As I exited the very overcrowded train from Stoke I wasn’t feeling particularly socialable, which was quite ironic considering I was on my way to the Social Value Conference at The Eastside Rooms in Birmingham. As I walked towards the venue, I was distracted by the many construction sites, indicating that things are changing in Birmingham … which I’ll come back to later ...

The Social Value Conference brings together experts from the public, private and third sectors to facilitate sharing best practices and innovative ideas for Social Value. This is an area Advance would like to grow more awareness in and create a bigger impact, especially in light of our brand-new B Corp accreditation.

What distinguished the conference from typical corporate events were the many inspiring human interjections. These experiences highlighted the true essence of social value, moving beyond key performance indicators, targets, and metrics — even though these aspects remain important in the long term. The human perspective reorients our focus towards the ultimate goal: improving lives and ensuring fairness and equality for all.

Luke and Billie shared their experiences of growing up in the foster system in the Northeast. They articulately spoke of the challenges they faced as young children to then young adults finding their own way in the world.

Stephen sings with the choir with no name, a charity for people impacted by homelessness. Steven was raw and honest about his life as a heroin addict estranged from his family and not long out of prison when he joined the choir for the promise of a hot meal. This decision turned his life around. He’s now been sober for 5 years, reunited with his family and newly married.

I felt honoured that they would share such personal experiences with a room full of strangers. I had approached the day with a focus on taking as many notes as possible so that I could diligently feedback to the Advance team yet I came away feeling emotional rather than logical – perhaps that was the intention!

The final keynote speaker of the day was Councillor John Cotton, Leader of Birmingham City Council. Birmingham faces many challenges which John is passionate about tackling. Birmingham is so diverse that a ‘one-fix solution’ is not the answer; for example there is a 10 year life expectancy difference between its richest and poorest wards (jaw -dropping moment for me). The council are working hard in these diverse areas to make changes. The impact of which is reflected in the construction you can see across the city.

So, what? (as we say at Advance). My takeways from the day is to acknowledge what you are already doing as a business - you may not be a million miles away from where you want to be with your Social Value Strategy.

Start small and don’t overwhelm yourself trying to change the world.

Don’t be scared to fail – you won’t win at everything you do, be transparent about this and it will encourage others to do the same. Look back down the hill once in a while and reflect on your journey and how far you’ve come.

Three words kept cropping up during the conference when discussing developing a Social Value Strategy:

• Collaboration
• Culture
• Change

I don’t necessarily think this is linear – they all feed into each other to design a Strategy that will work for our communities, our employees and our business. Al – I think there’s even a triangle in this!

I travelled home in a much more positive headspace than when I arrived, despite the hard truths of the day, as I now believe that we can all make a difference in our small corner of the world. It’s not about hiding behind a strategy, it’s about real people, facing real challenges and taking active action, no matter how small, to help someone’s life be that little bit better. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?