Elisabeth Lette On Social Procurement Growing The Social Enterprise Ecosytem

Elisabeth Lette is the QLD-NT Director of ArcBlue. Elisabeth has 28 years experience in financial management and governance; strategy and policy development, procurement reform and implementation. Her experience spans both the public sector and multi-national private sector organisations.

Elisabeth is passionate about the opportunity to deliver greater value to our communities through procurement. She is a recognised leader in sustainable procurement and led the development of Victoria’s Social Procurement Framework from policy inception to implementation across 300 entities.

At ArcBlue, Elisabeth is supporting a range of organisations across the public and private sector to develop and implement sustainable procurement strategies and place-based approaches to drive social, economic and environmental outcomes. This includes introducing a placed based approach known as Q-SEED in Townsville, to harness the massive forthcoming investment pipeline to deliver job outcomes for young people in the region. Elisabeth is a voluntary Board Advisor to the Queensland Social Enterprise Council.

Elisabeth discusses designing effective procurement frameworks for Australian social enterprises and her perspective on how policy makers can affect change across impact ecosystems.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion for social enterprise?

[Elisabeth Lette] - In my current role at ArcBlue in Queensland and the Northern Territory, I am supporting a whole range of different organisations to advance their social and sustainable procurement practices. What got me started in this space is that I previously spent a few years working in various roles with the Victorian Government, in the Department of Treasury and Finance. That job was focused on supporting the government to get the most value out of its spending and budget decisions, whether it be in infrastructure, health, or education. Back in 2016, not long after the Commonwealth first implemented its Indigenous procurement policy, I first came across the concept of social enterprise. I started working in that space and a few pieces of work collided, and I can recall the first time I heard the term social enterprise, which feels crazy to me now. The social enterprise sector in Victoria was starting to grow, and in my role with the Treasury department, I'd been asked by the government to support the development of their first social enterprise strategy. At the same time, the government was reacting to what was happening in the Commonwealth space, and they came back from a COAG meeting saying they wanted to do better than what the Commonwealth was doing in Indigenous procurement. I was then asked to develop a social procurement policy for Victoria. My role for the next three to four years was then focused on designing, getting cabinet approval, implementing, and designing a reporting framework for the first whole of government social procurement framework we then subsequently implemented in around 300 government entities. When I look back, there were some real highlights in those early stages of implementing that social procurement framework which were quite significant moments for me in terms of the benefits social enterprises could bring to their communities and government.

I had the opportunity firsthand to meet with those social enterprises, recipients, and beneficiaries of the outcomes they were delivering. I could see how it made sense for the government to be including social enterprise in their day to day purchasing decisions.

I'll quite happily put my hand up and have a laugh at myself because I had no idea. However, I’m glad I had no idea because I learnt so much along the way!

In your role as Regional Director at ArcBlue, what have you observed when looking at the social procurement landscape in Australia? Where do you believe there are ongoing opportunities to create an impact in communities?

One of the benefits of my current role is whilst I'm focused on Queensland and the Northern Territory, I'm also working with public and private sector entities across Australia. This gives me visibility as well as an opportunity to contribute to the landscape across all the States and Territories. What we see is differing levels of maturity across states, sectors, and entities. We see organisations (for example small regional local councils) might be in the very early stages of social procurement maturity, but nevertheless, it's still important to them. They want to be supporting their local communities, and whilst they might be less mature in terms of their sophistication, size, policies, or systems, they can make a big impact by focusing on regenerating and directing money into their local communities and having a tangible impact. At the other end of the spectrum, we see large national organisations, particularly infrastructure companies, who are operating with a national footprint. They've become adept and sophisticated along their social procurement journey and have placed quite a lot of resources into it. They see it not only as an important part of doing business because it's what their stakeholders are expecting, but they also see it gives them a competitive edge. 2016 was the first time I'd heard about the concept of social enterprise. Now, I can't say it's mainstream, that's part of the maturity journey we're all collectively on. But it's certainly becoming far more mainstream than the initially elusive concept it was back in 2015-2016.

What advice would you give to governments and corporates seeking to get more out of the way they procure?

