Social & Human Capitals Protocol

The Social & Human Capitals Protocol can be used to measure and value social and human capital impacts and dependencies across a whole business or an individual project, product or operation.

It is a critical part of the evolving business toolkit and brings together the currently fragmented landscape of social measurement and valuation. It provides the universal processes, principles and tools needed by business to ensure social risks and opportunities are considered alongside financial and environmental issues in corporate strategy and decision-making. The Protocol seeks to determine how and by how much business activities increase, decrease and/or transform social and human capital, and the extent to which it depends on social and human capital resources.

The Protocol Framework explores 4 Stages, broken into 9 Steps, each containing questions to answer when integrating the value of social and human capital into organizational processes.

01 Frame

Identify risks and opportunities for your business and stakeholders resulting from your relationships with social & human capital and explore how an assessment would be relevant to your decision making.

02 Scope

Identify the objective of your assessment and conduct a materiality process to select the most relevant impacts and dependencies from the perspective of both your business and stakeholders.

03 Measure & Value

Use relevant approaches to measure and value the costs and benefits resulting from your material impacts and dependencies on social & human capital.

04 Apply

Interpret, validate and verify your assessment process and results and integrate them into existing business processes to inform decision-making.

Although presented linearly, the Protocol is iterative and lets users adjust and adapt their approach as they move through the framework.

The Protocol does not require you to report assessment results externally. Nevertheless, you may wish to report your assessment findings to demonstrate how you have considered relevant social and human capital risks, opportunities and value creation.

Although the Protocol leaves open the choice of specific metrics and valuation and measurement approaches to users, it aims to provide guidance – and therefore confidence – in understanding the techniques that leading businesses currently apply. It also aims to develop a solid foundation for future progress on comparability and standardization. The Protocol is applicable within any business sector, to organizations of all sizes and in all operational geographies. It enables organizations to measure, value and integrate social & human capital impacts and dependencies into existing business processes such as risk mitigation, sourcing, supply chain management and product design.

The Social and Human Capitals Protocol is the result of 4 years of collaborative development – involving input from over 50 businesses and a global public consultation.

Explore more

Primer for Businesses