- 26 June 2026
Read time: 5 minutes
Summary: Leigh Smyth FRSA is the Founder of ImpactMatch, Co-Founder of ActionAble and a Trustee at Abiltynet. In this comment blog she examines why social impact is fundamental to good leadership, good governance and successful business.
What is “social impact?” Social impact refers to how an organisation affects people, both inside and outside the business. It’s about the company’s role in society and its relationships with employees, customers, communities, and wider stakeholders. For many governance professionals, it’s something we know in the context of annual reports, recording ESG updates, or as part of campaigns and public commitments. While all of these things have inherent value, they do not always influence the decisions, risks, stakeholders and accountabilities that truly shape how an organisation operates, or how its stakeholders view it. In my experience, social impact is mistakenly deemed separate from strategy, and this is a gap which has a huge risk of accelerating with the use of AI.
Good governance isn’t only about compliance (although many on the outside of the profession may perceive it this way). It is judged by how decisions are made, whose interests are considered, what evidence is used, how risk is understood, and whether commitments translate into action that people can see and trust. Social impact is foundational to this.
Building human trust in a world of AI
As AI changes the way organisations communicate, how quickly information moves, how content is produced, and how easily trust can be strengthened or damaged, polished reports and carefully worded statements alone are not enough on their own. Stakeholders want to understand the people and sentiment behind an organisation. Who is really at the heart of it, and what do they think and feel? Does the organisation’s behaviour align with the image they project out into the world? They want to know who is advising it, who is challenging it, how colleagues experience its culture, and whether its values are visible in everyday decisions and communications. Creating trust is about increasing human real voices, not just institutional messaging and AI will pick this up much more so than traditional SEO.
People and AI pay attention to what employees say, what they share, what they question and what they choose not to endorse. In a time when content can be generated quickly and corporate language can become increasingly uniform, credible employee voices are becoming one of the clearest indicators of organisational trust. Having your employees onboard and feeling aligned with your values, brand and organisation may be the single biggest piece of evidence that you are operating from a position of good governance.
Many organisations are repeatedly encountering the same challenges. They have good intent and care about doing the right thing, they even have strategies, targets and capable people, but they do not always have a practical route from responsible intent to measurable impact and improvement. The real opportunity comes from turning broad commitments into something leaders, teams, and partners can deliver in practice and as part of the culture. That means examining strategy, people, partnerships, capability, culture and communications together, rather than treating them as separate. Strategy only becomes useful when it reaches the people who can act on it and those that can benefit from it. Inclusion is not just about removing barriers, but about unlocking value that organisations can often miss.
The Disability Dividend is a powerful example of this. When organisations design with disabled customers, colleagues and communities in mind, they often create better services for everyone. They gain sharper insight, stronger relationships, more accessible products, better customer experiences and a deeper understanding of markets that have too often been ignored. Considerations like this equate to better design, better decision-making and better business. If a customer can access a service confidently, the organisation builds trust. If disabled colleagues can contribute fully, the organisation benefits from more talent, perspective and problem-solving. If products are designed with accessibility from the start, innovation improves, and commercial opportunity expands.
Making social impact central to organisational success
This is just one example of the importance of positive social impact and is a clear example of why social impact is the true test of great governance. It cannot be reduced to reporting alone. Reporting, measurement and assurance are obviously key. Still, if the work only happens after decisions have already been made, organisations miss the opportunity to improve those decisions in the first place.
For governance professionals, this creates an opportunity. As someone who is already close to the questions that shape organisational trust, it is time to start homing in on social impact to create better governance processes and better businesses.
If you want greater social impact, these are the questions you should be asking:
· Who advises the board and executive team?
· Who challenges assumptions?
· Who has lived experience of the barriers the organisation says it wants to address?
· Who understands the communities, customers and colleagues the organisation needs to serve better?
· Are those voices involved in a way that is structured, meaningful and capable of influencing decisions?
This is what quality decision-making is about, and the real value comes from listening. Leaders who listen well are better placed to anticipate reputational risk, understand stakeholder sentiment and build relationships before they are needed. This means organisations need to recognise that communication, trust, employee voice, and impact are all interconnected. They need the right preparation, the right evidence, the right people in the room, and a focused space to make better decisions.
The conclusion is straightforward: social impact is directly linked to a great strategy, and should serve as a tangible and actionable consequence of how organisations govern, lead, seek advice, communicate, listen to colleagues, design services, report progress and make decisions when trade-offs are difficult.
The organisations that earn trust in the next decade will not simply be those with the most polished statements of intent and case studies for annual reporting. They will also be the organisations that can show they are listening, learning, adapting and delivering meaningful impact in their daily interactions and communications. With the rapid growth of AI, social impact strategy based-on human and lived experience is integral not a bolt on
Join Leigh at the Annual Conference on 7-8th July 2026, where she will be exploring social impact in practice through connected leadership, along with Emma Wilson, Director of Digital at ImpactMatch. Secure your spot now.