Relevance of this toolkit?
The toolkit provides an opportunity for intermediaries to broach the safe working environment and fair employee treatment subject, and support their pipeline SGBs to become more compliant, enabling the SGBs to seize opportunities and reduce risks associated with OHS and employment.
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.
It aims to support intermediaries to have more strategic conversations with SGBs about the risks and opportunities posed by promoting safety at work and fair employment practices. Critically, it also enables the intermediaries to assess, design and structure possible solutions for their SGB clients.
Intermediaries are influential and can be important levers for change for SGBs within their portfolio. They can help raise awareness and highlight the advantages of health, safe and fair business practices by showcasing market and competitor dynamics, highlighting the growing body of risks and opportunities associated with OHS and employment issues and further supporting SGBs to chart a path forward. This can help to build trust, strengthen relationships and create mutual benefit.
Definition of Key Terms used in the Tool
Intermediary - These are enterprise support initiatives and programmes.
Small and Growing Business (SGB) - Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) are defined as commercially viable businesses with five to 250 employees that have significant potential, and ambition, for growth. Typically, SGBs seek growth capital from $20,000 to $2 million.
SGB Stage - An SGB stage describes the type of business between idea (SGB have little more than an unproven idea, so the focus is on testing the idea and identifying a product-market fit), start-up/early (SGB have initial market traction and will likely not yet be generating profits), or growth stage (SGB with demonstrated viability, growth, and potential profitability).
SGB Scale - The scale of an SGB is based on its capacity to generate revenue faster that it incurs costs. In this report, there are three scales starting with a formalizing SGB (an SGB in the process of formalizing its processes, accounts, sales; and mainly financed through savings/ friends/ family/ upper end of microfinance), dynamic SGB (usually a formalized SGB showing incremental growth trajectory and typically financed internally or debt finance through financial institutions), or venture SGB (SGBs in a high growth trajectory with a scalable business model).