A Pukka guide to metrics that matter

As B Corp and Impact Consultants, UK for Good supports business leaders on their sustainability and purpose journey to help them better understand and improve the impact of their business on people, communities and our planet. In other words, using business as a force for good.

The journey begins by understanding and clarifying the business purpose – why it exists and how it will shape a better world. These are the foundations for a sustainable and purpose led business.

Next, we look at five key impact areas; Governance, Workers, Community (including supply chain), Environment, and Customers. These are the areas that B Corp certification is measured on and can be accessed via the B Impact Assessment (BIA) on the B Lab website.

Being able to embed impact into the very fabric of a business means it’s vital to have key measure of success alongside the sustainable financial health of the organisation. At UK for Good, we believe that traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will no longer be a standalone viable measure. We are seeing forward-thinking business leaders measuring success using Impact Performance Indicators (IPIs) instead.

During our research into how businesses are adapting their boardroom agendas to embed impact and IPIs into their organisations, Pukka Herbs stood out for us as an organisation which had made significant progress.

 We have been learning about why they have evolved their business measures and why they now use The Pyramid Model (see Fig 1). Anuradha Chugh, CEO of Pukka Herbs explains: “Historically Pukka has presented its social, economic and environmental ambition as overlapping circles, in line with the triple bottom line. However, the Pyramid model is a better representation of why business must broaden measurement beyond purely financial metrics. The pyramid shows businesses can’t thrive if they don’t look after their stakeholders and the environment on which they depend.”

Fig 1: Pukka Herbs’ Pryamid Model using the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach (2023)

Anu also explained that “operationalising impact metrics makes decision-making easier.

We believe that embedding impact metrics into every plan, policy, process, and person can take a very different approach for each business and it’s not something most leaders have readily available knowledge and experience in implementing.

We can see the transition in Pukka’s approach from having KPIs that only affect activity and output in the business annually, with long-term impact results only realised over a 5-10 year period (see fig 2), to IPIs that are measured monthly, in-line with activity, outputs and impact goals (see fig 3).

Fig 2: Pukka Herbs’ Annual KPIs approach

The IPIs are presented to all employees during monthly team meeting updates so that everyone in the company can identify, understand, and improve impact and business performance.

Fig 3: Pukka Herbs’ Impact Performance Indicators used by leaders at monthly team meetings

Every business has a significant opportunity and responsibility to consider the impact of their decisions on all stakeholders, not just their shareholders. By acting as a force for good and the introduction of Impact Performance Indicators, it may just well be the solution all leadership teams need to take.

We appreciate the challenges a business can have when moving away from traditional operating models and standalone KPIs,  particularly when it comes to conversations with stakeholders who are more motivated by financial returns alone. We believe that businesses should balance profit with purpose, shareholder returns alongside stakeholder returns.

"Sometimes it's very difficult but it doesn’t need to be binary" explained Anuradha. "The magic happens when you get win-win. Your customers, employees, value chain, AND nature. To do that we need to invest, innovate, and sometimes break rules ".

The world is in an unprecedented and precarious state. Humans have exceeded planetary boundaries and collectively, as individuals and businesses, we need to work together to shape a cleaner, greener, fairer future for all.

That takes courage, commitment and compassion. Why not try the Pukka way?

To read the latest Pukka Impact Report please click here.

Thank you, Anuradha and Pukka Herbs, for sharing your impact journey with us and our UK for Good community.