In a world with challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, racial and social inequality, and the daily realities of climate change, what it means to do business as usual is changing and with this you’ll be hearing and reading about ESG, Sustainability, CSR, SGD but what do you start with, aren’t they the same thing?  What are the differences, aren’t they similar? 

Businesses can’t afford to ignore the social impact of their business or the interests of their wider stakeholders.  There is an increasing demand from employees, consumers, and wider stakeholders to act better and businesses themselves are starting to acknowledge that doing good can help companies succeed.

With no dream framework or clear road map it’s important for start-ups to find perspective and they can do this by focusing on the impact that they want to make and how to implement it.  Businesses acting better doesn’t have to be challenging for start-ups and the efforts can grow organically as the business flourishes.  Its best to embed doing good from the get-go rather than realise you’ve missed a step that could stall your growth down the line.

So, where can a start-up focus.  Don’t over complicate it.  Focus on your local community, what can you do to enhance the wellbeing of the people and what can you do to help close the gap on inequality.  Finally, what approach can you take to maximise that impact with the resource available to you?

To maximise the impact, you need to monitor your value.  Social Value is the quantification of the relative importance that people place on the changes they experience in their lives. Without hearing the stories of the people who experience these changes how do you know that you are making change on the ground and not just ticking boxes.

Social Value captures the wider outcomes of initiatives and doesn’t just end the value chain at output, or ticking those boxes. Social Value considers the more intangible value of people experience and the savings associated with increasingly life prospects.

Embedding and understanding this wider value will help you to do more of the good stuff and less of the not so good!  It avoids doing good becoming a tick box exercise.

What do we say to start-ups who are concerned about making social impact part of their business proposition as they are worried that initial costs will not significantly contribute to revenue?

Firstly, making social impact a core business focus will be beneficial to a start-up’s growth and the broader non-financial benefits such as employee engagement will create a virtuous cycle and ultimately result in a healthy the bottom line.

Secondly, you can start doing good with non-cash investment.  Cash investment can grow organically and in alignment with business goals as cash flows flourish. To help, we have put together some non-cash steps for start-ups to embed within their business culture.

• Make your business environmentally friendly, there is a connection between people and planet and the effects of your carbon footprint can have direct outcomes of people within your community.
• Sign up for courses highlighting equality, diversity, and inclusion within workforces.

• Supporting your employees with community volunteering, it gives them a chance to do good for people within their local communities, maximising their impact.

• Involve employees in deciding the impact you want to make; they’re perspective and life experiences can add a deeper dimension to doing good and create a more meaningful impact for people.

• Understand the material value that stakeholders experience, this can be intended, unintended, positive, and negative not all value will be captured by market prices i.e., a feeling of confidence.  Make a conscious effort keep improving your products and services to server a broader range of stakeholders.

Social Value is a relatively new area of societal value that closely aligns to the evolving S in ESG focusing on more proactive Social intervention that not only does good for the business but also does good for the community. Social Value doesn’t have to be difficult if you are able to take small incremental steps you will be on the right track. The scope of a social value initiative should grow with the business and deliver long term outcomes.