Impact Assessments

Secure better results and more funding

Responding to Growing Global Requirements for Demonstrating Impact Performance

Creating high-quality impact reports is now a key fundamental of organisational performance and requires a solid understanding of impact across the organisation. Introducing impact literacy and a culture for impact across your organisation is essential whilst also building your impact data set for use in reporting.

The challenge is that few organisations and people even know what impact reporting is – let alone how to do it well.

The increasing importance of impact assessment

In the UK,

%

of the £2billion funding available per year through the REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2029 is determined by impact and engagement

In Hong Kong,

%

of the UGC’s RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) 2026 will be determined by impact

What you can do to prepare

Creating impact adoption across your institution or even department can seem daunting, but there are lots of methods and strategies to achieve this, and they are often interconnected. Below are some examples to consider:

Leverage internal resources

Provide incentives for impact activities

Introduce impact planning

TRAIN THE TRAINER

Impact adoption

TARGET ECRs AS EARLY ADOPTERS

Send internal communications

Obtain senior level buy-in

Provide staff engagement

How can we improve your processes?

Assessments take place in cycles, typically lasting between five-seven years. To maximise your success, you should introduce processes that embed impact as part of regular activities, which will then significantly reduce the burden on your teams when it comes to the submission deadline.

Identify Impact Officer(s)

Determine who will become the lead for Impact Case Studies (ICS), and how this role will interface with other areas of the university e.g. strategic planning

Begin engagement

Propose a critical path, then begin the engagement and process development, ensuring impact is added to existing processes and activities as well as review incentives (such as research meeting agendas)

Include impact training

Incorporate impact training as part of professional development (such as through introducing eLearning courses) to raise awareness and improve overall impact literacy

Identify ICS

Liaise with Research Directors and the wider research team to identify where the ICS (Impact Case Study) you want to produce will originate from

Submission Year

By following these steps, when it comes to the year of submission you will be in a strong position and be able to conduct final reviews and any copy editing required

Mock Review

In the year before submission, you should undertake a mock submission to ensure that final actions are in place and to de-risk the assessment

Conduct Reviews

For years in-between assessment cycles, carry out annual reviews both internally and externally to understand your institution’s impact portfolio, providing you with more potential ICS identified in advance

Complete Workshops

Develop and complete a series of impact mapping workshops to help project leads identify their impact and come away with a structure with which to write up their narratives

Engage Impact Champions – Demonstrate ‘What’s in it for me’

Develop internal examples

Showcase the benefits from high impact through your own examples, for example by creating impact case studies.

CONSIDER BOTTOM-UP DEVELOPMENT

Equip impact champions through “train the trainer” sessions that help to scale impact understanding throughout your institution.

SHOW ROI

Help academics to clearly see the return on investment, for example by hosting funding workshops that include an impact element.

Make compliance easy

Make compliance easy by ensuring that impact data is readily available and can be easily repurposed into whatever formats are required.

How we can help

We have worked with universities of sizes and across all disciplines to help them prepare their submissions and embed key rhythms to support higher quality submissions through our software and services approach. We provide a consultative approach to help you identify your areas of improvement and choose the services or technology that will help you achieve as highly as possible.

Feature	Software	Services	ImpactEcosystem
Integrations: Repository, User Management and Grants
ImpactEcosystem onboarding and dedicated training, empowering your colleagues to use the technology to improve their capture and reporting of impact
CPD-accredited eLearning courses that cover impact basics through to specific Impact Case Studies (ICS) and national assessment training
Participation in quarterly Steering Groups to help shape product and services, and share knowledge
In-person workshops and full training options, including "what makes as 4* impact case study"
Annual health checks to assess impact readiness and recommend improvements
Annual Impact Case Study Reviews, built within ImpactTracker & ImpactReviewer and shared to provide continual constructive support
1-2-1 Impact Mapping / Feedback sessions in person/virtual (1 hour) to provide recommendations and actions to improve ICS.
Polish documents Ready for Submission: Receive drafts in Word /GDoc format. Clean and marked up versions to be provided

Why work with hivve?

The only organisation supporting multi-regional impact assessments around the world

SeasonED impact experts

10+ years of experience in review impact case studies in the UK and Hong Kong

Scalable Knowledge

Build impact literacy within your organisation and improve your results

Engaging Workshops

Complete impact mapping exercises to identify the impact across projects

Get in Touch Now!

How we can help

We have worked with universities of sizes and across all disciplines to help them prepare their submissions and embed key rhythms to support higher quality submissions through our software and services approach. We provide a consultative approach to help you identify your areas of improvement and choose the services or technology that will help you achieve as highly as possible.

