What is Social Value at WSP?

Social value is about using every aspect of our business and operations to make a positive difference to the communities we work in. For us at WSP, it’s no longer enough to say we are doing this – we’re here to prove it.

Social value: the heart of our growth strategy with a commitment to deliver £120 million of additional social value by 2024

The S in ESG

Social value measurement sits at the heart of the “S” of our ESG delivery strategy and our purpose as an organisation. To demonstrate our commitment and push the boundaries, we set a goal to generate and measure at least £120m additional social value over three years up to 2024.

We know that our work for clients generates inherent social value, day in day out, designing new hospitals, rail stations, community spaces. This is about going further. We’re focusing on embedded and additional social value, exploring how we can create more social impact, from how we operate our business and the suppliers we use, to how we work with communities, support our people and develop the next generation of talent.

It’s time for the industry to take social value seriously as an integral part of ESG.

This is why we’re leading the way with our ambitious commitment to create £120m of additional social value in our communities, and why it’s at the heart of our 2022-24 strategy.

Rachel Skinner UK Director of Government Relations and Corporate Responsibility

Rachel Skinner UK Director of Government Relations and Corporate Responsibility

When it comes to social value, measurement matters

Our goal of creating £120m additional social value has focused our UK business on making a measurable contribution to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We’ve mapped our recent impact against our selected SDGs and have set out our impact goals over the coming years.

Through a robust approach, we’ve measured £140 million of social value in 2023 , further to £87 million of social value in 2022. This means we have far exceeded our ambitious goal of generating £120m of social value throughout our 2022-24 strategic cycle.

The value comes from a blend of ESG programmes. It gives us a lens to measure our impact more meaningfully. No fluff, everything is carefully evidenced. We work closely with the Social Value Portal to verify this data where possible (and acknowledge where not possible), to show the tangible impact we’ve committed to making for our communities, and our own people.

Our approach to social value is constantly maturing. Everything we’ve learned from achieving this goal will feed into our social value approach over our next strategic cycle.

Fostering joined up thinking

We see social value generation as the thread that combines so much of the full ESG spectrum – it fosters joined up thinking to create bigger impact.

Our goal is that social value becomes business norm – we believe we can play a big part in influencing and educating ourselves and our industry at large, collaborating and thinking bigger than ourselves by sharing best practice and what we learn as we go.

Latest figures:

Social Value Generated in 2023

£140 Million

The social value was generated through WSP apprenticeships, laptop donations, humanitarian aid, employee wellbeing, SME engagement and piloting project-level measurement.

Read about our recent progress here

Find out more about our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and progress.

View update

Volunteering to refurbish playgrounds in Caistor, Lincolnshire

As part of our professional design services contract for Lincolnshire County Council’s highways department, our team coordinated and took part in volunteering days to transform play areas.

East Essex Hackspace

By donating money, volunteer time, equipment and skills, we enabled a community to develop a space for learning, creating and connecting.

Social value policy

Delivering real social value is integral to our work - nurturing sustainable societies, connecting communities and seizing opportunities - is enriched in our manifesto as a guiding principle of our business. Read our policy here.

Social value policy