Brighton & Hove Staff Benefits contract

The problem:

My Staff Shop is an online portal where council staff can access exclusive benefits, free advice and savings, including discounts from thousands of the UK’s largest retailers and service providers. This service is provided as a staff benefit.

Many of the offers published on My Staff Shop were unsustainable – both in terms of the companies promoted and the explicit offers provided. This was picked up by colleagues in the council’s intranet forum on sustainability:

Officer A (anonymous) 26/11/2019

My Staff Shop needs to change…

My Staff Shop is busy promoting mass consumerism – currently Black Friday – and encouraging us to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need at a variety of multinational outlets.

It seems a bit at odds with the climate emergency and with the ambition for a circular economy that the council is promoting and supporting this.

IMO it would be more fitting to promote and support local shops and sustainable practices.

Thoughts?

The solution:

To make the service provider aware of local hire, reuse and repair services, as well as local shops selling sustainable products, a directory of local businesses developed through the ERDF-funded BLUEPRINT to a Circular Economy Project was shared with the My Staff Shop contract manager.

With the service contract up for renewal, there was a window of opportunity to improve the environmental sustainability of the contract by introducing new contractual requirements and circular economy KPIs. This opportunity was not flagged by officers working in the Sustainability Team and Human Resources, but rather by the Sustainability and Social Value Procurement officer who regularly meets with the Sustainability Team to discuss upcoming contracts. A sustainability officer was then assigned to support the contract manager in developing new requirements and KPIs.

As a result, the following two new requirements were included in the specification:

The supplier is expected to:

  • Provide a stronger emphasis on local deals and approach repair shops and circular economy businesses to be featured on the site. Offers relating to these businesses should be highlighted/featured once a week on the main homepage.
  • Deliver a sustainable retailer section, with retail categories within it (e.g. sustainable transport, sustainable clothing etc). These will also be linked from the mainstream categories (e.g. transport, clothing). The section should be accessible from the council benefits section, via a permanent rolling banner on the main homepage and via the mainstream retail categories as mentioned.

 The outcomes:

  • The Staff benefit site now features a sustainable retailers section and a permanent banner on the home page promoting it.
  • Each retail category now has a sustainable section (for example Sustainable clothing).
  • New KPIs to increase the number of participating businesses offering reuse, repairs, ’rescue’ or sharing services have been added to the contract.
  • A new KPI to increase the number of shops primarily supplying sustainable products have been added to the contract.