Hello and welcome to another episode of a conversation with Zing Learning podcast. We are here today with the absolutely incredible Fathma Khalid, who is here to talk to us today about all of the wonderful positive differences we can make with social value if we're able to start really measuring them in a really effective way.
I really love this conversation because we get to talk a lot about the positive difference we can make, some of the broader challenges that we're seeing as well, and also how to start to interrogate your assumptions and beliefs. So grab a cuppa, kick back and have a listen. Welcome to this episode.
Today we are talking to the incredibly talented Fathma Khalid and we are talking about all sorts of fantastic things around social impact and measurement and what it really means in the grander scheme of things. So, Fathma, if it's okay, I'm actually going to get you to introduce yourself to the listeners. Great. Well, thank you very much for having me, Zoe. So my name is Fathma, as you said, and I founded a consultancy called Social Impact Reporting.
So my personal specialism is in social impact measurement. So that effectively means helping different kinds of organisations to track and report on the social impact that they are making.
So that could be for a charity that's working directly with local communities, or it could be for a larger corporate that has different kind of funding parts and just trying to understand what social impact means for them, tracking data against their outcomes and putting that together into nicely designed reports. Oh, fantastic. And thank you so much for being here today, Fathma.
I think it's going to be really useful for everybody listening because I imagine there's people here that have never heard of this type of work before. So do you want to tell us a little bit about what it is and what it kind of means? I guess in the grand scheme of community and those sorts of things. So to start with, kind of what does social impact mean?
So in general, there isn't necessarily like a very accepted definition that everybody agrees on, but in general, it's about having a positive change that affects a group of stakeholders and that is defined very, very, relatively depending on who you are and what is the positive change that you are trying to affect. There are loads of kind of adjacent terms that exist. Things like ESG, environmental, social and governance is used a lot in the corporate space.
In the past we've used terms like corporate social responsibility a lot. And then in terms of measurement specifically, you'll hear terms like monitoring and evaluation, which is used a lot more in kind of the development and charity space. And all of these things are interconnected and all related to social impact. But yeah, from like the measurement perspective. My specialism is in measurement, and measurement is about tracking to what extent the social impact change has occurred.
Once you have run a project. Oh, wow. Okay, thank you. And I think probably some of those terms some people are familiar with. I know CSR was definitely a big thing when I was working in HR and then I saw that evolve more into ESG over the last however many years. So that's quite interesting. How do people measure social impact then? It is a great question and it very much depends on what it is that you are trying to track.
I think the kind of overall principles for measuring your impact are to have a really well defined goals. So if you're able to really articulate what are the outcomes and the impacts that you're hoping to see and at different timeframes, and then from that you can have a good idea of what the data points would be that you should try to track to see the extent to which those are being realised or not.
Because I think traditionally, when we're looking at social impact work or trying to create positive difference, say, if you had an impact project that was trying to educate young people who are looking for work, traditionally the metrics that you would look at might include, you know, who showed up to the trainings, how many hours did they attend, what kind of things were they looking at?
And while those things are really important, the metrics that are really meaningful go beyond what happens when those people leave the room. So things like how many people were able to secure interviews as a result of that training, how many people were able to secure part time or full time work, how long were they able to stay in those jobs?
So it's basically looking beyond the metrics that are a little bit more accessible and straightforward, that historically we've put a lot more emphasis on and trying to understand the broader change and the other implications that result from the project that you do. And it does become more complicated at that point, but it's definitely a lot more meaningful when you have access to that data. Yeah, and actually that's something that we use a lot in the learning field and the DEI field.
So we notice it a lot more in organisations, obviously, than other spaces, community spaces and stuff like that, because you can track it all the way through someone's career. I mean, not necessarily that people are doing this very well in a lot of organisations, but it's definitely applicable and it definitely can work.
