5 Social Impact Skills Every PMO Should Build in Their Teams

Several research reports into project management and social impact, including PMI’s own research, show that there is a growing demand for projects that deliver not just outputs but lasting social value.

All projects have a social impact, whether positive or negative, but what we are talking about are the projects that have a positive impact on the world. An in turn, those projects often contribute to building a positive reputation for the company amongst staff and customers.

However, almost 40 percent of organizations report barriers to achieving the social impact they desire, including lack of financial resources, lack of organizational commitment and lack of skills in the team.

The last one is what I want to talk about today. The technical and behavioral competencies that are missing in many project teams can be trained in. PMOs can play a powerful role as capability builders, embedding social value delivery into the culture of project practice.

Want to know how? Let’s take a look at five essential skills for social impact work—and practical ways that your PMO can develop them.

1. Empathy and stakeholder listening

Social impact relies on understanding lived experiences and diverse needs, particularly for marginalized or non-traditional stakeholders. Nearly 70 percent of organizations that measure social impact do so with interviews or meetings with stakeholders.

Project managers already have tools and techniques for stakeholder identification, assessment and engagement, but these typically don’t put social impact first. Look at your templates to see how you can include social value (for example, by increasing time spent on identifying potential negative impacts, such as jobs lost through AI or automation, or impact on the environment from server farms).

Get better at this by:

• Training teams in active listening, user interviews, and inclusive facilitation
• Adding stakeholder storyboards or personas to project initiation documents so stakeholder groups are front-of-mind from the beginning
• Including community representatives in planning workshops or retrospectives, even if that means holding multiple sessions

2. Outcome-focused thinking

Project business cases might not include the longer-term change pathway—the behaviors, environmental change and long-term benefits or disbenefits. It’s easier to focus on these when working on projects where social outcomes are the main deliverable, but if your project is not a “social” project, then you’ll often have to facilitate the conversation deliberately.

Help project teams focus on outcomes, not outputs. Include sections in your templates for “What will the situation look like in five years?” or something similar to prompt longer-term thinking.

Get better at this by:

• Introducing outcome mapping or Theory of Change templates into early planning stages
• Coaching teams to define success in terms of human or community change, not just metrics (although ideally we still want these to be measurable)
• Offering clinics or mentoring on benefits realization

3. Ethical risk awareness

At the start of a project, risk logs fill up with all the standard risks that are applicable to most projects: risk of people going off sick, risk of change to scope, costs, leadership commitment, and so on.

Make it a habit for project teams to look at social impact risks as well. For example, highlight the unintentional harm projects could do through exclusion, unintended dependency, or privacy risks.

I think AI is a good example of where we need to take extra care. Is there a risk of reinforcing systemic inequalities through the algorithms in use, for example? And how will these be addressed? The PMO team can challenge and support projects by asking the right questions so these risks can be identified and managed appropriately.

Get better at this by:

• Incorporating ethical risk checklists in governance reviews (“What data are we collecting and why do we need it? What’s the risk of it being leaked?”)
• Developing guidance on balancing competing social priorities (like speed to market vs. participation)
• Asking legal or compliance teams to run awareness sessions on responsible delivery for the PMO

4. Measurement of intangible benefits

Traditional project metrics often fail to capture well-being, equity, or community confidence. Project teams focus on EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), financial benefits or the easy wins of an increase in customer satisfaction measured through Net Promoter Score or something similar.

The PMO can support teams to identify and measure benefits that might feel a bit tricky.

Get better at this by:

• Introducing SROI (Social Return on Investment), participatory evaluation, or qualitative feedback tools
• Encouraging teams to include baseline (start of project) and follow-up surveys (during delivery or post-completion) with stakeholders so you can measure the difference
• Including social benefit data in dashboards or reports alongside standard KPIs

5. Inclusive communication and co-creation

Projects involve a lot of communication, and we want to make sure that we’re carrying that out in the most appropriate and inclusive way. Especially on projects that affect members of the public or that will have a direct impact on organizational reputation somehow. Never underestimate how skeptical stakeholders can be! Communication, and involving stakeholder reps in communication planning and delivery, can go a long way to ensuring your messaging lands well.

Get better at this by:

• Providing templates for accessible communications (straightforward language, multi-language, visual summaries)
• Facilitating co-creation workshops or “design with” rather than “design for” practices
• Recognizing and rewarding inclusive behaviors in lessons learned reviews

You don’t have to wait for social impact projects to come along. You can build elements of social impact into all kinds of project by asking the right questions and empowering the PMO to ensure the resources and support offered to project leaders is inclusive and proactive.

By embedding these five skills into training, templates, and team culture, PMOs can close the capability gap and build teams fit for a more purpose-driven project landscape. Which of these skills will you focus on first?