The Handbook provides a pragmatic step by step guidance to explore and apply the social  metrics in your first case studies. It contains plenty of guidance in the data collection, hotspot identification, circular economy and impact assessment.

The Social Topic Report is the companion of the Handbook. It provides the definitions of 25 social topics, the reference scales and performance indicators. It is updated in April 2022; with more links to relevant standards and clarifications and examples. 

Our Core Partners are implementing the social metrics in their organisations supported by efficient procedures. The Implementation Guide shows how this can be done, based on the journeys our Core Partners are making currently.

The Methodology is based on the recognition that companies can not only impact social wellbeing, but are also dependent on it. The social topics are selected based on this understanding of mutual dependency between an organisation, its workers, the local communities, the small-scale entrepreneurs and of course their customers.

The Handbook for Product Social Impact Assessment

The Handbook for Product Social Impact Assessment (PSIA) describes a consensus-based methodology to assess positive and negative social impacts of products and services on four stakeholder groups: workers, local communities, small-scale entrepreneurs and users. Uniquely, the methodology focuses on assessing social impacts of products and services over the entire value chain. This approach is sometimes also referred to as Social Lifecycle Assessment or Social LCA. The Handbook provides a pragmatic step by step guidance to explore and apply this new metric in your first case studies. It contains plenty of guidance in the data collection, hotspot identification, circular economy and impact assessment. Intially the handbook was focused on product, and followed the LCA concepts, but we found it to be also extremely useful to use it for product portfolios, brands and even for strenghening reporting

It is important to be aware of some key differences between environmental life cycle approaches and social life cycle approaches. Social LCA is not just an extension of environmental LCA. While we can assume 1 kg of CO2 is half as bad as 2 kg we cannot say 10 slaves working is half as serious as 20 slaves working. Companies want zero slaves, but do accept some CO2 emissions. Likewise we can more or less predict a range of emissions of steelmaking as many companies use the same blast furnace technologies, some will do this more efficient than others. The social impacts with steel manufacturing however can vary widely between two different companies. In fact the conditions in a steel company can be as bad as in a cotton farm. There is a very weak correlation between the technology and the social conditions. This difference has huge consequences for the data collection procedures.

There are four basic steps in the Handbook, (1) Prepare, (2) define Goal and Scope, (3) identify Hotspots and (4) apply our impact assessment procedures. The Reference guide below summarises the entire procedure

  You can download the handbook here

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