Three years ago, in our climate action plan Taking it Personally, we set ourselves a challenge: to understand and measure the full impact of our business, not just in terms of carbon emissions or financial performance, but across people, communities, nature and the wider economy through an Integrated Profit and Loss (IPL) account.
Last year, with support from the Capitals Coalition, we began mapping our impacts across four interconnected capitals: human, social, natural and produced. It marked an important shift in how we think about value creation and gave us a more holistic picture of the positive and negative impacts associated with running our business.
As Forster marks 30 years of using communications to drive social and environmental change, our 2025-26 Impact Report captures another year’s progress on that journey and the lessons we’re learning along the way. Read it in full here.
From reporting to decision-making
The ultimate goal of building an IPL account is not simply to measure impact but also to create a management tool that helps us make better decisions, understand trade-offs more clearly and strengthen the positive outcomes we create through our business.
As we’ve continued developing our approach, we’ve become increasingly aware that impact is rarely straightforward. Decisions that create benefits in one area can have unintended consequences in another, and what appears positive in isolation can look different when viewed through a broader systems lens. Although challenging in its complexity, this is also where some of the most valuable insights emerge.
Understanding what really creates value
As a communications consultancy, our greatest impacts are not always the easiest to quantify.
Every day we work with organisations seeking to tackle climate change, improve lives and create a fairer, more sustainable society. The influence of that work stretches far beyond traditional business metrics and is often felt through the people we support, the ideas we help scale and the change our clients drive in the world.
This year’s report continues to explore how those impacts show up across the four capitals, helping us better understand where we create value and where we can improve.
It has also reinforced an important lesson: meaningful impact measurement requires constant learning. As we dig deeper into the data, we continue to uncover areas that were previously invisible to us, alongside opportunities to strengthen our approach and improve the decisions we make.
Progress is rarely linear
One of the most important lessons along this journey is that progress does not always follow a straight line. There are times when objectives compete, when outcomes that benefit one capital may create pressure elsewhere, and when short-term setbacks accompany longer-term gains.
By making these trade-offs visible, we can have more informed conversations about the choices we make as a business, from how we support our team and communities to how we travel, procure services and work with clients.
We believe openness remains essential, not because we have all the answers, but because sharing challenges is just as important as celebrating successes.
Learning alongside others
Whether through the Capitals Coalition, the B Corp network, our clients, suppliers or peer organisations, we have learnt an enormous amount from others who are also exploring new ways of measuring value beyond traditional financial metrics.
As specialists in sustainability communications, we know that many organisations are grappling with similar questions. How do you measure what matters? How do you compare different forms of value? How do you navigate competing priorities while remaining transparent and accountable?
We certainly don’t claim to have solved those challenges, but we are committed to sharing what we learn as we go.
Looking ahead
Our Taking it Personally plan runs until 2026, and this latest report comes at an important moment for the next stage of our impact journey.
We are currently recertifying under the new B Corp standards, while continuing to develop the insights from our IPL work. Together, these two frameworks will help us set our ambitions for the coming years and make clearer choices about where we can have the greatest positive impact.
As the countdown to 2030 continues, and the global goals deadline nears, the need for change can feel daunting, but it is also a call to be more connected, more honest and more imaginative about making progress. Communications has a vital role to play in that work: helping people see the systems they are part of, understand the change they can influence, and build the confidence to act together.
Read our full 2025-26 Impact Report to explore our impacts, progress and priorities in more detail.