Product Social Impact Assessment helps companies to identify the social impacts throughout the life cycle of a product or service. The method supports the identification of social hotspots and improvement opportunities, including risks in supply chains, production, use phase and end of life. The method also allows companies to identify both the negative and the positive impacts, which is the basis for strengthening the positive impacts and better managing the negative impacts. In this way, Product Social Impact Assessment can be a business driver and a source of inspiration for product innovation. The social impact assessment method can help business to:
The Product Social Impact Assessment method allows companies to measure and analyse positive and negative social impacts and to identify risks, improvement opportunities and points of excellence. The assessment shows where potential social hotspots may occur and how significant they are.
The majority of the social impacts occur outside the operational boundaries of an organisation (impaired by the trend towards outsourcing).Sound decision-making on this topic therefore needs
to take the entire life cycle into account, from extraction of raw material, through manufacturing and use phase to end of life
Products, including both their manufacture and use, can also contribute positively to social welfare. The Roundtable aims to make those positive impacts visible and quantitative. Indicators such as the well-being experienced and job satisfaction have been selected to enable companies to demonstrate how their products create positive impact. Social impact transparency also has tangible benefits for marketing – it gives businesses input for product development, improvement in the social performance of the product, differentiation, brand image and corporate reputation management.