So I think it's really interesting because we obviously do lots of measuring with our clients and with the people that we work with and thinking about how can they look at that social impact of the work they're doing internally as an organisation, with their people, with upskilling, maybe with talent velocity and helping underrepresented groups to become more senior in the organisation, more specialists, whatever else it might be, and how that then positively impacts the outside society.
So I think a lot of the work that you do kind of goes between those two, right, because you're talking about the projects you're doing within society, within the community, that then can influence organisations and also within organisations. How can that then start to not just help people in the organisation but also help outside of it?
Absolutely. And I think it is trying to look at what are those broader changes that you're hoping to see and what kind of is the pathway to impact that you would expect to see as a result of those particular changes. Once you're able to have that defined quite well, it's a lot easier to see in terms of data like what are the things, what are the changes that you'd be looking for and how can you try to capture some of those insights?
But it's all very interrelated, it's all very interconnected and it depends so much on how you define what impact means for you and your organisation. So it's really interesting but yeah, unfortunately not a straightforward answer. Yeah, no, I don't think it is, otherwise everyone would be doing it. Right.
And I think what you're saying there about that and organisations and places that have influence on social impact, when they're looking at those broader positive change that they're trying to make, you know, they're trying to think about those KPI's. Often they need a lot of help to get there and that's the sort of stuff that we've done with execs and boards and stuff like that to help them just to even start to go, what is it that we actually need?
Because often they don't know because they're so detached from the rest of the organisation or even from the customer base that they're serving or the community that they're sitting in, they can be quite detached from that just from, you know, being in a much more senior position and even just having that role in general or because of some of the ways in which people progress through their career, they may be from certain types of backgrounds that are
very disconnected from some underrepresented groups as well. So I think that's quite interesting and it's definitely something we spend a lot of time on with execs and with boards and stuff like that. Is that something that you find yourself getting involved in? I think it is. There's definitely a lot of parallels.
So, like, one thing that I've kind of found through my work is that when you do have an organisation that has a social project or kind of an impact focus, whether it's through the main business or, you know, as kind of like a side thing, often they'll have a general idea of what's the positive change they're trying to create. But they don't have the ability to articulate that in a way, in terms of defining success.
Typically it's like we want to do something good or we want to work with these people and often it will be reputational. But when you try to drill down into, okay, what does this positive impact look like tangibly on the ground? A lot of organisations don't have the language to articulate that or to really explain that, even if they've been doing that work for years and they anecdotally know what it looks like.
So I find that really interesting and it's really a case of kind of like interrogating what their assumptions and core beliefs are that are maybe implicit to the organisation and just trying to put that down on paper. And I feel like there's parallels in terms of the work that you do as well, and forcing those organisations to look inwards as well as outwards and trying to, like, improve their outreach and trying to kind of see what progress looks like from another person's perspective.
I think there's something really useful in what you just said there about language as well. And it's something that keeps coming up every podcast that we're recording, not surprisingly, because we notice a lot in the work that we do in Dei. Michael Reed, who's a linguistic expert, we did a podcast with him recently and obviously he's all about language and all about how it can change the way people perceive things, change the way people even look at Dei in general.
And then, interestingly, we had another podcast with one of the best behavioural scientists that we know, Irfan. And he was talking about how language has evolved, but not really in the last 20 years since he's been in place. So I find it really interesting that you've picked up on it as well. It's definitely a theme that's coming through, whether it's the internal Dei work organisations are doing or that wider social impact piece.
You can really start to see how important language is in playing a part, and like you say, learning how to articulate what it is and what it means to the organisation and how it might or might not align to the core beliefs of the individual or the organisation as well.
So that's always a really interesting conversation to have, I think, with especially those most senior people in the organisation, because they tend to be the ones that are living and breathing the values and really putting out all of those important kind of cultural pieces from the organisation, but sadly so disconnected sometimes from the reality of what that's like out in the wider world. Yeah, absolutely. It's very true and it is.
