Yes! And actually this is where the business community can make significant strides in building trust with the multilateral system and governments. We have proven planning, operations, project management and measurement techniques. #getstuffdonethatmatters
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A3. There are challenges around finding the right metrics and indicators that tell you something meaningful about actual performance, there is a lot of data being generated but does it really connect to outcomes for people? Some really interesting work in this regard in the business and human rights space, e.g. in the Valuing Respect initiative
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A2b: Now increasing and maximizing social impact is about learning from the data you have. So few funders actually adjust their investments based upon real-time feedback of impact information. Collect data. Use it to inform your work. Make adjustments. Stop funding things that donât appear to work as well as others. This is how we will increase social impact.
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Regulation is an interesting development but I wonder if companies have the capacity to quantify and report on mandatory disclosures?
thank you for clarifying this for me
For stakeholder engagement - recognised as a key starting point to measurement - a good starting point is to follow the Social Value Principles which ensures you prioritise the outcomes that are most important to those affected.
A2: First thought is to start with measuring and then worry about how to measure more effectively/efficiently!
Would aim for companies to understand that impacts are frequently collective, difficult to measure and even harder to attribute; there are no silver bullets. Secondly, recognise that impact is a neutral term but people tend to focus on âpositive impactâ. If you approach it from âletâs maximise our impactâ it suggest youâre a bit oblivious to the harms that are potentially being created by your organisation.
So to start with - use existing best practice frameworks (like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights) to understand your social risks and negative impacts. Use frameworks like the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark methodologies to understand how well youâre respecting human rights and how to improve. Recognise that by dealing with key negative impacts and risks, you have the potential to have a positive impact. Then map those positive impacts to the SDG Framework. (The WBA is creating systems transformation methodologies, to assess how well companies are contributing to the SDGs and these will provide an additional framework to understand social impacts.)
Recognise that in human rights terms, there is no offsetting; having a positive impact through CSR projects in rural Ghana does not offset paying poverty wages in New York. Enabling people to connect does not mean negate your role in breaching peopleâs privacy. Also, understand that while measuring positive impact is hard, quantifying âavoiding negative impactâ is even harder - but is just as important.
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Measuring the impact of a business demands a different approach as traditional methods for impact evaluation that start with establishing baseline data at a specific point in time and tracking changes longitudinally till an âend-lineâ are not always applicable to businesses. Keeping a tab on all the precise effects a business has on people and the planet may appear as a resource-intensive project. To be more efficient and effective, businesses can approach impact management as specific questions that can be answered with impact data and define the scope in terms of how that data is going to be used to make better decisions.
Businesses also need to understand better the data that already exists internally or externally. For example, if a company is delivering primary healthcare in a market where other providers do not exist, there may not be a need to collect new evidence on the need for such a service. Rather, qualitative feedback on whether the service is effective in its delivery may be enough to improve performance and maximize impact. Responsible impact measurement and management will only invest in primary data collection where the data is actionable and benefits the people impacted.
Businesses can scale their social impact by using impact data as a feedback loop and create a virtuous cycle of learning and improvement.
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A2. On the second part of this question measurement is only part of the story in terms of maximising social impact. Building community and broader stakeholder relationships based on mutual trust and respect is critical. How better measurement helps inform and strengthen these relationships is key.
From a system perspective, industry and cross-industry collaboration is critical. Itâs through engaging on shared challenges at a local/regional or global level that can create significant change. E.g. working in collaboration on regional development planning exercises with multiple companies like Anglo American has been doing in a number of countries.
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Question 2b may be too broad and itâll depend on each company. One universal truth is that it starts with understanding the organisationâs impact, which is no small task.
Olivia, this is very interesting (yet simple) way of looking at how organisations think about social impact - is there somewhere where I can read more about it?
One big gap to reporting is the question, âwho is your audience?â who will validate all the stuff youâve printed out? Will all your stakeholders/Communities understand the language? More importantly, will they agree with the metrics?
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From the Ibero-American General Secretariat we are developing a project that seeks to promote companies that rightly have a positive impact, and not those that only seek to mitigate or reduce negative externalities. The project is called âthe fourth sectorâ and was born as an initiative financed by the WEF but took its own flight. The transition of traditional companies is very important, but I think it is more important to promote that companies created in the future be born with a different DNA.
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The IMP has defined impact as âImpact is a change in positive or negative outcome for people or the planet. The IMP has built consensus that to understand any impact, we need to understand five dimensions of performance: What, Who, How Much, Contribution and Risk.â It provides consensus of more than 2,000 enterprises, investors and practiionners, https://impactmanagementproject.com/impact-management/what-is-impact/
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Weâve worked on translating SDG targets and indicators at the business level - would be happy to share!
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Some good news I think: IMP Structured Network has brought a signficant number of standard-setters (proud to be part of that!) to a common table and working on a common understanding and narrative of the âimpact ecosystemâ. Need to be forward-thinking and ambitious though, ie focus on the gaps.
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I agree Andrew - and thatâs why the leading standard-setters in this space have been coming together to get to consensus to help more comparable measuring reporting.
It is broadly agree that, organisations should measure as far along the theory of change as possible - at a minimum collect information about policies, ideally collect outputs (both of those are in organisational control, and so are easier).
Where possible measure the change in the social or environmental outcome - where outcome is defined as an aspect of well-being (per the OECD research). Outcomes are therefore broadly agreed to be the result that is out of organisational control.
To know what âimpactâ has occurred, you then need to factor in the counterfactual - did the enterprise cause all of that change in outcome?
There is also widespread agreement that knowing whether impact has been âmaximisedâ depends on putting the data in context. For example, knowing if youâve met SDG 8.5.1 (quality employment measured by average hourly earnings) depends on what a living wage looks like in that context, and whether the employees affected previously did not have that wage level.
I would argue weâre a bit far away from talking about âmaximisationâ yet!
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In my opinion, the key to effective and efficient impact measurement is a robust Theory of Change and M&E framework. My experience has shown that it really pays off to invest in a robust baseline and M&E approach at the beginning so that it will be easier to collect and evaluate defined indicators when implementing a project.
I also think that you should rather focus on a limited set of well defined indicators where you are sure you can get good quality data on a regular basis and that enable you to measure impact and make decisions rather than trying to âboil the oceanâ and collect a large set of data that will not be used.
Ideally you would also like to involve the stakeholders in your M&E approach. Truthfully you would not only involve them in the M&E process but right from the start, when designing a programme. A programme is only as successful as it is perceived to be in the eyes of your main stakeholders.
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I agree, I think communicating the data effectively so it is really accessible to people is key. But different audiences want to know different things/ hear it in a different way, e.g. investors vs communities. How can companies best respond to this?
Fully agree⌠This also addresses the challenge of âfirst mover disadvantageâ for a company