What is SROI?
Social Return on Investment – also known by the abbreviations SR and SROI – is a methodology to give people with a distance to the labor market the opportunity to participate. In the Netherlands more than 1 million people fall under this target group. These are often long-term job seekers, young or older job seekers, or employees with a work disability. SROI promotes the reintegration of people with a distance to the labor market.
What is the added value of SROI?
With SROI, organizations that carry out government procurement projects can help both skilled and unskilled people who are distant from the labor market to get a job. Often social return, or social profit, is applied as a contract requirement within procurements to reserve part of the procurement amount for jobs, internships or work-study placements for, for example, the long-term unemployed. This is a guarantee that employment will be created for the target group. Social return is nothing more than a process in which organizations – from municipalities and benefits agencies to ICT companies, healthcare institutions and construction companies – join forces to, for example, offer work to candidates who are distant from the labor market, fill vacancies, and reduce the benefits burden for municipalities. In short, SROI offers the following advantages:
1. Development
It offers long-term unemployed people or people with a disability the opportunity to further develop themselves.
2. Diversity and inclusion
Employers come into contact with people from different backgrounds and perspectives. It brings diversity to the organization. It also offers opportunities to connect with a new network.
3. Reduction of work pressure
Because more people are deployed in different roles, the workload within the organization decreases. Also, the burden of benefit payments within the region decreases.
4. Yield
SROI is at its core a way of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The government's investment is repaid in social value. As an organization, by applying SROI you increase the chance of obtaining an order from a government agency. In addition, you actually make a difference in people's lives.
How can you use SROI as an organization?
Many organizations prepare an SROI plan in which they take the following points into account:
1. Inventory of opportunities and possibilities
It is important to determine what the opportunities and possibilities are for labour participation for the target groups. Make visible what is happening in the area of SROI and in what way you can put that into practice. Also record the organisation’s vision on social return and communicate this to employees. Involve your employees so that they know they can work with a colleague who has a distance to the labour market.
2. Seeking collaboration
Then map out what is needed to smartly enable people to enter a particular sector or role. See who can help in the region. You might work with partners who already work with employees who are at a distance from the labour market. Also check whether a candidate needs (specialist) support or whether training needs to be purchased. And see whether there are opportunities to collaborate with a job coach or a trajectory counsellor.
3. Monitoring and reporting
It is necessary to record what the result of the effort is. Does the approach work? What does it yield? What obstacles do we run into? That way you can evaluate and assess what works and whether you should do it differently.