I mean, like, language is just so powerful in terms of how we communicate and like, a big part of the work that I do in terms of measurement is about reporting.
So, like, once you have data, once you have an understanding of, you know, the impact that you are making in terms of, like, data, in data points, how do you communicate that externally and how do you make sure that it's like, received in a way that you want it to be received and that is tailored for different audiences and it's such a big part of the whole puzzle, just making sure that you are able to communicate and present yourselves in a way that's consistent with your values. Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, listen, that's like marketing 101 in general, right? Even if you take any of the social impact, the human behaviour stuff out of it, that's basically the minimum of what organisations should be thinking about in general. I'm really interested because you've used the word parallel a couple of times and I definitely see it, hence why we've had conversations before, hence why I asked you to come on here.
I think I'm really interested to hear to what extent Dei plays a role in designing and implementing social impact projects from your point of view. A great question.
So I think one of the things that well designed impact projects will have is a big focus on stakeholder engagement and that's kind of across all levels and a lot of the time that will include, like, community stakeholders, so who are potentially, you know, the beneficiaries of the project, who will be engaging, who will be benefiting. And I think that's where, like, De and I can have a really big role to play.
Just making sure that your stakeholder engagement is really context relevant in terms of where you're physically situated and making sure that you are speaking to the audiences that are relevant to you, even if they're perhaps some groups that you might not have engaged with before as an organisation and trying to be really conscious of making sure that those stakeholders are representative of the change that you're trying to make and the type of organisation that you are and
where you are as well. That's been a really good example, I guess, of where kind of diversity and inclusion fits in with impact work and it's a big risk as well, of trying to do a social impact project and where a lot of them can fail. So it's, I think, underappreciated for how important it is in the impact space. Yeah.
And I think with the, you know, the anti Dei rhetoric that's happening at the moment because of various things that are happening in politics and all sorts of things, and not just in the UK, you know, we feel things in the UK that are happening in the US, in this space because there's such a close connection on some of the challenges we face in systematic barriers. So I think it's a really valid point, actually, that we need to think about where it does get a bit of a bad rap.
And actually a big part of our role in DeI feels like at the moment is PR. We're trying to get people to understand, okay, it's ebbs and flows in Dei. People get really involved in it when something big happens in the community space and then it kind of goes down when budgets get cut and things are a little bit tighter and then people all of a sudden really care about it.
So I think our job is to make sure we keep showing people the positive impact of the work that we're doing and it can be, of course, internally with the DEI work we're doing. And it can also, of course, like you're saying, be that social impact work and there's no reason it can't be both of those things. We've seen it happen with organisations where we have developed a DEI learning programme for them and actually that's changed the culture of the organisation.
It's then naturally split out into recruiting much more representative people from the community and those sorts of things. So that's been a really beautiful thing to be able to see that social impact, but we definitely see some challenges with organisations in quantifying the social impact. So I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on this because I know this is something you're really passionate about.
So how do you think some of these organisations, or not even how, what are some of the challenges that these organisations are facing and actually, how might they be able to overcome them? I think it is just generally difficult to quantify what are often abstract concepts, you know, so if you're trying to understand, like increase in well being. What does that look like in a data point?
So that's kind of where it goes back to interrogating your assumptions and your beliefs and trying to force a definition out of your organisation. So the way that I work is that I'll work with kind of project leaders or an organization's leadership to help them to really define what their impact vision is and then work out what the pathway to impact is.
Using the theory of change framework, which I know we've spoken about before, and then using that as a starting point, you can really drill down into each kind of building block of that impact and trying to understand, if I was to look for this change in the real world, what could I expect to see? Because not every change is necessarily observable.
Like if you're looking at a change in mindset or attitude or something like that, it's not necessarily a behaviour point that you can always observe, but there might be something adjacent to that that you could observe or, you know, ways of asking questions that are, you know, not too leading or things like that. So just thinking about what's accessible to you and trying to just explore the, the options that exist.
