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June 11, 2025
Human-centred approaches key for social responsibility in public procurement
How can the cooperation between enterprises, businesses and public buyers be improved? That’s a key question for public authorities seeking to incorporate social responsibility in their tenders. The Big Buyers Working Together Social Procurement Community of Practice (CoP) visited social enterprise Silta -Valmennusyhdistys and HOAS, the Foundation for Student Housing for the Helsinki region, concluding that people-centered models lead to simpler and more humane processes that make collaboration easier.
Silta is one of 11 organisations that have joined forces in the Centre of Expertise for Social Enterprises (SYO), seeking to implement and develop a Finnish strategy for the social economy. Currently, Finnish social enterprises are struggling with decreased funding, due to increased competition from big companies.
As noted by Eeva Salmi, Director of Silta, the social enterprise that runs SYO; during a dialogue session with the CoP on Social procurement: "It is really important that there is a continuous dialogue between buyers and service providers at different levels. Silta-Valmennusyhdistys and its sister organisation Valo-Valmennusyhdistys provide a wide range of social and employment services in Finland. That’s also done through our work with the Finnish Centre of Expertise for Social Enterprises- one of its objectives is to promote socially responsible procurement in Finland. Using public procurement to prominent employment opportunities is a key activity in this regardt.”
Through its connection to SYO, Silta also seeks to tackle social sustainability and further develop Socially Responsible Public Procurement, as most of the funding for Finnish social enterprises comes from public tenders and European and national projects. By November 2025 SYO is aiming to develop an updated strategy for social enterprises, which will include recommended measures for SRPP. These measures will be discussed with various Finish ministries.
One of the key points of the new strategy will be that there need to be more different ways of funding social enterprises. Recent research has shown for example that the use of reserved contracts is an almost non-existent practice in public tenders in Finland. Reserved contracts can make it easier for social economy actors to participate in tenders without fearing competition from big market players.
Building on these insights from the Finnish social economy, the BBWT Social CoP also visited HOAS. In addition to building apartments, HOAS is raising awareness of the well-being of workers at construction sites, seeking to ensure the quality and safety of their work. Within this context, they have developed the Aware worksite concept to ensure that all HOAS worksites share the same practical social responsibility objectives, and comply with labour rights. Compliance is monitored through regular (voluntary) surveys measuring the performance and well-being of the workplace. The results of the surveys are fully transparent and based on the responses makes adjustments at the workplace in collaboration with the contractors on site. After three months another survey is done to check if the situation has improved.
As such the concept is a great case study for the Social CoP which aims to build a shared understanding of labour considerations, aligning local, national and international labour standards to ensure fair working conditions and ethical sourcing practices across all contracted suppliers and subcontractors across the entire value chain.
Marika Nyyssönen, Sustainability Manager at HOAS explains "As a non-profit construction client, we believe it's our responsibility to care about the people working on our sites and to actively shape the industry's direction on social responsibility. Our Aware Worksite concept sets shared, concrete goals for well-being, interaction, and fairness — from procurement to everyday site practices. It’s not just a checklist; it’s a mindset for collaboration. We've implemented it in ten projects so far, and others in Finland are joining in. We share the model freely because real impact only happens when good practices spread. Meeting others who are working toward the same goals was truly eye-opening and valuable — exchanging experiences and practical solutions reminded us that together, we can achieve much more."
Learn more at ICLEI sustainable procurement platform news webpage.
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