The importance of understanding the critical concept of social impact and how this is interlinked with the company’s environmental, financial and social operations along with its measurement is only but growing among marketing professionals.
According to current trends profitable organizations track and measure their societal outcomes. This is the only way to ensure that their investments have been effective. Therefore, an increasing number of companies and professionals are working towards that path in order to deliver on assessable expectations of their stakeholders. That, however, might involve a complex situation in terms of balancing calculations.
It is commonly known, especially in the age of social media that doing just profitable business doesn’t equal responsible business and that might affect a corporate image on a long term while also make the stakeholders to disengage sooner than expected. On the other half, it is not adequate for a company to simply assume itself active within the corporate social impact industry just by taking initiatives that stress the social and environmental aspect. Most companies are able to set social goals nonetheless not all might contribute to a succesful sustainability strategy. Recognizing impacts is not the difficult part to do whist translating the human experience into numbers might involve a failure in capturing all of it. What is key in the process of social impact measurement is knowing what to quantify, have internal and external focus on strategies that meet long-term goals and emphasize on purpose-driven communication efforts.
Steps need to be made to embrace a culture of change-making. In order for a successful vision to be established, it is required a shifting in consciousness. That means that professionals have besides strong leadership skills, also the ability to be open in constant learning over impact assessment. The more you invest in it the more likely is to find the framework and methods that best align to your needs. Once organizational capacity receives the right training and develops the skills to measure impact success then change is reflected.
Are you ready to advance your skills in Sustainability with a hands-on training? Sustainability Academy offers you the right online course to get all the information needed on Social Impact Assessment and SROI and takes you through the main issues of identifying inputs, outputs and outcomes of CSR initiatives.