Business Social Impact Initiative Report

How and why are businesses seeking to have a positive

social impact?

For Discussion

Business Social Impact Initiative

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What are businesses doing to achieve a positive social impact?

Uscreates has set up the Business Social Impact Initiative to support businesses that want to improve their social impact.

The ultimate aim is to help organisations to take action and make the practical changes that will make a difference.

Over the next year we will be having a series of conversations with businesses and hosting events to bring togetherpeople from different types of organisation to understand and discuss the key issues, share best practice and explore the possibilities for innovation and improvement.

The objective of our first series of conversations is simply to gain a better understanding of how and why organisations are seeking to have a social impact.

What do you think? Use this space to take some notes.

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What is Social Impact?

‘The effect of an activity on the

social fabric of the community and

well-being of the individuals and

families.’- businessdictionary.com

For us social impact is:

Conversations for Understanding Over the last few months we have talked to over twenty people in a number of different roles and in mainly business to business service organisations, with public and private sector clients, to better understand how and why they seek to have a social impact.

This report summarises some of our key insights which will form the basis to further conversations on how businesses can optimise their social impact moving forward.

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During this period many organisations made donations to charity and encouraged some employee volunteering but did not give much thought to how and why they have a social impact. This is now changing, both quickly and dramatically.

The journey so far ...What do you think? Use this space to take some notes.

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The world is changing and there are many external factors leading businesses to take their social impact seriously.

‘Sustainability is our strategy. It’s what we do.’

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Most of the organisations we talked to described a similar journey in their current thinking on social impact. It started up to twenty years ago when Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was all about compliance and form filling and was undoubtedly a cost to the business. Over the last ten years the CSR focus has been on environmental issues (many organisations took the S out of CSR and rebranded CR to acknowledge the broader scope) and as the business benefits have become clear (mainly cost savings from greater energy, water and waste efficiencies) most large organisations have been successful in starting to tackle the environmental challenge. For many sustainability is now at the core of their business strategy.


Businesses are starting to see their potenial as a force for good.

There has been negative publicity relating to poor corporate governance, the global banking crisis and poor operational practices, such as child labour, where organisations have been accused of putting profit ahead of people.

More and more consumers make choices (where price and quality are the same) based on how they perceive the social impact of a brand or organisation.

At the same time, here in the UK, the government has introduced the ideas of the Big Society, and the Social Value Act has changed how the provision of public services is assessed to include social and environmental as well as economic factors.

‘We’ve got the environmental piece wrapped up – there is a clear business case and well established indicators. Now social impact is a whole other issue.’

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6 key insights:What do you think? Use this space to take some notes.

1) Organisations are doing many great things that result in positive social impact but they could be doing much more.

2) The business objectives for having a social impact tend to be vague and poorly communicated.

3) Organisations are adopting three broad approaches to having a social impact; outsourced, managed and integrated.

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4) For organisations to make a difference there needs to be clear and strong senior level leadership.

5) Many organisations are not clear about the social impact they want to have.

6) Businesses are struggling to evaluate their social impact.

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1) Organisations are doing many great things that result in positive social impact but they could be doing much more.

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‘We have an employee volunteering

scheme’

‘We match donations our

employees give to selected

charities’

‘We give grants to charities that

target certain outcomes’

‘Our employee wellbeing

programme is key for us’

‘We run apprentice

schemes throughout

the country’

‘Just what we do has social impact - we

deliver many public services’

‘We donate £50,000 to

a local charity’

During our conversations people described to us the ways in which they are having a social impact ...

... but most admitted they feel they could be doing more.

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What became clear to us is that until organisations recognise that there are business benefits to having a social impact they will be held back and unable to truely optimise the impact they are having.

For many organisations it is mostly a timing issue – having a social impact is new on the strategic agenda and for others the conversations are only just starting.

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The organisations we spoke to gave many different reasons for wanting to have a positive social impact including:

2) The business objectives for having a social impact tend to be vague and poorly communicated.

To avoid bad publicity

We just want to ‘do good’ (we are all human and want to make a difference)

Being seen to do the right thing

To generate good publicity

Our clients are asking about it

Our clients are insisting on it

It makes our employees feel better about the organisation

It helps to develop employees

It opens new markets for us

It helps fuel our employee pipeline

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‘Our founders were Quakers and doing the right thing continues as our organisational mantra’

Few participants were able to clearly explain how the social impact objectives directly linked to the business strategy or activity, although it was often much easier for them to make the link to the vision and values of the organisation. This is because having a social impact still appears to be linked to the culture of the organisation, rather than being a business driver. Often, the organisations that were further down the road to optimising their social impact to have a strong historical or cultural reason for this. Organisations with a long record of social investment have the concept of social impact embedded in their culture and this makes the journey easier.

