Principles

Social metrics based on principles

The SEAM Standard for social impact measurement emphasizes understanding and referencing the guiding principles that lead to change. By grounding metrics in the measurement of these principles, measures are accurate, ethical, and transformative. Prioritizing principles to measure outputs advances a deeper understanding of the issues and promotes strategies that lead to lasting positive change.

Framework design

Recognizing the complexity inherent in social sciences, SEAM has developed a framework that integrates social equity principles into the fabric of its rating system design. The SEAM Standard framework embeds social equity into the scorecard design in six ways.

1. Timely Contextual Analysis

People are complex, and they change. The SEAM Standard requires conducting a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) for every certification. An SIA is the process of identifying and managing the social issues of project development. It includes the effective engagement of affected communities in participatory processes of identification, assessment, and management of social impacts. By thoroughly understanding the context and specificity of the project and engaging with the relevant impacted parties at the time of the project, it increases the chances that actions and interventions will be successful.

Careful design of solutions and interventions can prevent irreversible effects on people, such as displacement, social inequality, and cultural erosion. These consequences can undermine the project's objectives and lead to resistance from local communities, causing delays, cost overruns, and reputational damage. By integrating SIA into the early stages of project planning, Owners can mitigate risks and design projects to maximize value for local communities and minimize social costs.

In addition to the challenge of preventing negative consequences, the conditions and constraints affecting social issues and possible solutions change over time, changing both the problem and the range of options designed to address it. Conducting an SIA for each project allows the Owner to address the issues that are current and relevant.

2. No offsetting of negative impacts

Human harm cannot be offset. As noted in the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGP), a company's commitment to maximize opportunities for positive impact and contribute to advancing human rights does not offset its failure to respect human rights throughout its operations.

Therefore, wherever applicable, the requirements for each Activity have been separated into Act to Avoid Harm, Benefit Impacted Parties, and Contribute to Solutions sections. In all cases where this delineation occurs, the Owner will only be credited for achieving requirements in Benefit Impacted Parties or Contribute to Solutions once all Act to Avoid Harm requirements are met. This design ensures that the SEAM Certification does not allow offsetting of adverse impacts.

3. Social science logic model structure

Logic-based outcome models. Social issues can be complex with intertwined challenges that may have multiple possible solutions. A clear plan is necessary to ensure our actions effectively lead to desired outcomes. The SEAM Standard uses a well-organized process, known as a logic model, to create Activities with the highest chance of creating those desired outcomes. This logic model, rooted in standardized methods for measuring and managing impact, has five stages: what we need (Inputs), what we do (Activities), what we produce (Outputs), what changes (Outcomes), and the overall effect (Impact).

"Through this approach, the precise link between activities and the achievement of the long-term goals are more fully understood. This leads to better planning, in that activities are linked to a detailed understanding of how change happens. It also leads to better evaluation, as it is possible to measure progress toward the achievement of longer-term goals beyond identifying program outputs."

Definitions for the five phases of the logic model

Inputs are the resources the Owner will use to accomplish the Activities (e.g., finances, architect, contractors, materials, human resources). Inputs will be collected by the SEAM Administrator for each Activity and reported on the SEAM Certification Application. Collecting this information allows SEAM to understand trends and averages and more properly prepare an Owner for pursuing certification.

Activities are actions that will be taken or tasks completed during certification. The Activities on the SEAM scorecard represents the Activities in our logic model.

Output — Each Activity produces an Output which is a direct and quantifiable product of the Activity. It is represented in the SEAM scorecard by the performance indicator, or key performance indicator (KPI), and is expressed in numbers, percentages, amounts, or other units. These outputs are necessary to standardize performance measurement for comparison, measuring progress over time, and to base the SEAM points awarded for each Activity.

Outcome — The Outcome is the changes or benefits resulting from the Activities. These changes may occur at the individual, group, community, or organizational level. Outcomes can be immediate, intermediate, or long-term impacts. It is typically expressed as "increasing" or "decreasing" conditions.

Impact — Finally, the impact is the portion of the Outcome or change in long-term condition, attributable to the Project's Activities. This requires subtracting the counterfactual, or the change that would have happened regardless, and subtracting any change that can be attributed to the action of another party. What is left is the impact that is attributable to the project.

4. Score weighting based on salient human rights

Structured prioritization of human rights impacts. UN Guiding Principle 24 states, "Where it is necessary to prioritize actions to address actual and potential adverse human rights impacts, business enterprises should first seek to prevent and mitigate those that are most severe or where the delayed response would make them irremediable."

This principle shapes the scoring system on the SEAM scorecard for each SEAM Activity, whereby points are awarded based on the importance and potential negative impact of the social issue being addressed, referred to as its saliency. The issues that could cause the most severe harm are identified as the project's salient issues.

