Policy brief: New jobs for 100,000 people with the power of social enterprises

Social enterprises have an extensive positive impact on society and they develop and spread social and ecological innovations. We are proposing four policy targets and measures which can be used to accelerate social enterprises’ ability to create new jobs for 100,000 people, especially partially disabled people and other professionals who require support. The means already exist and require no public additional funding in comparison to the current level, only rationalisation and re-allocation.

Recommendation 1

Through procurements, the public sector assumes an active role in the promotion of employment and pos-itive societal, social and ecological impacts.

Public procurements must be developed so that they promote the creation of a market of positive impacts in Finland. This will be implemented by making a concentrated effort to increase effectiveness-based procurements, by introducing indicators of societal benefit, such as SROI, in procurement processes and by producing information about the impacts and jobs created.

Recommendation 3

There is no punishment for accepting or performing work.

As part of the reform of social security, the incentive traps related to accepting work are dismantled by decreasing job-seekers’ risk of losing their benefits or of having the payment of the benefits be delayed. Furthermore, the position of people who are in debt and in debt recovery proceedings is supported from the perspective of accepting work.

 

Recommendation 2

Social enterprises that integrate people with work are seen as an alternative for unemployment.

The operating conditions of enterprises that integrate people with work are protected through a sustained, effectiveness-based funding model. Employment policy allocates resources to organisations that offer diverse, coaching-like support and which both decrease the social and health costs employment causes for society and increase the positive wellbeing effects.

Recommendation 4

The availability of early-stage funding and funding that strives for growth is improved considerably for social enterprises.

Different financial instruments are changed to support the development of employ-ment-oriented social innovations by piloting an application process whose granting criteria emphasise positive social and ecological impacts that are produced directly into society. The aim is that a bigger share of the funding granted would be allocated to communities that produce positive social and ecological impacts for society

You can read the policy brief “New jobs for 100,000 people with the power of social enterprises” in full here:

Policy brief in English (PDF)