And I think just having a starting point is, is better than floundering with too many unknowns. So if you're able to just ask a few questions that maybe are quite rudimentary in the first instance, it will give you a starting point of the kind of outcomes that you're looking for. And hopefully from there you can refine and improve. And I would say try not to get overwhelmed or like bogged down in the detail.
Just try to focus on a few key points and try to look for things that are accessible and not going to take a huge amount of time and resource because that's not feasible for a lot of organisations. Yeah, and I think the word overwhelm is probably really, really important with this because I think you're so right. Like, if people don't know where to start, they tend not to.
And we see this with more traditional organisations that know that they've got a lot of work to do in this space and they really want to do the work, but they don't know where to start. So it kind of creates this decision paralysis around what they're doing. So they never really quite get started because they don't really know where to start. They're also terrified they're going to get things wrong and they're going to make it worse. So that's always a big challenge as well.
I'm really interested because you just mentioned the theory of change framework, which we've talked about, but just for people listening to this now, could you explain to them, because I think this is a really good framework for people to be able to start to think about how they might be able to apply it. Absolutely. So it's quite foundational to how I work.
But the theory of change framework, it's one of a type of logical framework, so there's a few that exist, but theory of change is the one that I found that's the easiest to work with and effectively, it helps you to map, to map out what your impact project looks like, taking you from what is the problem that you're trying to solve?
Who are the main stakeholders involved in that particular issue, and then looking at what are the potential activities you could do to support those target beneficiary groups, what are the outputs? So if you have a project, what are the direct results of that project? So that could be like, how many people show up to your training or how many food parcels have you distributed? Something like that. And then beyond the outputs, you're looking at the outcomes.
Typically there's three outcome levels. The first level outcome is short term, and that's typically an internal change to a person. So that could be a change in belief, understanding, attitude, perception, something like that. Second level outcomes are medium terminal and they are typically seen in a behavioural change. So that could be, how are those first level outcomes then translated into behaviour? So if someone's learned something, how has that changed?
How they're approaching a certain issue or like their job hunt, for example. And then third level outcomes are broader, so they are typically felt like an organisational or a societal level, but it's effectively the cumulative effect of those behavioural changes at an individual level and how they aggregate up. And the idea is that those three outcome levels then contribute to your overall big impact vision.
So that could be like one or two kind of statements of that big kind of blue sky thinking goal that you have. So once you have all those stages of outcomes defined, it gives you a better understanding of the types of change that you would expect to see at different levels in different timeframes. And then from that you can try to define some indicators to try to collect both qualitative and quantitative data to see the extent to which those outcomes are being realised.
The framework helps you to understand effectively the impact pathway and how to get to your big impact vision. I love that. And it's so, I think, especially when you see it written down and someone takes you through it. It's so simple. It's one of those things that you're like, why have I not thought about this before? Because I know you and I did this work and I was like, actually, it's not.
It's not as much work as I thought it was going to be and it's not as overwhelming as I thought it was going to be. And for somebody who runs a business that is all about diversity and inclusion, I thought I kind of knew all of this stuff. But actually spending that time with you was really useful, not just for my business, but I was able to then pass that, that knowledge on to the organisations that I'm working with as well.
I'm really interested to hear some thoughts from you and I might put you on the spot a little bit here. So apologies if I do, but if we could just say to organisations, say that they are running their DEI programmes and they also want to have a bigger social impact as an organisation, what are the three metrics that we think that organisations could focus on that are really going to help them?
So rather than having to think about too many things, what are just three simple metrics for them to just get started, to start to understand their social value? Hmm. I really put you on the spot here. I think it's so dependent on what it is that you're trying to achieve.
