Should PM success evaluations include social impact indicators?

Yes, PM success should include social impact. A project can meet scope and budget yet harm trust, community, or inclusion. I use a balanced view: delivery metrics plus people metrics like community benefit, accessibility, and long term impact. When teams see both, decisions become wiser and success becomes meaningful, not just mechanical.

I think the answer to this question should vary across industries and projects, but in general, a project manager whose sole job is executing decisions made by other people, delivering product and then being assigned to a new project, should not be held accountable for things they have no control over. Embedding community or inclusivity outcomes is not universally material to all projects. And, even if they were included, accountability needs to sit with roles that persist long enough to influence and measure those results. Project managers don't need more responsibility for things they can't control.

Can project managers raise community and inclusivity risks on a project? Certainly. They may even be involved in making sure a plan to address the risks gets created, whether it gets executed before or after the project is over. However, unless you are expanding the role of the project manager to perform more of a PMO or program manager function that has some level of responsibility for value realization after the project is over, and community/inclusivity outcomes are part of the desired project outcomes, you're measuring something that has little to no bearing on defining the effectiveness of the project manager.

Social impact indicators can be included as a success criterion depending on the type of project. For example, projects with environmental or societal implications should incorporate social impact measures to ensure they deliver meaningful benefits to the environment, citizens or local communities. In contrast, projects focused purely on financial outcomes may not require the same level of social impact evaluation.

Ultimately, the inclusion of these indicators depends on the nature of the organization or institution and the extent of the project’s impact on end users. Aligning success criteria with both organizational goals and stakeholder impact ensures a more balanced and context-appropriate evaluation.

I'd guess it would depend on the project. Everything we do has some social impact at one time or another, but more often than not, it is outside our sphere of influence. This is my way of saying that, like all metrics, we should only include it if there is a direct impact within the sphere of influence. Beyond that, it becomes a vanity metric, something we just love to include. Everybody wants to be part of a cause, any cause, so having measures for social, sustainability, inclusion, and a host of other things seems like the right thing to do, which it is, if it adds any value.