Edition 30 - What's the impact?

Welcome back to another edition of Pondering Careers, where we talk about all things related to careers and pathways.

We're coming towards the end of the year, which means Impact Reports are popping up everywhere (including ours, which is out this week), and it's got me thinking about all this impact.

Measuring impact is something that's important, because it can tell us what's working and what needs a tweak or two, but there are lots of different ways to measure impact and sometimes raw numbers alone don't tell a great story, so this week I wanted to take a look at what impact actually is, why it matters, how you can measure it, and what you can do with the data once you have it.

Let's get into it...

What is impact, and why is it important?

When I think about the impact a project has had I'm wanting to know about the amount of change it has created, and who it has created that change for. This isn't just about evaluating the 'value' of the project, because often value is intrinsic and not measurable - it's more about looking at the outcomes, identifying what worked and why, then thinking about how we can apply that in our own context.

Here's an example - Who Gives A Crap .

They're a Social Enterprise that makes toilet paper. That's it, that's all they do.

But, they also have impact - so far, they've raised over $13m and they have brought sanitation to thousands of people across the world.

So, technically, you can measure their impact in dollars, but they also have other kinds of impact. They are out there talking about sanitation and clean water supply, which makes other people think about it and raises the profile of the cause on a larger scale. They also put pressure on other retailers to create sustainable products and return profit into sanitation programs, creating even more impact.

We can't technically 'measure' this type of external impact, but that doesn't mean it's not important.

Impact can also be individual

Not every career conversation I have covers impact, but I'm noticing that more people want to talk about the impact they can have with their work as part of the puzzle.

For example, I spoke with a doctor looking for a change a few weeks ago and we talked about courses and possible employers, but we also talked about the type of impact she wanted to have. The impact wasn't the only thing to consider, but it was important that her work benefited others, and we discussed different ways she could do that while also meeting her other career goals.

Even on an individual level, it's possible to measure and track impact - think about how much impact you've had with your own career!

Measuring impact gives us information

Collecting and sharing data about impact goes beyond glossy reports - good data can give us powerful information and keep us on track.

Earlier this week I shared a map of Australia and a story about how we wanted to have more impact in regional and rural areas. The goal was simple - to serve schools outside of the major metropolitan centres as well as we serve those schools in the cities, and to do that we needed to measure our impact.

We literally got a map of Australia and marked out the location of every one of our schools, then set out to fill in the gaps.

If we hadn't started by measuring our initial impact, then revisited the goal and reviewed our impact at the end of the year, we wouldn't be able to see what's changed.

The Ocean Cleanup is another great example of an impact-led organisation; they use impact to drive their mission and track their progress, while at the same time forcing other organisations to consider the impact of their own policies and frameworks.

They use impact in multiple ways to achieve their goals, and they use the data they collect to help the public understand their mission.

What should be measured and why?

If you want to think about your own impact, it's important to start by working out what should be measured, and why you want to measure that particular thing.

For my own career, I want to help ALL young people navigate brighter pathways, and that's driven by my own experiences of feeling lost and unsure when I was in the last few years of school.

Because I know that I want to help young people, it makes it easy for me to work out what kind of impact to track - in my case, it's not about the $$$'s or the number of awards, but about the number of young people I help, so I track the number of students we serve.

Because it's also really important to me that all young people can build a bright future, regardless of where they live, their gender or skin colour, or how much their parent's earn, I track those things as well.

How does this relate to you?

Well, you need to start by thinking about the impact you want to make and why you want to have that impact. If you're a Career Practitioner or School Leader working with secondary students, your impact might be very specific - for example, you might aim to ensure all graduating students know their next step, whether that's into work or further study.

We know that some things make it more likely that students will have a clear pathway, so you could track the number of engagements your students have with the world of work (which is what The Careers & Enterprise Company does really well), or the number of career conversations you have each week.

What metrics matter to you?

• The number of sessions you have with students?
• The amount of time students spend in career education lessons?
• The percentage of students who attend work experience?
• The number of parents and family members who attend info evenings?

It's important to be careful with what you measure. Sometimes I've been involved in programs where clients and students are asked to 'rate' the service they've received, and, while the vast majority of ratings are usually favourable, I question the usefulness of such a measure.

Career counselling isn't always neat and tidy, and clients don't always leave feeling better - in fact, in some cases they may leave feeling worse, if their expectations coming into the session were inaccurate. I've had some clients who expect me to give them a job, and that's just not possible.

Those clients would have given me a negative rating, which doesn't mean that I didn't do my job - so is client rating a valid measure to track?

The same goes for student confidence.

I often hear people talk about improving student confidence, as though that single measure alone is enough to track the impact of a career education program. Granted, confidence is important, but it's just one of the four 'Cs' of Career Adaptability outlined by Mark Savickas.

The other three elements, concern, control, and curiosity, are equally important, and if we're going to track career confidence then we need to be tracking the other three as well.

Start with the outcomes

If we really want to get 'impact' right, then we need to start with the desired outcomes - which is what Who Gives a Crap and The Ocean Cleanup do so well.

How can you measure positive outcomes in your own context? What constitutes a positive outcome, and how can you keep track of them? We all know how hard it is to track student destination data, so relying on a 'where are they now' model to measure impact could lead to difficulties, but there are other ways to measure impact.

Once you know what you want to achieve, you can work backwards to identify impact metrics.

One of the things that we started tracking this year was the number of conversations we have with educators.

At the start of this year, we were having a conversation about whether or not to send out a survey to our members. We've done these in the past, but I'm always reluctant because I know how busy everyone is, and I often feel that with surveys you only get two types of people who respond - those who really love you, and those who really don't.

As part of this conversation, I asked the question about how many times a week we already talk with Career Practitioners and Educators.

We guessed it was about 5 to 10, so we decided to track conversations for a couple of months to see how close we were.

It turns out, we have an average of more than 40 of these conversations each week, which is not bad for a team of 4.

We only count a conversation when we've had at least four emails in the chain, or a phone, zoom, or in-person conversation. These conversations cover everything - sometimes we talk about new programs we're building, or a concern they have related to their students. We talk about what's happening in the industry, and we share ideas for new programs. These conversations are robust and powerful, and help us understand the concerns within schools with far more insight than we could gain from a one-off survey.

What I'm trying to say is that it's worth taking the time to really think about the impact measures that count for your context, and then keeping track of those.

Measuring and communicating impact

I'm not going to tell you how to collect data - we have excel and Google Sheets for that - but I would love to share this graphic on using data:

One way we can do this really well as Career Practitioners is with a combination of numbers (like, we held XX one-on-one sessions with Year 10's in 2023), and stories, like the #CareersImpact stories Chris Targett RCDP has been sharing recently.

These stories put our work into context and make it tangible.

A colleague told me about an alumni event they attended recently, where four separate people approached her to say thank you - Suzanne McIntyre had worked with some of these students many years in the past, but the students remembered her and the guidance she provided and the impact it had had on their career.

When we put the raw numbers to one side and listen to the stories, that's when we can see the real impact.

That's it!

Thanks for joining me for another week of Pondering Careers, this will probably be the last full edition for a while as we're travelling (again) in December, then taking a couple of weeks off, so bear with me as things get a bit slimmed down.

Our 2023 Impact Report is out now, in case you'd like to learn more about what we've been up to this year.