CSR Impact Assessment - Gauging Social Impacts from Sustainability based interventions

There has been a remarkable shift in the corporate sustainability outlook and their approach towards delivering socio-economic stability to their beneficiaries. The role Impact assessments play in providing timely and vital information required by a company to make a real difference cannot be underplayed. A comprehensive assessment utilizes specific and vital performance metrics to gauge the true outcome and impact of an intervention. 

The objectives of any social impact assessment should be:

·      Assessing and understanding the relation between CSR performance of companies and their related societal impacts.

·      Explaining and reporting on societal and environmental impacts from their CSR interventions.

·      Explore factors that drive superior CSR performance and deliver the envisioned CSR impact.

·      Recommend measures to mitigate any underlying issues (if any)

·      Finally, to investigate any current or future challenges

A prominent FMCG company initiated six impact assessment studies in 2015-16 across its basket of CSR initiatives, which were being implemented in 17 states. The group head indicated how such evaluations helped the company gauge the effectiveness of its interventions on ground. Not only did it help highlight areas that had to be improved but the stakeholder feedback they got in the process, also provided them with avenues to scale up the interventions successfully.

As for ISO 26000 (a relatively new player in the world of CSR), it is a set of guidelines and recommendations against 7 principles. These guidelines appeal to any organization looking to advance its business operations and business impacts through socially and environmentally responsible interventions. The best part of ISO 26000 is the flexibility in its design ensures that it can work in all organizations across all cultures. Most importantly the core element of ISO 26000 is identifying stakeholders, developing channels of interaction and engaging them.

Through our experience, stakeholder perspective is a necessary steppingstone to ensure a holistic economic and social development of disenfranchised communities. Recently we were actively involved in surveying and assessing a company’s co-community development activities in vulnerable and remote villages of southern India. Through our survey we uncovered some amusing facts which were vital to streamline the area’s ongoing interventions –

·      Cultural Viewpoint: Even with ROs installed some villagers preferred the dam’s “clean” water over RO water! Villagers were convinced that the water from a local dam was holy thus making it pure and safe to drink. By taking into account local considerations we also managed to uncover a cultural aspect, which wouldn’t have happened if only superficial monitoring and evaluation was done.

·      Social Stigma: cast system is still rigorously adhered to in the majority of the villages we conducted the assessment. Equitable disbursement of social infrastructure thus needs to keep inclusiveness at its core. For instance, in some cases the OBC (other backward class) would not touch the RO water dispenser the SCs (Scheduled Caste) would use and vice versa. 

·      Social development Issues:  Each issue varied massively from village to village. This was an eye opener because it not only re-affirmed the fact that socially there are wide variations based on each region and community, but also makes a foolproof case for impact assessment as each geography and community has specific needs, limitations, etc., and cannot be addressed by one standard approach.

Impact assessments are an integral part of CSR strategy and shouldn’t be carried out only at the end of an interventions, but in fact before as well. A need assessment is crucial in considering the needs of the target community and designing projects that address those identified needs. The impact assessment then measures whether those needs have been satisfied. If these aspects aren’t seriously considered, then it would basically just mean directing your CSR funds into an initiative which would end up having sub-standard outcomes.

Moreover, adhering to the "voluntary" ISO 26000 standards on CSR, corporates can not only fulfill requirements of disclosing relevant matters against environmental and social issues but can also use it to design great public relations campaigns to draw light on the good work they have been doing.

Conducting an impact assessment for the sake of conducting one also defeats the purpose entirely. At times, it is understandable that a company keeps impact assessment results internal in fear of negative perception of its brand image. However, an independent assessor, who directly reports the findings (in terms of the transformation in beneficiaries’ socio-economic situation or any other qualitative variable) helps organizations iterate upon their approach and develop an effective communication strategy for various stakeholders.

Detailed impact assessments are essential in gathering good data which sets up strong analytical opportunities to monitor and validate findings. Apart from evaluating the true value of the outcomes, impact centric approach towards CSR projects is an affirmative way of using data to push for a truly sustainable society.