The UIC Barcelona Chair in Management by Missions and Corporate Purpose, the DPMC Foundation and Corporate Excellence – Centre for Reputation Leadership have come together to drive the Measure to Improve movement in order to perfect and professionalise the way companies measure and internalise the experience of corporate purpose. The global, collaborative and non-profit initiative seeks to promote a significant change in the business paradigm, placing purpose at the centre of all operations and strategic decisions of the company.

This proposal focuses on the implementation of metrics that allow quantifying and continuously improving the impact of purpose on companies. The organisations leading the movement work closely with business leaders, academics and measurement experts to drive the measurement of the experience of purpose.

Measure to Improve is the natural evolution of the launch of the Purpose 3D Index in July 2023 to measure corporate purpose in organisations. This new metric is the the result of fifteen years of research promoted by UIC Barcelona, the DPMC Foundation and Corporate Excellence – Centre for Reputation Leadership.

The Purpose 3D Index serves as an indicator for the degree of experience of corporate purpose within the entity, similar to how indicators such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) or global reputation are used. Its objective is to be incorporated into the scorecards of companies through three key criteria: statistical representativeness, understood as the number of indicators necessary to reflect a certain aspect or quality of the phenomenon to be evaluated; clarity, so that it can be used in different areas and levels of the company; and the differentiation of the questions, so that an anchoring effect is not generated, where an answer to one question influences the answer of the next.

Carlos Rey, founder of the DPMC Foundation and director of the Chair of Management by Missions, argued that “most organisations lack rigorous and relevant information about the internal experience of purpose,” adding: “What is not measured is hardly managed, which leads to the purpose not being fully experienced by employees.”

Angel Alloza, CEO of Corporate Excellence – Centre for Reputation Leadership, understood that the indicator developed “will allow to clarify the impact of the corporate purpose on organisations, starting by quantifying the degree of experience and internalisation of the purpose in the company itself. This is of vital importance: many organisations have a defined and stated purpose but that does not mean that it is truly internalised and shared by all employees.”

Those companies that join the movement commit to including three questions about the experience of purpose in their internal employee surveys, in three key dimensions or areas: managers, colleagues and personal.

The Measure to Improve movement team provides companies with help in the implementation of the questions and will promote the publication of a benchmarking report , with results segmented by sector and size, which will help companies interpret and contextualise their particular situation.