Not all jobs are equal

When looking for economic development from procurement it is common to want to record the nature of the job that is being created. Governments may, for instance, wish to prioritise the creation of apprenticeships, or permanent, skilled work over and above the creation of a non-skilled or temporary work.

In this scenario, data on profits and revenues won’t be enough, instead firms will need to provide details of the jobs they plan to create and when they will be created. Where a buyer has a clear sense of the value of different types of job, a weighting can be applied to your analysis in order to afford more credit to companies that will create the desired jobs. Weightings can work as a mechanism for discounting activity that is of a lower priority.

We have laid out some weightings expressed as percentages below. Combining weightings with data from a bid can be used to arrive at a single “credit” value for a given supplier.

This single credit can be given a place within the wider scoring mechanism for a tender, so economic development may be considered to be worth 10% of a bid value with other factors, such as price making up the remaining 90%

Permanent skilled employement = 100%
Permanent, unskilled employment = 80%
Temporary, skilled employment = 40%
Temporary, unskilled employment = 20%

Supplier A's bid information
New permanent skilled employees = 12
New permanent, unskilled employees = 6
New temporary, unskilled employees = 4

Supplier A credit score = (12 * 1.0)+(6 * 0.8)+(4 * 0.2) = 17.6

Supplier B's bid information
New permanent skilled employees = 10
New permanent, unskilled employees = 6
New temporary, unskilled employees = 6

Supplier B credit score = (10 * 1.0)+(6 * 0.8)+(6 * 0.2) = 16

Weightings can be created for a variety of factors, including location, nature of work, type of skills acquired or whether or not the company is in a growth market. Use of weightings and how they will be applied to a tender will need to be compliant with your procurement legislation and will need to be communicated to your bidders prior to conducting any bid assessment.