Social impact survey aims to encourage others to act

Positive impact runs deep within the veins of Socius and we’re acutely aware of the privileged position we’re in, to put people at the very heart of our business model.

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) has organically grown within our company, and was on our radar long before it became an international talking point, meaning we have a unique opportunity to support our partners, consultants and suppliers, and enabling us to share our knowledge and understanding for the ‘greater good’.

Having identified this opportunity, our first step to making it a reality has been to survey a number of organisations, in the hope of finding out more about their business aims and objectives, and how their strategies for the future will have an impact; on the environment, sustainability, local economies, recruitment, supply chains and their local areas.

The results of this survey indicated:

• 93% have an environmental strategy
• 24% don’t currently track their energy usage
• 83% had made financial donations, provided pro-bono services and/or partnered with charitable organisations within the past year (to a wide range of charities)
• 93% had female representation at senior management level
• 34% had individuals from an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority
• 100% of the businesses we surveyed had all staff on FTE contracts and paid salaries, rather than hourly wages, and at least the Living Wage

Our survey also asked companies to commit to an impactful initiative and there was widespread assurance to a range of ideas, from providing work experience and apprenticeships, to committing to support other local businesses, and creating an inclusive and diverse workforce.

We now need to turn these good intentions into reality and we very much see our role as ‘enabling others to do good’. We will therefore provide support to our partners; through training, mentoring or via our external networks, to allow others to pursue their own social impact goals.

Of course, we appreciate that this is only small sample of businesses, who as part of our existing network, are arguably already going some way to ‘do good’! However, we’re excited by the enthusiasm and commitment shown so far, to creating social change through positive and realistic actions.

Our next step is to take this even further, building on these initial conversations and working together to create opportunities and commitments that will result in significant and long-term social impact.