If it’s been said once, it’s been said millions of times: employees increasingly want and expect the companies they work for to have a social impact strategy.
More than three years after the murder of George Floyd became an inflection point for corporate America to fully embrace diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, there are still unanswered questions. Many center around how companies should invest in having a social impact, and the way they measure and evaluate success.
During Fortune’s annual Impact Initiative conference, which took place in Atlanta, Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh sat down with Paramount head of corporate social responsibility and ESG Crystal Barnes, Amy Nakamoto; head of social impact for Discovery Education; and Dana O’Donovan; social impact and Monitor Institute leader at Deloitte; to discuss how companies can zero in on what social impact looks like for them and their employees, and then how to strategize for maximum effect.
The key is that there’s not a magic bullet, one size fits all approach, O’Donovan says. Social impact needs to deeply align with the business, so it will and should look different, she says.
“We tell our clients that your purpose strategy needs to be completely embedded in your business strategy,” O’Donovan says. “It’s going to look a bit different depending on your business and the kinds of issues that are most important, and where your capabilities can help you really drive change.
“It’s okay to have a portfolio of activities that are all designed to meet different goals around social impact and purpose,” she continues, “as long as you have an overarching strategy and rationale for that.”
Deloitte’s strategy
Deloitte, last September, announced a $1.5 billion social impact investment over the next 10 years. The company zeroed in on three areas that resonated with organizations values and focus: equity in education and workforce development, financial inclusion, and health.
It’s no longer something companies can steer clear of or not communicate to staff. Nearly half of a 125 CEO cohort from public companies said they felt compelled to speak out on social, political and environmental issues, according to a 2021 survey from Deloitte and the Society for Corporate Governance. And in a study from earlier this year, 76% of U.S. employees say they want to work for a company that’s trying to have a better impact on the world, half said they might even resign if the companies social impact values didn’t align with their own, according to a survey of 2,000 workers commissioned by Unilever.
For Paramount, social impact starts with storytelling, Barnes says, and runs through every crevice of the company’s commitment to it.
“We know that in order to continue to grow our business and, quite frankly, to deliver shareholder value we need to tell diverse stories that represent the audience with which we serve,” Barnes says. To do that, Paramount needs to invest in writers, directors, and producers from those communities. “So when we think about inclusive storytelling, and changing the narratives, we know that our impact efforts have to be closely connected to that, and that the measurement and evaluation has to be consistent.”
How companies measure their impact and the success of their initiatives is key. Paramount, Barnes says, partnered with Salesforce over the summer to create a tool to help track and measure diversity in its productions and better know where the company is along the way to meeting its goals. They also made the tool open sourced to share with the industry.
“It’s not about it being proprietary to our organization, but it is about creating the same song, the same hymnal that we can all sing from so that we can actually see if we are measuring progress over time,” she says.
‘You can’t be a pendulum’
For measurement to be successful, Nakamoto says, companies have to first tie social impact to the core business and then figure out goals for impact. Discovery Education, for example, has partners who want their impact to be in workforce development, she says. But that looks different whether it’s foundational learning in early grades or building pathways to careers in K-12 through post secondary education.
“You can’t be a pendulum, because that actually hurts communities… you need metrics and data to show that it’s working, but you also can’t pull out before things actually take hold,” Nakamoto says. “You want to scale your impacts, you’ve got to show your big numbers. And then you’ve got to do deep impact storytelling,” and it’s not fluff she says, “It’s actually saying if we do this, and we feel really good about our theory of change, then those stories are illustrative of the scale.”