To put it simply, whether you're in the government or corporate sector, social procurement just makes plain sense. Whilst in the first instance it might require upfront investment, time, and energy to develop a strategy and prioritise social value, when done well, social procurement can become core to the business-as-usual buying decisions of any organisation, regardless of what sector they're in. By business as usual, we mean incorporating social, economic, or environmental outcomes as part an organisation’s value for money decision. That to me makes more sense from both a financial perspective, as it goes a long way to meeting stakeholder expectations.

Across the business landscape, increasingly stakeholders are expecting more, whether its regulatory expectations, companies looking to attract and retain employees, or stakeholders and investors expecting organisations to have a clear social impact strategy. The community in which we all exist expect their local councils and businesses to be doing the right thing, and people generally want to support organisations making a positive change to the communities in which we all live.

What are the next steps for this business for good movement in Australia to reach the next stage and become business as usual?

I thought a lot about it in recent years. I've also physically moved from Victoria to Queensland, and I'm now in a role where I'm working with organisations across the country. What I would say is I've seen firsthand the difference social enterprises can make for a government, regardless of its political persuasion. I've seen firsthand what happens when a government or leadership authority puts in place a strong mandate for social procurement. In my mind, that’s a critical ingredient to accelerating this uptake of social procurement, because when you have a strong direction (or authorising environment as we'd call it in a public sector), it has a flow on impact to large corporates who are part of the government's supply chain. They in turn then develop their own social procurement policies and practices, which they pass on through to their supply chain. Irrespective of whether they're doing this by choice because they see it as necessary to win government work, give themselves a competitive advantage or it’s the right thing to do, by having those large corporates respond to government requirements, there is a multiplier effect. In my mind, it's that leadership from the top down in the government sector which can be such an important accelerator.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

I'm going to talk about one project I'm implementing now, a place-based social and local procurement project known as Q-SEED. ArcBlue has received in partnership with Central Queensland University, some funding from the John Villiers Trust. John Villiers Trust is a philanthropic organisation supporting regional and rural young people in Queensland. With that funding we are implementing Q-SEED, and it's about harnessing local and social procurement to deliver outcomes and jobs for a particular region. In this case, that region is Townsville. Our research around Townsville's demographic data highlighted it's experiencing several social challenges, and I'm sure we all see that playing out in the media around issues including youth disengagement, crime, and youth unemployment. Through Q-SEED, we are bringing together a collaboration of big businesses, government organisations, community organisations and employment providers to work together and collaborate. We want to harness expenditure, as we know there is around 14 billion dollars worth of expenditure each year in the Townsville area, but nearly half of that is leaking out of the local economy.

Through the Q-SEED program, we're looking to redirect a portion of that spending back into the local community, to create sustainable jobs, employment, and training opportunities for the young people we know are otherwise being disadvantaged.

Two months into the program we've been receiving an overwhelming level of support from organisations wanting to participate, and we're busy working with them now to develop what we will call a regional action plan. Watch this space; the difference between Q-SEED and some of those broader government frameworks I spoke about earlier is that in the absence of a strong mandate, Q-SEED is a place-based program looking to build social procurement momentum into the ecosystem. It looks to grow it from a bottom-up approach, and then coupled hopefully with a stronger mandate in the future from the government in that policy space, social procurement can become multifaceted. We can see the two colliding and working together to create momentum. We've had overwhelming support from the Townsville community, and this is a model being tried and tested elsewhere. We're already seeing some early wins and success stories which will enable us to replicate it in other areas of Queensland.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?

When I heard this question, I wasn't sure whether I needed to recommend something topical for this podcast! I recently picked up a book which I already read a few years ago my dad shared with me. My dad passed away not long ago, and the book is called A Fortunate Life. It's an Australian classic by A.B. Facey, and I was just reading it over the weekend. Sometimes in our day-to-day life, when things feel like a struggle, there is a lot of good news happening in the broader world. It's just nice to take stock and reflect on how fortunate we are and the opportunities we've had. For me, that book is a good reminder of the fabulous opportunities I've had to get myself to where I am today.