Today, forward thinking companies and their stakeholders (investors, financiers, partners, customers) recognize that people create value when they are safe, healthy and fulfilled at work. People are the heart of any successful enterprise, especially in these tough economic times. In addition, employment, safety and health performance lies within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within SDGs 8, 5 and 3. Most successful enterprises recognize the impact a skilled, engaged and productive workforce can have on its operations, and ultimately, its perceived value and business performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented global crisis and impacted workplaces in significant ways. It is more important now than ever to focus on the fundamentals of employee wellbeing, health and safety. It has been seen that losing workers to injury or illness, even for a short time, can cause significant disruption and cost, to any business as well as the workers and their families.

Sustainable Business Consulting (SBC) aims to is to inspire, engage and empower companies to reimagine their strategies and plans, in order to achieve the nexus that leads to sustained economic prosperity, societal equity and environmental good. Through this toolkit, SBCs contributions towards shared prosperity is clear.

The toolkit is provided for all intermediaries and enterprise support organizations – regardless of size, geography or sector – who want proactively to support SGBs within their portfolio to integrate OHS and employment minimum practices. The toolkit aims at equipping intermediaries with the necessary tools, knowledge and resources to broach the safe working environment and fair employee treatment subject, and enables the intermediaries to assess, design and structure possible solutions for their SGB clients.

A special thanks to Argidius foundation for their support in development of the toolkit. We extend our gratitude to the intermediaries and SGBs involved in the co-creation of the minimum practices as valuable contributions to shared prosperity.