrity in delivering the work and in all relationships with co-workers. Part of this involves being clear about anyone in any role speaking up if something isn’t going well or hasn’t worked, taking responsibility to share ideas how something might be done better or in spotting and sharing possible new opportunities for the business. The employee surveys over the past five years confirm that working at Procure Plus is generally a fulfilling and happy experience with everyone feeling that they are making a positive difference in the world. The business also facilitates a range of activities for employees including social events as well as opportunities to take a day or two out working on a project for one of the local communities, one example recently was digging a pond as part of the development of a community garden.

The Procure Plus flex and adapt approach is essential to the success of the projects because there is no imposition of a ‘model of best practice’. Each project is developed collaboratively with customer, supply chain and community stakeholders; a kind of asset based community development, making sure that they’re not going in and doing something “at” people, rather supporting the community to use the skills and the resources they already have to create something by and for themselves.

Case Studies

Using this approach, over the years Procure Plus have delivered a variety of successful projects including a factory established in HMP Hindley, a prison near Wigan employing prisoners who made panels for housing and then had the opportunity to gain employment on completing their prison term. Procure Plus still work with the Prison Service, Construction Industry Training Board and City and Guilds, to provide training in prisons leading to permanent employment on release.  The rate of recidivism for the ex-offenders working with Procure Plus is typically 5%, rather than national averages of 60%.

A second example is the Yes Project in North Manchester run with a local housing association in the community, for the community. It had started off as a series of community drop-in centres, what some would now call ‘warm spaces’; “the kettle was always on, the heating was always on. There were computers available if you wanted to look at the news, e-mail your granddaughter in Australia and so on.” Procure Plus started a conversation with the project manager to explore how this project might be developed further to provide opportunities for job creation. Kate Parker, the manager charged with looking after the delivery of social value picks up the story: “we could have turned up and said ‘what you need to do is this and you need to change this completely into a job support centre and stop people coming in to do this and stop that and stop the other’. That would have led to the project falling down quicker than we could have set it up.” With their more conscious collaborative approach, nine years later, that is now what it is; a series of job support centres employing people from the local community as advisors and support workers including volunteers from the local communities, who through volunteering get experience and build their confidence in themselves. Working slowly with the community, making small agreements with them for funding, seconding a member of Procure Plus to them who worked with them for a year, developing the original valued centres into to something that the local community now values even more for the new opportunities, something it is really involved in to create a measurable impact. A community working in partnership to create its’ own social value, one that now means people of all ages on the estate have access to good quality support and good quality jobs.

One final example from many; Procure Plus partners and provides some funding with two Manchester charities working with marginalised and sometimes homeless people, Back on Track and Embassy Village. One of the identified outcomes from this project was to support some of the jobless clients to do some volunteering including supporting four people to go on an in-country volunteering programme in Kenya to experience living and working in a different culture. The experience they have had has created a paradigm shift for the participants helping them to look at the world and themselves in a very different, more resourceful way, helping them build self-confidence and the capacity to make positive changes in their own circumstances as an introduction to finding work.

Embassy Village look after people who are street homeless; they take people from the street who have issues around drugs or alcohol when they come to them. The first stage of the process is to support them out of their addictions into a healthier way of living.  Part of this process involves the clients living in a shared house rented by Embassy Village as a multiple occupancy in which the clients live together and have shared experiences supporting each other, with professional support, on their journey to recovery. Once someone gets to that recovered stage able to get work and earn money, the transition back into the community begins. They live in the house for another six months whilst they save some money from their earnings, this then enables them to pay a deposit on their own rented property and move into that, beginning to live independently. They are then supported for another twelve months as they fully reintegrate into work and life.

The Results

It is clear, the activity that Procure Plus delivers with stakeholders and partners creates results. For a start: in 2023 – 2024, 750 people were supported back into work.

The latest data for the charity Re:vision for the year 2022 -2023 shows that 320 people were supported into employment with 96% being from the priority groups mentioned earlier with an 86% retention rate.

