Question #3: Relevant social impact indicators to the private sector

[Kelly Fish, MarketShare Associates]

This is a question for everyone to respond to, including experts and participants: 

 

What social inclusion/women’s empowerment domains and inclusive business outcome indicators are most relevant to the private sector?  

 

Looking forward to the conversation! 

[Yaquta Fatehi, William Davidson Institute]

Hi everyone

While there are many standard indicator repositories (one of which is GIIN), there is also an acknowledgment to strike a balance between standard indicators and indicators contextualized to the program's theory of change or strategy map and local environment.

Typically, when I identify social and business outcome key performance indicators for SME partners, I begin with co-developing the theory of change with the company and relevant stakeholders and then selecting outcome indicators based on this theory of change (the indicator selection also goes through a process of review and discussion - especially focused on how will we collect a particular indicator). So, in addition to finding the right indicator, we also review if the indicator can be collected in a 'rigorous,' 'right-sized' to resources, 'responsible' without harming any persons, and 'relevant' manner (the 4Rs of Lean Research developed by MIT). If it cannot (which can be the case when working with very resource-constrained companies), we look for proxy indicators or use secondary data or existing literature to understand the impact pathway. Also, as companies grow and scale, indicators can evolve with time!

On the G-SEARCh project, working with 21 companies, we found these to be the most common social and financial indicators based on the gender-inclusive programs (Column A) being implemented. These were co-developed with the companies and implementing partners. In the "how to use this resource" tab, we share how many indicators should be selected, given not all can be used due to company resource constraints.

And while conducting this G-SEARCh work, my research led me to the following women's economic empowerment frameworks and indicators that I found very useful.
1. Women's empowerment by W+ 2. Measuring women's empowerment by Data2X and CGD 3. Women's economic empowerment by the Gates Foundation 4. Women's empowerment agricultural index by IFPRI

Looking forward to hearing from the other experts and members of this group on this topic! 

Best
Yaquta

[Donald Ocen]

Hi All

A question from Donald Ocen. It may not necessarily relate to the question or theme for the day but I would very much appreciate responses to it.

Background information: The use of None Financial Performance have become more widespread during recent years to assess performance in organisations. This is largely attributable to the fact that many important aspects of the organizational performance cannot be measured in purely financial terms

There are a number of Non-financial Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that may even be “Lead KPIs” / “Lead CSFs” in so far as they give an indication of likely future financial performance and therefore their measurement might reveal problems which might be addressed by management in time to take remedial actions. However, some of them are not social in nature (i.e., do not fall within the confines of the elements of ESG).

They are more or less related to the products/ services and or the way the products or the services are delivered like Innovations and learning, internal business process efficiency, Reliability, flexibility, customer satisfaction, quality of services & products, resource utilization, delivery etc.

Although some of the elements ESG have direct impact on the products and service and the way they are delivered some of them do not or at least are remotely related or their impact are long term in nature.

More often than not the choice of staff, suppliers/ service providers, distributors, customers/ beneficiaries of our inclusion programs are determined by social considerations with some predetermined designated %tage for involvement of say women, youth, PWD etc. as opposed to the use of some competence profile bench-marked with industry standards which may in some cases have a lot of implications for performance indicators which are none financial and none ESG, mentioned above.

My question is:  How can we use social data and indicators to the determine the impact of our inclusion program on non-financial indicators which are not social in nature and therefore justify our inclusion program.   I think it Yaguta who pointed out the social impacts alone is often not enough to justify more investment in inclusion programs. Can social data like gender/ sex-segregated data be of use?

For instance, how can we measure the impact of our inclusion programs on:

·         The Number or  % increase in the number of new products developed in a year/ or time taken to launch a new product

·         The revenue or % of revenue earned from new products

·         Amount of, or  % of the expenditure on research and development 

·         % of time used for staff development

·         Amount of, or % of expenses used for staff development

·         % of sales from new clients

·         %  of clients from whom repeat business is gained

·         Rating from clients’ satisfaction surveys

·         Response time to clients changing needs

[Yaquta Fatehi, William Davidson Institute]

Hi Donald - thanks for your question. I dont know if I fully understood your question, but here is my response, and I hope it helps:

1. One way is to look at the diversity of your workforce and see if it has any correlation with the indicators you listed; So, yes, you could sex-disaggregate the data that you are collecting for the indicators you mentioned; e.g., revenue earned from new projects that are developed by diverse teams or teams that have a larger percentage of women engineers/employees.

2. You can also look at employee feedback and satisfaction scores regarding how gender inclusion and diversity make the company more productive. A Google search can give you some interesting survey questions here. 

3. Similarly, you can apply such a lens to the customer base - what are their satisfaction scores by gender? How does the feedback differ from customers using a product developed by a diverse group versus a non-diverse group?

Getting into the how requires collaboration, listening, and discussion among the teams - companies' measurement staffers have to figure out how many resources they have and design solutions within that resource boundary; as they identify quick wins and show how their measurement data can be used for decision-making, they can approach leadership to direct more resources to measurement. Additionally, they need to collaborate with leadership to understand the latter's goals- is contribution OK, or do you have to show attribution because then you need different methodologies and analysis plans?

Best

Yaquta