Feature	Software	Services	ImpactEcosystem
Integrations: Repository, User Management and Grants
ImpactEcosystem onboarding and dedicated training, empowering your colleagues to use the technology to improve their capture and reporting of impact
CPD-accredited eLearning courses that cover impact basics through to specific Impact Case Studies (ICS) and national assessment training
Participation in quarterly Steering Groups to help shape product and services, and share knowledge
In-person workshops and full training options, including "what makes as 4* impact case study"
Annual health checks to assess impact readiness and recommend improvements
Annual Impact Case Study Reviews, built within ImpactTracker & ImpactReviewer and shared to provide continual constructive support
1-2-1 Impact Mapping / Feedback sessions in person/virtual (1 hour) to provide recommendations and actions to improve ICS.
Polish documents Ready for Submission: Receive drafts in Word /GDoc format. Clean and marked up versions to be provided

How we can help you:

We can support you by developing internal understanding of what to report and best practices for doing this

We can provide feedback, practical insights and key actions to improve your Impact Case Studies (ICS) and environment statements

We can help you set up systems and processes for recording impact and evidence

We can help you to finalise your reports ready for submission

We can help you keep abreast of developments in impact assessment with our specially curated events:

How we can help

We have worked with universities of sizes and across all disciplines to help them prepare their submissions and embed key rhythms to support higher quality submissions through our software and services approach. We provide a consultative approach to help you identify your areas of improvement and choose the services or technology that will help you achieve as highly as possible.

Feature	Software	Services	ImpactEcosystem
Integrations: Repository, User Management and Grants
ImpactEcosystem onboarding and dedicated training, empowering your colleagues to use the technology to improve their capture and reporting of impact
CPD-accredited eLearning courses that cover impact basics through to specific Impact Case Studies (ICS) and national assessment training
Participation in quarterly Steering Groups to help shape product and services, and share knowledge
In-person workshops and full training options, including "what makes as 4* impact case study"
Annual health checks to assess impact readiness and recommend improvements
Annual Impact Case Study Reviews, built within ImpactTracker & ImpactReviewer and shared to provide continual constructive support
1-2-1 Impact Mapping / Feedback sessions in person/virtual (1 hour) to provide recommendations and actions to improve ICS.
Polish documents Ready for Submission: Receive drafts in Word /GDoc format. Clean and marked up versions to be provided

Customer success stories

We equip our customers with the resources to achieve excellence in research impact assessments globally.

VV (hivve)’s extensive knowledge and understanding of the REF guidance became invaluable to us as an institution and meant case study authors were able to seek clarification where necessary to better understand the how’s and the why’s behind the recommendations made, resulting in a much greater level of confidence throughout the submission.

Dr Astrid Breel

Impact Research Fellow, Bath Spa University

The Vertigo Ventures (hivve) team was very thorough and provided lots of context along with examples of successful planning and execution of case studies in the REF, for example. I was able to gain a really clear picture of how to understand and present impact within case studies, including effective formats and methods for including testimonials.

Professor Haiyan Song

Associate Dean and Chair Professor of Tourism, School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

The University of Oxford continued to work with Vertigo Ventures (now after they were able to help us investigate new areas of impact we had not previously considered, engage with various stakeholders to collect, verify and demonstrate the impact of our research and they added value overall. Throughout the project Vertigo Ventures were pleasant to work with, took our comments on board and delivered the project on time.

Esme Wilks

Senior Communications Manager, Social Sciences Division, University of Oxford

What are some examples of HEI impact strategies around the world?

EIA 2024 (Postponed)

Australia’s scheduled Engagement & Impact Assessment (2024) has been delayed, and the governmental response to the Review of the Australian Research Council Act 2001 agrees in principle that the evaluation of excellence, impact and research capabilities within Australian universities needs reform.

Institutional strategies

Several of Denmark’s universities have adopted impact strategies, although there is as of yet no overarching national research assessment. Learn more about some of the institutional strategies through the analysis here.

RAE 2026

Hong Kong introduced an impact element into its Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) for the first time in 2020, drawing on the UK’s REF; learn more about our analysis here. The next edition will take place in 2026, where impact will possibly grow in importance.

SEP 2021-2027

The Strategy Evaluation Protocol (SEP) is a formative, rolling exercise designed to evaluate and improve research in the Netherlands. As part of this, impact and engagement are addressed, especially under the umbrella of societal relevance.

PBRF QE 2026

In June 2022, New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) agreed in principle to recommendations to extend the definition of research excellence – which could lead to impact assessment playing a role in funding distribution after the next Quality Evaluation round in 2026.

HumEval 2015-2017

From 2015-2017, the Research Council of Norway (RCN) carried out a research impact evaluation focusing on the humanities. This exercise compared findings to the UK’s REF 2014, but unlike the REF is not tied to funding. Read the report here.

REE 2022

Poland closely followed the UK’s REF model for its Research Evaluation Exercise (REE), evaluating research impact across its institutions for the period 2018-2022. As part of this, 2,661 Impact Case Studies (ICS) were uploaded, in both Polish and English, to a searchable database.

REF 2029

The UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) pioneered impact in national assessments in 2014, with impact growing in importance for the 2021 edition and playing a key role in funding allocation. The next REF will take place in 2029; learn more about REF 2021 here.

Join our mailing list

and keep up-to-date with everything impact