Categories: social impact
Social impact isn’t limited to special projects. As we’re seeing on this website, there’s more chatter around social impact and social returns. And this isn’t just for the projects where social impact is the main goal. Every project shapes people’s experiences, and people are social, right? We should be factoring in the impact on our environment and communities for every project. As project managers already influence outcomes through the work we do facilitating other people’s work, there is quite a lot of scope for us to help shape our projects.
Where social impact shows up
Social impact is about:- Who bears the cost of delivery (and cost could be financial but also socio-economic or some other type of cost)
- Whether harm is avoided, reduced, or redistributed
- Whether project success comes at someone else’s expense.
There are risk trade-offs too. Which risk management activity has the highest negative social impact? Do we want to do that, or is there an alternative trade-off that might give us better results.
Finally, think about change design. What’s the impact of the change you are implementing, and how can that be structured for the best possible outcome?
How to do it
Let’s think about some practical ways you can embed ‘impact thinking’ in your normal project team meetings and conversations with stakeholders.
I think it starts with asking different questions at initiation, being more pointed with discussions to bring social impact to top of mind for people. You can be the person who asks everyone to consider unintended consequences. You can make social impact visible in reporting, even if it’s just to say that you haven’t worked out what it will be for this project yet.
The role of the PMO
I do think there is a role for the PMO to play in helping project teams set themselves up to take social impact into account in a reasonable way. For example, if you’re in an PMO role, you could standardise some good questions so they are added into project initiation and kick off calls, or you could put a section in the PID template that talks about what’s important to consider.
Proportionality matters here. Not every project needs a detailed social impact assessment, and trying to apply the same level of rigour to every piece of work will only create resistance – or teams filling in paperwork for bureaucracy’s sake. The PMO’s role is to help teams think and make it easy for them. Providing prompts, examples, and lightweight guidance gives teams permission to engage with social impact in a way that makes sense for the scale and risk of their work.
If this is becoming a tick-box approach, then you’re doing it wrong! Social impact should be something the team can actively support and understand, not some documentation requirement to get through the next gate review.
So what does it mean in practice? I think it’s about including purpose as part of professional judgement, and understanding that small decisions matter. You can be sensitive to the impact your project is having without having to do big assessments or lots of analysis. Just be aware of what’s changing for people and see what opportunities you have to make that experience of change as positive as possible in as many ways as possible.
What do you do to encourage social impact on your projects? Let me know in the comments!
Posted on: June 23, 2026 12:00 AM |
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