Some organisations have started to make real changes to put positive social impact at the core of their business strategy but many are just starting to see the potential and explore the possibilities.

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3) Organisations are adopting three broad approaches to having a social impact; outsourced, managed and integrated.


Our conversations have led us to believe there are three broad approaches to social impact:

Outsourced Managed

Organisations that are having a social impact through a third party.

Organisations that are proactive about having a positive social impact in addition to their core business activity.

e.g. charitable donations, grants, foundations, partnerships

‘Charities and voluntary organisations can apply to us for grants and we support them in making a difference to their beneficiaries which is what they are good at.’

‘I know it’s a cliché but it is true - it’s not enough anymore to send our highly skilled employees to paint walls, we want them to be doing something that makes the biggest difference based on what they are good at and helps them to develop in some way.’

e.g. employee volunteer-ing

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In reality, many of our participants are doing something with all three of these approaches but tend to strongly favour one over another. We believe that what is most important is to be clear on the objectives and ensure the approach optimises the business benefits and positive social impact.

Integrated

Organisations that have a social impact directly through their business activity.

e.g. through product design and usage or service delivery

‘We are just coming to the realisation that everything we do has a social impact and this is where we must focus our efforts. With a bit of work we can make a far bigger difference doing what we know and what we are good at. It’s obvious really.’

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We call this win win business social impact.

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In most organisations the responsibility for having a social impact still tends to sit outside the core business within the CSR (or CR) team.

Although the head of CSR is normally a senior role with access to the board the drive for lasting social change must come from the top.

4) For organisations to make a difference there needs to be clear and strong senior level leadership.


The organisations that have senior level leadership driving the organisation to improve their social impact are far more likely to be successful in the long run.

‘These are not conversations the board is having’

‘As FD some people think it is strange I am responsible for sustainability but it’s all about value generation so it makes sense to us’n so it makes sense to

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However, even in these organisations there are dissenters who do not believe the business should be concerned about the social impact it has.

There is still much work to be done in understanding and communicating the business benefits of having a positive social impact.

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5) Many organisations are not clear about the social impact they want to have.


Very few of the organisations we spoke to were clear about the actual impact they want to have. One or two were able to describe the outcomes they are seeking and how this relates to the core business.

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The organisations that are very clear about the areas in which they want to have an impact often define two or three key themes, such as education, local economy, wellbeing or community cohesion. Most of the activity is structured around these themes, however, they tend to be quite broad which enables flexibility but can result in a lack of true focus.‘We know the

impact we want to have – it’s part of our DNA’

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1 Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timebound

There were very few organisations that define a clear target audience or set SMART1 objectives for the social impact they want to achieve.

A lack of focus is likely to reduce the organisation’s ability to optimise social impact and is one of the reasons measuring the outcomes has proved so difficult.

‘We have clear areas in which we want to have a social impact that are right for the sort of business we are but we still manage to retrofit some of our old ini-tiatives into these categories for fear of upsetting some employees’

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6) Businesses are struggling to evaluate their social impact.This issue was an almost universal response to questions about measurement and evaluation. Many participants told us thatthey understand the benefits of measuring social impact but are finding the practicalities difficult.

The issues raised included:


Whether it is necessary

Being able to say what you have done makes the difference, and what would have happened anyway

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Knowing what to measure and how

Assesing whether the time and effort, and therefore cost, are worth the benefit of measuring the outcome

Who is responsible for doing the measurement

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We believe that to truly optimise social impact it is critical to find the answers to these questions around social impact measurement. It is a learning process, and it is unlikely to be perfect first time, but it should not be the reason for organisations to not fully realise their potential in having a positive social impact.

We believe that to truly optimise social impact it is critical to find the answers to these questions around social impact measurement.

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‘We just can’t figure out who will own the responsibility for measurement - us or the client’

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Win Win Business Social Impact

We see this as a very exciting time as more and more businesses are taking on the challenge of optimising their social impact. As the journey described at the beginning of this report continues there will be many challenges but we truly believe that there are many opportunities to create win win situations where businesses both benefit and optimise their social impact.


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... we truly believe that there are many opportunities to create win win situations where businesses both benefit and optimise their social impact.

This report is based on information provided by individuals in a range of organisations and has not been verified by either Uscreates or others in the organisation.

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Business Social Impact Initiative

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Documents

Business Social Impact Initiative Report