From Measurement to Momentum: Growing Social Licence Through Tracking and Insight

Social licence is not just a safeguard, it’s a strategic enabler of citizen-focused transformation. But recognising its value is only the beginning. The next step is understanding how to grow it. That’s where tracking and monitoring can be of value.

A social licence is dynamic. It shifts with sentiment, context, and experience. It’s not granted once and held forever it’s earned, reinforced, and sometimes rebuilt. That’s why governments and agencies need tools that don’t just measure a social licence at a single point in time but monitor it across the lifecycle of a project or policy.

Why Tracking Social Licence Matters

Tracking a social licence helps organisations move from reactive to proactive. It allows them to:

• Understand how legitimacy, credibility, and trust evolve over time.
• Spot early warning signs of erosion or backlash.
• Evaluate the impact of communications, engagement, and behavioural interventions.
• Build a feedback loop between community sentiment and strategic decision-making.

In short, it helps agencies not just know where they stand but know how to move forward.

Making Measurement Meaningful

Effective tracking starts with a robust framework. At Verian, we’ve developed a purpose-built model that measures both a social licence to operate and a social licence to act, grounded in the core pillars of legitimacy, credibility, and trust. We also integrate elements from:

• Behavioural science: to understand what drives sentiment and how it can be shifted.
• Evaluation frameworks: to assess the effectiveness of interventions.
• IAP2 principles of meaningful community engagement: so that the community can make informed choices.
• Brand and reputation research: to contextualise public perception and identify gaps between reputation and permission.

This multi-disciplinary approach ensures that measuring a social licence provides a snapshot of public sentiment and goes further to become a strategic compass that guides organisations in engaging, adapting, and building enduring public trust.

Strategies That Move the Needle

Tracking a social licence is only valuable if it leads to action. The most effective strategies for growing a social licence include:

• Ensuring communities see the benefits: Providing a clear picture of the benefits is important, in addition to costs. Often the benefits are too abstract, or too far in the future for the community to grasp their true value or meaning.
• Demonstrating long-term commitment: understanding a social licence can help create short-term wins. Importantly, it also allows you to understand beyond compliance and demonstrate organisational commitment for the long haul. This includes maintaining transparency, delivering on promises, and continuing engagement well after a project is complete.
• Embedding community voices in decision-making
• Going beyond consultation to co-design or co-management models can deepen trust and legitimacy. When communities see their input reflected in outcomes, they’re more likely to support and defend those outcomes.
• Responding visibly to feedback: It’s not enough to collect feedback people need to see how it’s acted on. Closing the loop builds credibility and shows that engagement is meaningful, not performative.
• Building internal capability for engagement: a social licence is often undermined by inconsistent or poorly executed engagement. Investing in staff training, tools, and processes ensures that community-facing teams are equipped to build trust effectively.
• Leveraging trusted intermediaries: Sometimes the messenger matters as much as the message. Partnering with respected community leaders, local organisations, or subject matter experts can help bridge gaps in trust and understanding.
• Maintaining consistency across channels: Mixed messages or conflicting information can erode trust quickly. Ensuring that communications are aligned across media, spokespeople, and engagement touchpoints reinforces credibility.

These strategies aren’t new, but measuring and tracking a social licence helps you know when and where to apply them. It helps you tailor your approach to different stakeholder groups, monitor progress, and adapt in real time.

Relevant across most sectors of Government

Whether you’re delivering a new transmission line, securing water supplies, or reshaping trade infrastructure, tracking a social licence helps you build the trust and support needed to deliver with confidence. The impact and import of social licence is relevant wherever public impact is high, because in an increasingly transparent world, public permission matters. Wherever permission matters, meaningful measurement, accurate and timely response to and the ongoing tracking of public sentiment is essential.

About Verian

Verian is a global policy advisory and evidence business. We work end-to-end across the public policy lifecycle, helping clients tackle next-generation challenges.

We’ve developed a purpose-built, evidence-based solution for measuring and managing a social licence empowering governments and agencies to deliver responsibly, even when projects disrupt or impact communities.

Verian has developed a validated, evidence-based model designed specifically for the public sector. Our approach helps governments and agencies not only understand where they stand, but identify where to go next. If you're looking to build trust, foster meaningful engagement, and deliver transformation with confidence, we’d love to help you make your social licence a strategic advantage.