Social Impact Initiative
From developing a social impact strategy to delivering low effort / high reward improvement opportunities, I helped The Customer Experience Company to "walk the walk".
The Solutions
Throughout this project during my time at CEC, I was the Project Lead from initial discussions to determine the social impact strategy for the business all the way through to the first 6 weeks of delivery (I was unfortunately part of a redundancy wave before this could reach the end of the 3 month pilot I was the head of).
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Social Impact Strategy
A six monthly Social Impact Strategy that was comprised of two horizons: Walk the Walk and Community Uplift:
Two Year Strategic Roadmap​
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To empower The Customer Experience Company to drive forward progress, scale solutions and adapt as needed, I had also developed a two year strategic roadmap detailed with all of the opportunities to be more sustainable and socially equitable in alignment with the UN's SDG Framework.
Comprehensive Project Plan​
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A comprehensive project plan that took the findings of the current state assessment and prioritised them in order to achieve quick wins to prove the credibility of the approach and acquire leadership buy-in to see the full delivery of the proposed outcomes of the 3 month pilot.
Cheat Sheets​
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‘Cheat sheets’ for each business unit to drive advocacy and adoption across the business - many hands make light work.
The Unique Problem to Solve
Due to a lot of concurrent projects, there were limited resources within the team, which resulted in a divided effort and short-lived attention to many social impact initiatives.
A lack of strategy hindered the ability to deliver impactful outcomes over time.
A minimal understanding of CEC’s environmental impact and opportunities for improvement within the organisation made it extremely difficult for leadership to be confident in where to elevate their social impact journey.
Preparation
Once the leadership team and the working group had determined the objectives of the social impact initiative, research into the available frameworks and mechanisms to assess a business’s social equity and sustainability standing began.
To collate quantitative data to help guide decision-making and prioritisation of actions to take, a current state assessment was conducted using the B Impact tool and SDG framework as to be adherent to global standards and goalposts for collective success.
Once the project team was clear on the foundational knowledge of delivering a successful social impact initiative, we developed a 6 monthly social impact strategy adopting systems thinking principles and ways of thinking. This was then communicated to the entire business for radical transparency in relation to this initiative.
Our Approach
Working Group Established
To kick this whole initiative off, a working group was created tasked with developing a social impact strategy, which was then morphed into the delivery working team.
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Research
Research was then conducted to understand the various frameworks and potential approaches in order to ascertain what best suited our team and needs.
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Current State Assessment​
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An assessment based on the B Impact tool and SDG framework was conducted, which enabled us to use data-led insights to make an informed decision about where to play and how to win in this space.
Analysis and Synthesis
Once we had all of the data in front of us, we conducted our analysis and synthesis using affinity mapping, identifying top opportunities, and documentation within Notion (including tracking mechanisms).
Affinity mapping was used to categorise the top opportunities from the B Impact Assessment findings: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools/b-impact-assessment/
Assessing How to Have the Biggest Impact​
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An assessment of how to have the largest impact as a business whilst supporting each stakeholder’s own goals was undertaken to identify when to pivot to ensure the success of the pilot. This lead to a refinement and realignment of the strategy leading to a shift from focusing on our top 3 recommended focus SDGs to a focus on all quick wins related to each business unit enabling the core social impact working group to co-design with each head stakeholder/s of each business unit for reinforced advocacy and systemic shifts leading to higher impact outcomes;
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Low Effort / High Reward Opportunity Drive
A focus was held on implementing low effort / high reward opportunities (I’m happy to confirm that the results was implementing 12 quick wins within 6 weeks).
Growing Advocacy Across the Business
Through adopting the principles and mindsets of co-design, the social impact working group was able to grow advocacy across the business (Office Operations, Leadership Team, Resourcing & Marketing, People & Culture) whilst educating others of the role they can play.
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Organisation-Wide Collaboration and Execution
Organisation-wide collaboration and implementation led to 9 of the quick wins implemented being executed by other stakeholders or working groups. For example, 3 quick wins were already in the pipeline in some form for the Wellbeing Working Group so we collaborated to gauge any barriers for implementation and saw them to completion within the first month of the pilot.
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Development of a Two Year Strategic Roadmap
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To ensure that the vigour and determination that was held for this social impact initiative didn’t wane to the point of apathy a 2 year strategic roadmap was developed and approved by the Head of People and Culture to take forward.
Challenges to navigate
Leadership Buy-In
Some leaders were challenging the priority of this initiative and suggested decommissioning it while other initiatives were taken forward however thankfully through the robust research and development of the project plan this was reassessed and deemed a top tactical priority with resources formally dedicated to see the 3 month pilot to delivery.
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Time, Resource and Workload Management
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Managing workloads with other concurrent projects and initiatives meant that sometimes there was delays with the delivery of some tasks to help drive forward this initiative.
What I'd do differently if given the chance
Due to the conflicting business priorities throughout this pilot, the second member (working alongside myself) changed to accommodate capacities and focus projects. This slowed down momentum and progress while the new members were briefed and brought up to speed.
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If given the chance, I would explore earlier whether there was another passionate team member with less workload who could support drive this initiative alongside myself.