How is the Impact Score® calculated for the Impact Score® Company app? We partner with the Maths and Applied Sciences team at the University of Chester who developed weightings and formulas to transform the data into a single Impact Score® so you can easily see how a business is behaving and can compare them with similar companies.

How often are the scores updated?  We refresh the scores at least monthly, with the latest sets of data we obtain.

What is ‘My Score’ and ‘Public Score’?  ‘My Score’ is the Impact Score® weighted by your selected preferences on the Preferences page of the app. ‘Public Score’ is the same, but weighted by the average preferences of our entire Impact Score® Company app user community.

What are the six measures?

• Paying UK Tax
• Gender Pay Gap
• Paying the real Living Wage
• Carbon Emissions
• Paying Suppliers Promptly
• Fat Cat Pay Gap

Why only these six measures?  We conducted market and audience research in 2019, and consumers told us which company sustainability measures were important to them. Since then these measures have evolved to reflect our app users priorities. We continually review and add new measures as we develop. 

Where do you get the data for the Impact Score® Company app?  Data comes from a variety of sources. Some is collected and published by the UK Government, others are collected directly from the businesses themselves, and others from reliable 3^rd parties, like the Living Wage Foundation.

How do the six measures align with legislation?  This isn’t about legislation. This is about you telling us what you care about. Not some politician or bureaucrat. We collect data and report direct to you.

I searched for a company and they’re not listed. Why? There are over four million businesses registered in the UK. Only a small percentage report their performance across the six measures we collect. We only show Impact Scores where we have data on three or more of the six measures.

Why does a company appear more than once, with a slightly different name?  Companies often have complex structures with more than one entity.  It is complicated to decipher these, so we report all the data we can obtain.

When I click ‘Compare’, not all companies I expect to see are in there?  There are over 700 codes which businesses can use to describe what they do. Companies who appear to do the same thing sometimes code themselves differently. We have tried to merge similar codes, but with more than five million UK businesses, it’s not always possible.

Why is some data missing?  Only certain sized businesses have to report certain data sets, other businesses choose to because it’s the right thing to do. We try and capture data from as many different reliable sources a possible. If you think some data is missing from a company’s results, please get in touch.

Why does a company with a low late payments figure get a ‘bad’ emoji?  In the calculations, we also account for what the actual payment terms the company demands from their suppliers. Some of these can be horrendously short, and so change the overall score.

I run a business, how do I get shown in the app?  We only show businesses where we have data on three or more scores. Contact us and we’ll work with you to get you listed.

Is this app just for larger companies?  Not necessarily. Any company we can get data for two or more measures (excluding Real Living Wage) is included. It’s true that only larger businesses are legislated to report some of the measures, but any company can volunteer the information. If you want your company included, contact us and we’ll work with you to get you listed.

What if the business doesn’t pay tax? Like if it’s a charity or council body?  We still think it’s important to show how these businesses are performing against the other measures, so we simply exclude the tax measure from the Impact Score® calculation.

What do the emojis mean? The five emojis represent where the businesses score against each of the measures. The highest score for a measure is the hearts emoji (top 20%). Then it’s the smile, meh, and sad emojis. The angry emoji is the lowest score (bottom 20%).

Why does a company with two entries have an emoji in one, and not the other?  We use machine learning to identify parent and subsidiary businesses, but it’s not 100% accurate. So sometimes we miss things. If this happens, get in touch and we can correct it.

Some companies have six emojis, others only three. How do I know this is comparable?  We can only show you what data we have available. Use the ‘Tell Them’ button on the app, and we can tell the companies their customers want more transparency.

How do I express my discontent with a businesses’ Impact Score®? Contact us and we’ll let them know.

What do you do with my feedback?  We take your feedback back to the individual businesses concerned, so they can see what our community is saying about them and their supply chains. We also publish league tables to show which businesses are performing well and badly – our aim is for every business to constantly be improving themselves.

If I see a business with a low Impact Score®, shouldn’t I just boycott them? Boycotting is not always the solution. If everyone did that, it could lead to closures and redundancies. Better to tell them, and force them to improve. Then we improve the situation for everyone.