But I think maybe if I was to try to pick a couple of metrics from a DEI perspective, I think if we were to look at things that are perhaps a little bit beyond the obvious, like demographic type stats, I'm sure these are things that you've spoken about and work with your clients about, but if we look at things like, what's the progression, like of different types of minorities within that, or underrepresented people within that organisation,
or things like, what is your kind of dispute management conflict resolution process in your organisation, how is that working? Do you just receive complaints from a certain demographic or is it a little bit more mixed? I'm sure these are things you've come across before in terms of. From an impact perspective, it really depends on what it is that you are trying to do. From an internal perspective, I guess it would. The easiest things are output metrics.
So, like, do you have, like, donation schemes in place? Do you have volunteering days? So that's kind of, I guess, more employee centric, not necessarily working with, like, external communities, and it's a little bit more CSR focused. But if you were to have more of an external social impact project. I think it would really depend on what your organisation is trying to do and how you could add value to the community.
And typically that's like the way that I will start working with any client is just really understanding what are your organisational priorities and then how could you leverage the assets that you already have as an organisation to bring additional support to the community that you're already engaged with? And it's about trying to capture those lowest hanging fruit.
So it's a little bit harder to say from the social impact perspective because it really depends on what type of project you're trying to do or what type of impact you're trying to create. But you can start with just a couple of fairly simple metrics and take it from there. That's really fantastic.
And actually I think that that's really useful because some of the DEI metrics that a lot of organisations use, they're very good at demographics in that kind of knowing who is working in the organisation, but they really struggle to see it as people progress, they really struggle to see it, like you say, with dispute resolution and stuff like that. So that's a really useful tip, I think, for organisations. And then, like you say, those are some really simple metrics there.
How, you know, who are the volunteer days, how many are there from an internal point of view, if it is about representation, how are you working with the local community that is represented in your organisation? So there could be some really interesting ways to use it there as well. And I think that's a really good thing for people to think about because it can feel really overwhelming, it can feel really hard to know where to start.
So I think those are just a few simple things that people can start with. And often when we're talking about those more internal employee related ones, that demographic data, some organisations find really hard to get that data, so people don't want to tell them that information. And actually I say to these organisations that. But that's actually data in itself. The fact that your people don't feel comfortable enough to share aspects of their identity with you is your baseline.
So there's actually some safety work that you need to do with people. So a, they know what you're doing with that data and that you're going to use it for something positive and b, that it's going to be a safe space for them to be able to share that data with you in the first place. So actually I think any data is going to be really, really useful. So like you said, just starting with something is a really really good way to get going. And I think besides numbers then.
So what other types of evidence do you think is important for assessing social impact work of the DEI work organisations are doing? So when I look at measuring social impact projects, I will always have a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data to try to understand how, how those, like how the success of that project is being realised.
And both are really helpful because quantitative metrics can be really useful in understanding kind of the scale and the reach of the work, whereas qualitative metrics, they can really be helpful in understanding the depth and kind of the richness of how that project has gone.
And often in terms of social impact projects, especially if it's a new project, there can be lots of learnings where you wouldn't necessarily know which questions to ask to understand how to improve the next time you do the same project. So having more open ended qualitative questions can be really, really helpful. So even just very broad things in terms of general, like how could we improve questions? Or things like how did you benefit? Or how would you have expected to benefit?
Often if you can do pre and post surveys or interviews that can give really good comparative data for you to gain a much like deeper insight of how that change has affected that particular beneficiary group, again, the exact questions you would ask would we depend on what it is that you're trying to do with that project?
But yeah, I suppose, like from it, from a de and I perspective, it would really be trying to, as you've said, like defining that baseline and then understanding what the change has been from that baseline. So just kind of like using the data that you already have accessible to you and trying to add to that and see where kind of the lowest tagging fruit are and making those changes and seeing where the next areas for growth would be. I love that.
And it's really interesting because when you were talking then about the pre and post feedback or surveys or whatever it's going to be, it's really interesting because we do a lot of that in the learning field and we definitely translate that over to the DEI learning field quite easily as well.
