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It’s a simple premise: private companies want to help reduce poverty, and they want to know how.

For over a decade, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) has developed tools to identify and tackle ‘multidimensional’ poverty – that is, deprivations experienced at the individual and household levels, including health, education and living standards.

Out of that award-winning work came SOPHIA: Oxford University’s first social enterprise. SOPHIA takes the approaches developed by OPHI and makes them available to businesses that want to make an impact on their employees’ wellbeing.

SOPHIA Oxford has developed a technological tool for businesses to collect and analyse data on the deprivations faced by employees and their families. This tool allows a company to conduct an online census of its employees, and analyse the data collected. The tool implements the Wise Responder questionnaire, which collects information on all deprivation indicators included in the national measure of multidimensional poverty, on income, on debt and a few additional questions to assess the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on the household. The Wise Responder questionnaire also includes questions aimed at capturing gender gaps.