Confusion often pervades the social dimension of sustainability, or the S in ESG when the terms are used interchangeably, in particular there’s a lack of certainty regarding what truly delivers positive social outcomes and value.

As a result, the tendency can be to either report inputs and outputs, that is what’s been done and what happened as a result, which alone doesn’t fully expose the effects of interventions, or seek standard metrics to demonstrate success, leading to restricted or formulaic results.

Quantification of social outcomes is not always straightforward, let alone desirable. The change one person experiences from an intervention can be completely different to the change experienced by another. Measurement frameworks provide some consistency and benchmarking (based on many assumptions), but their end-goal of standardisation means that not only can the same project be reported in different ways, depending on which methodology is used, but the lived experiences of those involved isn’t adequately captured.

A return to the fundamentals of sustainability the trilogy of people, planet and profit reminds us that the social dimension should always be about people and improving their lives, welfare and lived experiences.     

The starting point is asking critical people-centric questions: who are our key stakeholders or beneficiaries? How can we reach them to ask what their individual needs, concerns, challenges, behaviours and influences are?

This approach is likely to be a little more complex and require creativity, lending itself less to a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s only by knowing who the beneficiaries of a project or intervention are likely to be that it can be designed to deliver impactful and meaningful social value.

Seeking specialist resources is invaluable to support stakeholder identification and engagement. This may involve curating partnerships with local grassroots groups, charities or social enterprises whose objective is to understand, reach and positively impact specific beneficiaries. These groups have knowledge of local issues and can access the very people experiencing them.

Whether it’s an organisation looking at the social impact of its operations on its employees or a project team looking at the social value contribution of an operational real estate asset, development or regeneration project, taking a deeper systemic approach is key to proactively creating the opportunity, environment and culture to generate positive outcomes.

Tips for taking a 'people-first' approach to social value: 

• Start with your stakeholders – identify and map out stakeholder groups and their individual needs, concerns, challenges and influences. Factor in challenges around accessibility, availability, communication style, language, location, obstacles or concerns to coming forward to engage, and selection biases.
  
  
• Be aware of the difference between capturing ‘efforts’ and capturing ‘effects’ and be consistent. A truly purposeful approach goes beyond this and strives towards identifying impact. For example, reporting the outcomes of a skills programme in terms of number of jobs created doesn’t detail the effect the programme has had on participants’ better mental health, ability to buy better food, or heat their home because of improved financial circumstances.

• Avoid the trap of recording what’s convenient and instead record what’s meaningful; this may be complex data to collect and may have gaps. Embrace non-quantitative means of capturing outcomes such as ‘lived experiences’ – an invaluable way of sharing the powerfully human story of social impact.
  
  
• Be prepared to re-design initiatives if they’re not delivering the outcomes intended or needed. This ensures effective behaviour change is monitored and creates a flexible feedback loop.
  
  
• You don’t have to go it alone – there’s usually specialist or targeted channels available to reach your beneficiaries. As your stakeholder groups move further away from your sphere of influence or accessibility, partnerships with groups on the ground are an invaluable source of knowledge.
  
  
  

Further information

Contact Maria Garcia

Why the importance of social value should not be underestimated