Corporates and government can and should use the Poverty Stoplight tool to understand and improve:
- Employee engagement. The reasons for unengaged employees, especially in the African context, often lie in socio-economic circumstances, not the workplace.
- Employee wellness: Campaigns tell people what to do to lead a healthy lifestyle without taking into account the realities of their everyday lives. Poverty Stoplight can help you to focus your employee wellness programme on the issues that really matter.
- Personal change as a driver for systemic change. Understanding people in a process is the key that unlocks successful change. When people cannot see progress, achievement or change in themselves and their own environments, corporate KPIs, targets and goals are meaningless. Assisting people to move their personal mind-sets from poverty to abundance, creates the space for a similar shift in their professional thinking.
- Systemic understanding: The tool’s aggregated data reveals patterns in communities or groups of people, which allow government to implement systemic changes aligned with the real requirements.
- Managing community relations constructively by mapping what people have, and not asking what they need. This methodology is aligned with Asset-Based Community Development, and allows everyone in the process to self-diagnose and take responsibility for the part they have to play.