Equally important, the business has seventy employees working in an organisation the like of which they’ve never worked in before and enjoying making a positive difference with people in the communities they serve. A range of research into Employee Engagement over the years consistently shows that working in a role through which an individual feels they are valued and can make an impact is one of the most important factors in engaging and keeping employees. This is central to all that Procure Plus does so it is not surprising that employee satisfaction surveys show a high degree of positive response reflected in the ability of the business to retain its employees.

Future Developments

Procure Plus are a successful example of the shift from business as purely about making profit in order to pass this on to the shareholders to what Michael Porter redefines as: “creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy”.[8] In other words this is not simply about individual acts of Corporate Social Responsibility but about a holistic approach that will increase both business financial success and create positive opportunities and experiences for the disenfranchised and marginalised individual and community partners through the creation and delivery of social value through innovative activity and productive partnership working.

This approach becomes more important, particularly in the light of the challenges these communities and individuals are currently facing. The future direction is clear though not all businesses have understood this as yet and Procure Plus are well-positioned to continue their development to widen their impact with the partners and communities with which they work:

1. Businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of sustainability and social responsibility, leading to the integration of these values into their core strategies. This shift will drive innovation in products and services that address social and environmental challenges.
2. The rise of stakeholder capitalism emphasizes the need for businesses to consider the interests of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, and communities, rather than focusing solely on shareholder value.
3. Advancements in technology, particularly in data analytics and artificial intelligence, will enable businesses to measure and report their social impact more effectively.
4. Collaboration between businesses, non-profits, and governments will become essential in tackling complex social issues, leading to a more holistic approach to value creation.

The next stage of the journey for Procure Plus is to extend the reach of their activity to a wider geographical area whilst at the same time increasing the scope of their projects to reach a greater number of the individuals and communities they want to work with. One of the challenges in achieving this is the need to work with regional and national agencies whose structure, process and cultures are conservative and inflexible compared to the flex fast and adapt approach of Procure Plus. Conversations and connections continue to be made with a view to influencing at a national, governmental level; this takes time and seems to be a challenging haul over the medium to long term.

Having said that one of the other challenges is that there are so many opportunities to help, to create social value, to positively impact people and communities, it becomes challenging to choose where best to place interventions. It is likely that the need for Procure Plus and Re:vision’s support will go on increasing given the challenges in society we are currently facing; unfortunately they can’t do it all.

It is hoped that the noises being made by the new Labour government regarding increased devolution will put power and decision-making where it best sits, in localities.  To this end the next big job being worked up is a Social Impact Project with a Regional Combined Authority, initially looking at children in Alternative School Provision, giving then the support that they should be entitled to, leading to a full life, rather than the stunted version that typically awaits them.

Finally, the business and the charity are in this for the long term so the final big challenge is to keep building the leadership capacity in the business, building a legacy, so that when Mike and his colleagues retire, there are people ready to step-up and fill those shoes. To quote the words of a song in ‘Lord of the Rings’: ‘The road goes ever on’. Procure Plus realise that the journey along this road is taken one project at a time and the cumulative impact of all their projects is extensive AND there’s always more that can be done.

David Taylor (March 2025)

With thanks to Mike Brogan and the teams at Procure Plus and Re:vision

www.procure-plus.com

[1] Fraser B.W. (2005) ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ Internal Auditor February 43-47.

[2] Costello K.W. (2021) ‘The Social Value of Business’ Regulation Spring 10–11.

[3] Porter M.E. & Kramer M.R. (2011) ‘Creating Shared Value’ Harvard Business Review January-February

[4] Rygh A. (2020) ‘Social Value Creation’ critical perspectives on international business Vol. 16 No. 1, 2020 47-75

[5] Porter M.E. & Kramer M.R. Op Cit  63-77.

[6] Dunn W. (2023) ‘The Age of Greedflation: How Corporate Profiteering is Making us Poorer’ The New Statesman 2-8 June 16-21.

[7] Moore-Bick M., Akbor A. & Istephan T. (2024) Report of the Public Inquiry into the Fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/sites/default/files/CCS0923434692-004_GTI%20Phase%202_Report%20Overview_E-Laying_0.pdf

[8] Michael Porter and Michael R. Kramer, “Creating Shared Value”, Harvard Business Review 89, no. 12 (2011): 62-77.