2023 is here. Pandemic fatigue is still on. The concerns over climate change and social inequities have touched a new peak. Companies across the globe have their antennas on in terms of investing in sustainable practices and spending efforts in socially responsible initiatives.
At the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, the world leaders adopted a new 2030 Agenda for ‘Sustainable Development’, which is “a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” designed to “shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path”.
The agenda of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets is a plan of action for people, the planet, and prosperity. They seek to realize human rights for all and achieve gender equality and women empowerment. They are integrated and cut across the three dimensions of sustainable development – the economic, social, and environmental.
The social dimension of Sustainable Development Goals is focused on investing in people. It talks about removing the barriers for every individual to perform to their fullest. It talks about helping people to achieve their aspirations with confidence, respect, and dignity. It also talks about setting up people to succeed and helping them earn decent wages so that their families and society can benefit.
As per the Global Gender Gap Report 2022, it will take up to 132 years to achieve gender equality in the world if we stay on the same trajectory. SDG Goal no 5 looks at achieving gender equality in workplaces.
While mature organizations have included gender equality as a key people progress measure, many smaller businesses are yet to reap the benefit of employing women as part of their workforce.
As per the report published by the International Centre for Research on Women, a few key issues that are faced by women employed in smaller businesses/MSMEs are the following:
- Jobs being stereotyped by gender
- Little presence in managerial/technical positions
- Recruitment thru informal network
- Poor working conditions including the hiring of workers as casual workers or no benefits, lesser adoption of maternity benefits, or adherence to sexual harassment provisions
- Wage discrimination between male and female employees
To improve women’s workforce participation in smaller businesses/MSMEs, Avtar has launched the Business is Good (BIG) initiative. BIG is a corporate mentoring initiative where large and conscious businesses who are champions of inclusion can support the smaller businesses (can be their suppliers/vendor partners as well) to build inclusive workplaces. It can be through mentoring towards building inclusive culture or by sponsoring policy implementation kits to quickly enable smaller businesses to deploy basic DEI policies on the ground.
In an era where “Who cares, Wins?”, social impact initiatives like “Business is Good” can help responsible business groups build inclusive supply chains, which can lead to long-term value creation in terms of creating more businesses, jobs, and economic opportunities.
With an uptick in socially-conscious investors and customers, who are keen to know about companies’ efforts and stance towards social factors, now is the time to consciously evaluate the actions that the company needs to take up in this area and make an impact. Let 2023 be the year of social impact for companies towards building a sustainable and resilient future for themselves and the ecosystems.
