Starting out as an independent consultant two years ago, there was no particular plan other than to pay the bills, have a healthy work-life balance and indulge myself in family and hobbies. Well, the fairy tale ‘semi retirement’ did not last long. Truth be told, the inner churn to, in some small way, make the world a better place, refused to retire.
Reflecting on 2024 and seeing the various projects written down firstly, shows some of the adventure I’ve been on, and secondly, raised the question of, ‘has all this activity led to change?’
As a freelance consultant, it’s difficult to measure change as a direct result of the activity – once the contract is done, well, you move onto the next piece of work. However, with activity and impact buzzing round my brain, the post-it-notes flagged up patterns on potential ways to interrogate or measure ‘impact’.
- One can notch it up by deliverables, for example in 2024 this covered strategy development, training, workshops, toolkits, guidance, case study & briefing writing, and contributing to work on international development and decolonisation.
- Another way is thematic – areas within labour & human rights such as climate change (heat, water, industrial relations), Just Transition, child labour, forced labour, trade union rights, and human rights due diligence.
- Commodity supply chain deep dive also provides a good set of indicators against which to measure. In 2024, this was mainly done through training case study development for ITC/ILO training. The deep dives covered furniture, coffee, garments, surgical gloves and fishing.
- Geographies and industries tick many boxes. From a supply chain or HRDD perspective these score fairly high.
There is a BUT ! While the above reflects busyness, networking and yes, a solid basis for developing a plan and success measurement, they mask the desire to see individuals flourish and to build confidence in others to be the change in their environment and spheres of influence.
2024 was busy. Going forward though, there’s no particular grand plan except to be authentic with a desire to learn and share more. That’s how the three ‘self measures’ have come into being. INSPIRE, ENCOURAGE and EMPOWER will be the measure from here on in and will be built into client discussions, some through written guidance, briefings, manuals with an extra measure built into all training & workshops.