Transforming Social Impact Measurement at Places for People

Background

Places for People is one of the biggest housing associations in the UK, an award-winning placemaking and regeneration company with a 50-year history of delivering meaningful social outcomes through the design, building, and management of large-scale regeneration projects. In recent years, they have diversified their operations beyond housing, creating a range of ancillary services and companies to support the welfare and economic well-being of their tenants and communities.

Social and environmental responsibility is central to Places for People, which describes itself as a “business with a social as well as commercial purpose.” Their CSR strategy encompasses four themes: neighbourhood, people, society, and environment, with effective measurement practices at the heart to inform management decisions and sustain activities that improve lives.

The challenge

Before adopting Impact, Places for People used spreadsheets to capture and record details of their initiatives. This method was cumbersome, siloed, and limited to their core housing division. As a result, they couldn’t capture the full picture or get real-time, granular insights into the effectiveness of activities and interventions across different parts of the business and supply chain.

Social value managers had to handle data from disparate sources, which was often sparse and error-ridden, with no central place to input activities uniformly. Compiling reports and providing timely updates to senior leaders was challenging, leading to decisions being made on a best-guess basis rather than being data-driven.

The decision to switch

Places for People needed a digital platform to consolidate data from multiple sources, sub-organisations, and divisions, apply relevant measures, and output quantifiable real-world results. Impact’s platform, being framework-independent, was ideal for this purpose.

Previously, the organisation relied on the HACT framework for measuring the impact of their activities. While functional, it was restrictive and contained within a spreadsheet, limiting functionality and requiring duplicate data entry. Impact allowed Places for People to use various measurement frameworks from the same interface, supporting bespoke conversions and enabling comprehensive organisational measurement.

Training & onboarding

To facilitate the transition, Impact led group discovery workshops and adopted a train-the-trainer approach, enabling faster rollout and tailored onboarding. This method allowed Places for People to educate employees and volunteers based on need, using trainers from within their business areas, ensuring users could get started quickly and learn about relevant features without being overwhelmed.

Data capture

Impact’s centralised activity logging reduced the administrative burden on social value managers. Instead of it falling on the shoulders of social value managers, individual teams, front-line staff and volunteers could now easily capture the required information in real-time, ensuring accurate data entry through customisable fields. Places for People could now capture, measure and report on virtually any type of activity taking place, at any time, across the business, something they could never do before.

Impact also served as a valuable staff engagement tool, helping front-line staff recognise the social value of their work and motivating them to do more. The platform unified data collection, enabling comprehensive analysis and reporting.

Ongoing social value measurement and reporting

Social value is central to Places for People’s mission to provide housing, alleviate poverty, and improve community well-being. Impact’s platform supports this mission, driving cultural change within the business. Since 2018, Impact has tracked and analysed over half a billion pounds of Social Return on Investment (SROI) from Places for People’s activities.

Impact’s platform links each activity, goal, theme, and KPI to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, facilitating stakeholder dialogue. By unifying data collection, analysis, and real-time reporting into one intuitive platform, creating Value for Money, SROI, and Sustainability reports has become an on-demand task, completed in minutes.

Conclusion

Impact has transformed how Places for People captures, measures, and reports social and environmental impact across the organisation. The platform’s powerful capabilities enable data-driven decision-making and demonstrate the substantial social value generated by Places for People’s diverse activities.