Mark Daniels reflects on the future for jobs-focused social enterprises in Australia, sharing his hopes for a world where social enterprises lead the charge in transforming employment systems, breaking down barriers, and inspiring change.
What could the future of jobs focused social enterprise look like in Australia?
I am off to a meeting in Sydney with the WISE Hub, a committee of Social Enterprise Australia that has been meeting since 2022 to discuss, share and drive change for jobs-focused social enterprises.
This is the first time we’ve sat down for a fair dinkum strategy session. It will be informed by the insights we captured from the sector at the Social Enterprise Jobs Summit, which is a great starting point. It got me thinking about what my personal 10-year vision for the jobs-focused social enterprise field looks like.
My view has always been that social enterprise isn't the end-game, I'm not an idealist who believes every business should be a social enterprise. Social enterprises are a critical part of the civil society and they have an important role to play, but the level of altruism in social enterprise will never be the dominant form of business in neo-capitalist Australia.
I believe the role of social enterprise is to drive social change in business, government and society, by demonstrating what is possible and what is best practice. Social entrepreneurs are rebels, activists and innovators who see gaps in systems and seek to fill them. In doing so, they demonstrate better ways to address the gaps and change the lives of tens of thousands of people annually who are not being properly serviced by the employment system.
If we do our job well and are able to measure and communicate our method and impact, then the system will respond and fill those gaps…and create hundreds of thousands of job opportunities every year in response to our innovative solutions and learnings. It will 20x-30x the impact of jobs-focused social enterprises nationally. For me - this is the end game.
We definitely won't get there in 10 years, so what could we reasonably expect the field to look like in 10 years? This is what I think could happen:
- The social enterprise field will be bigger. It needs to get bigger to steward society towards the solutions that are needed. We still have a fair bit of demonstration and activism to do.
- Government procurement policies implemented nationally that include requirements for suppliers to employ people with significant barriers to work in the delivery of those contracts. This means head contractor jobs and supply chain jobs including through social enterprises and Indigenous businesses.
- Social enterprises permanently integrated into the employment system, supporting those furthest from the labour market into work in social enterprises and then, in many cases into mainstream employment.
- Commercial businesses adopting social enterprise culture and practices in their organisations or parts of their organisations so that they can better support people with barriers to employment.
- Bespoke financial products that enable social enterprises to grow, shrink and diversify as they need to rather than being over reliant on philanthropy.
- A vocal jobs focused social enterprise field that has powerful channels to advocate and influence policy and practice in government and business.