For each SEAM Activity, the Severity and Management aspects were evaluated, reflecting a typical commercial real estate project. Various factors were examined following the guidelines from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Under the Severity dimension, scope, scale, and possibility of remedying the impacts were assessed. Under the Management dimension, the likelihood, attribution, and level of effort to address the issues were evaluated.

Assessed Dimensions Definitions

Scope addresses how many people could be affected and was rated from 1 to 3, with 3 being greater than 20% of the total population in the impact area or greater than 50% of an identifiable group; 2 being greater than 10% of the total population or 11–49% of an identifiable group; and 1 being greater than 5% of total population or less than 10% of an identifiable group.

Scale represents how serious the impacts would be for the person and was rated from 1 to 3, with 3 for an impact that will cause death or adverse health effects that could lead to a significant reduction in quality of life and/or longevity; 2 for a tangible human right infringement of access to basic life necessities (e.g., education, livelihood); and 1 for all other impacts.

Remediability considers whether the remedy will restore the victim to the same or equivalent position before the harm and was rated from 1 to 3, with 3 being difficult to restore; 2 being moderately difficult to restore; and 1 being easy to restore.

Likelihood estimates the likelihood that the risk of negative impact or opportunity for positive impact will happen in the next two years and was rated from 1 to 3, with 3 being the risk or opportunity has or is occurring; 2 for risks/opportunities that may occur in the future; and 1 if it is unlikely to occur.

Attribution looks at how closely the project is connected to the impact and was rated from 1 to 3, 3 being the project caused the impact; 2 being it contributed to the impact; and 1 for being linked to the impact (through business contracts and relationships).

Level of effort assesses the resources necessary to prevent or mitigate the negative impact or capitalize on the opportunity to create positive impact and was rated from 1 to 3, with 3 being high; 2 being moderate; and 1 being low.

Each aspect of Severity was assigned a value for every SEAM Activity; these values were summed up and then doubled, emphasizing the higher importance of Severity compared to Management. Subsequently, the values for the Management aspect were totaled for each SEAM Activity and combined with the Severity total. This combined total was then halved to determine the Available Points.

The design of this scoring system aims to guide the prioritization of activities, aligning with the UN Guiding Principles, by incentivizing Owners to focus on SEAM Activities with higher Available Points. This way, activities of higher significance concerning human rights issues are attended to diligently, promoting responsible and ethical project management.

5. Roadmap design

Guidance to do the right things in the right ways. The SEAM Certification framework has been constructed to navigate the complexity of implementing social initiatives based on international standards, frameworks, and principles. It assigns specific preliminary activities within the Social Responsibility and Social Impact pillars that are essential prerequisites for the more advanced activities within the Social Justice and Social Accountability pillars. This structure addresses a common issue in social initiatives: the failure to achieve meaningful outcomes often stems from the need to complete or adequately execute these foundational activities.

For example, a flawed or omitted impacted party mapping process can compromise the effectiveness of subsequent impacted party feedback collection. You can only ensure you've consulted all relevant parties if the initial mapping is complete or correct. Therefore, SEAM Certification incorporates these essential preliminary activities to lay the groundwork, ensuring that the more advanced activities can achieve their intended outcomes.

6. Certification levels aligned to impact goals

The goal is impact. The SEAM Certification adopts a structured approach to evaluating projects based on the "ABC" Impact Goals outlined by the Impact Management Project (IMP), a globally recognized framework for measuring social impact. The ABC Impact Goals are defined as:

A. Act to avoid harm: This goal emphasizes identifying and addressing any negative impacts a project may have on people's well-being, intending to improve these outcomes towards a sustainable range defined by a specific benchmark known as the outcome threshold. Under this goal, the focus is on improving the adverse outcomes, even if the project may only partially achieve a sustainable outcome within the set objective period.

B. Benefit impacted parties: This goal extends beyond Acting to Avoid Harm. It requires maintaining or enhancing the well-being of one or more groups of people to fall within a sustainable range established by the societal threshold.

C. Contribute to solutions: This goal takes a step further by not only Benefitting impacted parties but also improving the well-being of a group of people so that the outcome is within the sustainable range for many people and/or has a long-term duration.

During the SEAM Certification process, the outcomes of each project Activity are evaluated and categorized under one of the ABC Impact Goals. This categorization of individual Activities subsequently informs the classification of the entire project, which allows for determining the certification levels, as each level corresponds to one of the ABC Impact Goals.

Figure 3 in the printed standard illustrates the ABC Impact Goals in relation to the outcome threshold, which is the point where impacted parties experiencing an impact consider the outcome to be positive. Any outcome falling below this benchmark is viewed negatively. This illustration aligns the ABC Impact Goals with the SEAM Certification levels, visually representing how projects are evaluated and classified based on their impact.

All Projects should be Acting to avoid harm for all significant negative impacts. Projects causing negative impacts that are not improving are classified as Does or may cause harm. Until performance improves, the project is not eligible for a SEAM Certification.