Communities play an important role in every aspect of our lives. Being a part of a community gives us opportunities to connect with people and the planet. A healthy community recognises and celebrates our diversity as well as our similarities. This extends beyond the immediate communities in which we live and work, into the communities connecting and influencing our suppliers. Some of the relevant topics within this issue are meaningful and secure employment, a living wage, inequality, diversity and inclusion, charity activity, and supporting local business.

Businesses are not separate to communities - they operate within them. Building strong connections with the communities in which you operate helps your business to thrive.   By proactively connecting within your community, you can show that you understand their needs and concerns, and are working with them to make it better. Business can have an important role in this process, helping to bring people from a range of backgrounds together to connect, share ideas, and common goals.  Business should also be reflective of the communities that they serve. The rise of purpose-led businesses is an illustration of this trend - these businesses are integrating wider social and environmental topics into their business models. This gives the community a sense of connection and of contributing to a greater good. By first ensuring that basic needs are being met, they unlock the potential of their staff and wider community to innovate and try new things, new experiences, and building their networks further. Cooperative and Social Enterprise are two models in this space. Similar to the other issues, it is not sensible for your business to try to act on all topics of relevance for your community. To make progress, you should identify those topics of most relevance for your business, and then focus on those in order to drive more impact.

Measuring social and community impact can be quite challenging in comparison with environmental impacts. This is mostly due to difficulties in definition of what is being measured, interpreting the results, and informing the next steps. Often, measuring the inputs e.g. money or time donated, is easier than measuring the impact of those inputs e.g. number of people lifted out of poverty. Regardless, your business should have an idea of which topics are most relevant, and a way to measure your progress on each one. You can think of your business’ engagement with the community as occurring at three different levels: your direct employee community, the community in which your business operates, and the community in which your suppliers (and their suppliers) operate. Measurement of progress will be easiest within your direct operations - there are also a number of independent certifications that can strengthen your approach and ability to communicate externally on what you are doing. Measurement of community aspects in your supply chain is generally the most challenging area, but again there are a number of independent certifications available to help with this, particularly for industries with known supply chain risks e.g. fashion.