But what we found over the years with DEI learning is often people will score and scale themselves much higher in areas, then they'll come to the DEI learning, they'll realise they didn't know what they didn't know, and then they'll actually score themselves sometimes lower.
So that in itself can be really useful as long as we set the expectations for the employers so they know that that is the case, but I think the way you're using them probably is an even better way to use it because that's the way people are feeling about things and their expectations of those things and whether or not it matched the actual project itself. So that can be really useful as well. But it's just something that came to mind then.
It's just something we find quite often when we do a bit more of a scaling data collection in that way. I guess that's another example as well of where like the importance of language and understanding kind of comes into play, because that's something that we see as well in terms of people responding to questions but not necessarily knowing what they don't know and that kind of affecting how they respond and what their perception is of a particular issue.
And then once they go through a particular programme, then their understanding and perception will change and therefore their responses will change. So that is very interesting. There isn't necessarily a clear cut way in terms of how to deal with that. I think that is one of those things that you iterate and you improve as you go through and you get better at knowing how to ask the questions in a way that they can be answered a little bit more uniformly.
Very, very interesting to see how those data points come back. And I think your point around having both, I'm going to try say this wrong now, but having both quantitative and qualitative data is really, really important because they paint the picture together and that's basically what you're trying to do with this, right? You're trying to establish what is it and in your case, what is the biggest social impact piece that we're going to get from this? Before and after, of course.
And for us it's similar, but it's very much based around the organisational point in the middle. That's really interesting. And just before we finish off, I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on looking forward and how you think data is going to continue to evolve and continue to shape the DEI efforts and how we can make a much bigger social impact in the work that we're doing.
There are abs and flows in terms of how much attention like organisations pay to this type of stuff, as you have mentioned earlier. But I do think there is becoming a broader appreciation of kind of more meaningful data points.
So looking beyond the simple kind of output metrics, demographic metrics, so I am hopeful that more organisations are able to leverage the things that they already have and are able to invest a little bit more time and effort into trying to track things that are a little bit more meaningful in terms of the future for organisations that are trying to improve their DNI or their social impact tracking.
I would say to start with the heat of the data that you already do have, whatever is already accessible to you, because it's often the case as well that organisations will have data that they're not necessarily using to the, to the best of ability that they could, and then trying to see where the existing gaps are and what the lowest hanging fruit is. Because the intention isn't with De and I or with social impact to make your life difficult.
You know, like it is about trying to just improve things from where you are. And you can only really do that if you know where you are now.
So just have a good understanding of where you do sit and have, I guess, a little bit of openness to learning and then trying to develop it from there and tapping into resources for help and organisations where you need them, and then trying to focus on kind of deeper metrics like, you know, things like retention or sense of belonging or, you know, having a review of like the types of work and leave policies and all of that kind of stuff when the time is right. I love that.
So layering up the data rather than trying to do everything right now, use what you've got, there's definitely going to be something useful that you can use to get started, just to benchmark exactly where you are and then slowly layer it up so then you've got much more data to work with and much easier pictures to paint, basically, exactly from what you've got there. I love that. Thank you so, so much.
I could talk to you about this for days and I think we have talked to each other about this lots before, but I really, really appreciate you spending some time with us today. I know that there's been some really useful things that people can take away. I'm hoping that some of the senior leaders listening to this are able to understand that data doesn't need to feel overwhelming. Actually, just starting, just doing something is going to be really useful in the work that we're doing.
Thank you very much, Zoe, it's been lovely speaking with you and yeah, looking forward to hearing the next episodes of your podcast. Lovely, thanks, Fathma, speak to you soon. Thanks. Well, we hope that you liked that episode. What a fantastic amount of information there from Fathma. I loved the way she was talking about some of those different positive differences that we can make.
Also just explaining that theory of change framework, because I think it's such a great simple way for us to start to think about how we can start to measure the work that we're doing, whether we're in an organisation. Even if you're not in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion, I think there's something really useful to take away from there as well. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next one.