Social value measurement tool, the National TOMs has been refreshed and updated to make it more streamlined, robust and given an increased focus on environmental reporting to reflect the ever changing needs of organisations in operation today.
Following feedback from existing users across a variety of industries and taking the latest ONS data into account, the newest version of the National TOMs has been simplified for ease of use, features an overhauled environmental theme and clearly signposts enhanced opportunities to create more social value, making good go further.
In light of the climate emergency, tracking and reporting environmental performance is top of the list of priorities for organisations across all sectors. As a result, the environment theme has had a complete overhaul, making it easier to use and featuring a new greenhouse gas calculator designed to help an organisation to reduce its carbon footprint and get to net zero more quickly.
By providing a broader footprint from which to report social value outcomes, organisations can now use the measurement framework to capture the social value created by their social value outcomes, offering clarity on how to capture and report the outcomes in a transparent and appropriately attributed manner.
The robustness of the National TOMs means that there is a wide range of Measures to benchmark performance against, which are tailored to suit different needs. At the same time, the evidence shows that there is a smaller number that are used most regularly. National TOMs 2022 provides a core list of 40 recommended measures which are expected to cover most user requirements and has also identified a ‘Light’ set of 18 measures which is expected to make the Framework easier for smaller projects or tenders.
Nathan Goode, Chief Strategy Officer, Social Value Portal said: “The National TOMs is regularly evaluated to ensure that it keeps pace with the evolving needs of today’s organisations and these enhancements reflect this. Our customers have been instrumental in providing honest feedback that has fed into these changes and which will now set the new standard for social value reporting and measurement.
“We have been pleased to see more SMEs and VCSEs join the social value movement recently and we expect the latest updates to the National TOMs will help those that are new to social value to measure and report their performance in a straightforward, clear and robust way.”
Webinars — key dates
Existing clients of Social Value Portal will be invited to join a ‘walkthrough’ webinar on 16th June which will cover the new features and explain how they will help to streamline the measuring and reporting of social value within their organisations.
A follow up webinar will be opened up to everyone on 23rd June where attendees will have the opportunity to understand how the National TOMs works as well as finding out more about the latest improvements.
The National TOMs is an evidence-led social value measurement framework originally launched in 2017 in partnership with the National Social Value Taskforce. It has since become a standard toolkit for measuring and reporting Social Value across the public and private sectors, providing organisations with a clear framework in which to measure Social Value, integrating the standards into the measurement approach as a minimum.
