What business can learn from international development on measuring social impact

By Danielle Stein

August 2026

Image: Celery being harvested

The international development sector has spent decades learning how to measure complex social change. Businesses can learn a lot from their approach when they look to measure their social impact. Much of The Outcome Gap’s work is built around measuring what matters: impacts on people. In this article, Danielle Stein, Senior Impact Adviser, explores what the private sector can learn from international development approaches to Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) to strengthen Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) and demonstrate real-world effectiveness.

Businesses are under increasing pressure to move beyond commitments and demonstrate that their human rights efforts are leading to real outcomes.

The challenge is that many companies are still relying on tools that were never designed to measure complex social change — audits, compliance checklists, activity tracking. These approaches can tell you whether something was done, but not whether these efforts have been effective.

This is not a new challenge. The international development sector has spent decades grappling with the same question: how do you know if your interventions are actually improving people’s lives?

 Though business and the international development sector operate in different contexts, the underlying challenges are strikingly similar, making the development sector a powerful analogue with lessons the business world can learn from.

Start with outcomes, not activities

Though tracking activities is important to understanding what actions have been taken, real results are measured by focusing on outcomes. This may sound simple but moving away from tracking activities to focusing on outcomes represents a fundamental change in mindset.

In many corporate human rights programmes, success is still defined by what is delivered:

●      Number of supplier audits conducted

●      Number of workers trained

●      Number of policies implemented

These are useful, but they are not the goal. Development practice pushes a different question:

What has actually changed for people?

For business, these questions might include: 

●      Are workers experiencing fewer rights violations?

●      Do they feel safe raising concerns?

●      Are livelihoods becoming more stable and predictable?

This shift forces companies to rethink what success looks like, and to align their measurement systems accordingly. 

Understand how change actually happens

Development practitioners rarely assume that delivering an activity will automatically lead to change. Instead, they invest time in understanding how and why change happens, and what stands in the way.

For this reason, theories of change or impact pathways, which set out the expected change process and steps along the way, have become an integral part of the design and measurement of international development programming.

For business, thinking about the change process means unpacking the drivers behind human rights risks, which are often systemic and interconnected:

●      Commercial pressures and purchasing practices

●      Power dynamics within supply chains

●      Weak enforcement of labour regulations

●      Social norms and informal labour arrangements

This kind of analysis helps avoid a common pitfall in corporate programmes: applying standard solutions to complex problems.

For example, if workers do not use grievance mechanisms, the issue may not be awareness — it may be fear, mistrust, or lack of consequences.  Similarly, suppliers may be aware of key human rights provisions, but not have the funds needed to put these in place.

Without understanding these dynamics, even well-designed interventions can fail to deliver results.

Be clear about your role and your limits

No single actor can solve complex social issues alone. International development programmes understand that they are one of many actors in a crowded and complex space. For this reason, a core principle in development MEAL is being explicit about their contribution to change, rather than claiming attribution.

For businesses, this means being clear about:

●      What is within your control (e.g. purchasing practices, supplier incentives)

●      What you can influence (e.g. supplier behaviour, industry norms)

●      What requires collective action (e.g. policy reform, wage benchmarks)

This clarity helps set realistic expectations and avoids overstating impact — a growing risk as scrutiny around ESG claims increases.

It also encourages more strategic engagement, particularly through collaboration with peers, governments and civil society.

Measure what matters, even if it’s harder

Development programmes routinely measure things that are difficult: behaviour change, perceptions, empowerment, system-level shifts.

This often requires going beyond easily available data and investing in data collection processes beyond what those delivering the interventions would typically gather, including routine surveys and assessments.

In contrast, corporate systems tend to prioritise what is easy to measure. But if the goal is to understand whether human rights outcomes are improving, companies need to be willing to measure what actually matters — even when it is less straightforward.

For business these might include: 

●      Worker voice and perception data

●      Qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, case studies)

●      Longitudinal tracking to understand change over time

Though adding data collection activities is more costly than simply tracking activities, the international development sector has demonstrated that investing in high quality and well-targeted data collection can help enhance the effectiveness of programming over time. For businesses, this can pay off by helping to identify and pivot interventions that have not achieved their desired results, improving the overall return on a company’s human rights investment.

Embed learning and adapt as you go

In international development, MEAL is fundamentally about learning and adaptation. Data is collected not only to report upwards, but to inform decisions on what is working, what is not, and what needs to change. This creates a continuous feedback loop between implementation and strategy.

In many companies, however, human rights data is still used primarily for external reporting. Companies now have the opportunity to reposition measurement systems as tools for internal decision-making — enabling sustainability and procurement teams to refine approaches, test new ideas, and respond to emerging risks in real time. Done well, this not only improves the effectiveness of human rights efforts, but also allows companies to leverage these insights to strengthen their own operations and risk management.

This shift requires accepting a reality that international development practitioners know all too well: there are no perfect solutions. Approaches will evolve, contexts will change, assumptions will be tested, and not everything will work the first time. Measurement, therefore, should not be seen as a way to prove success, but as a tool to improve performance over time.

For businesses, this means embracing iteration, being transparent about challenges and limitations, and using evidence to continuously refine strategies.

From compliance to effectiveness

A push toward effectiveness in the human rights space brings with both opportunities and challenges. The question is not simply just whether companies have systems in place, but whether those systems are effective in practice.

International development offers lessons for navigating this shift:

●      Focus on outcomes, not activities

●      Understand the change process you seek to support

●      Be clear about contribution

●      Measure what matters

●      Embed learning and adaptation

These are not new ideas, but applying them in a corporate context requires intent, investment, and a willingness to rethink established approaches.

Approaching these challenges in this way can mean that MEAL becomes more than a reporting function, it becomes an asset that that enables companies to turn human rights commitments into measurable, meaningful impact.