The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has urged businesses to adapt to survive and thrive through finding new and innovative ways of doing business.
Delivering her solidarity message at the Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe (Emcoz) annual congress in Kariba on Tuesday, ILO country office director for Zimbabwe and Namibia Philile Masuku said firms should understand the current landscape and its challenges.
“The challenges for business are clear, enterprises must adapt to survive and thrive,” she said in a message read on her behalf by ILO senior specialist for employers, Maria Machailo-Molebatsi.
“This means finding new and innovative ways to do business and ensuring that our economic activities are productive and sustainable for the future. To adapt to a changing landscape, we must first understand the current landscape and its challenges.
“Some of the biggest challenges and opportunities we face today are informality, changing dynamics of occupational safety and health, digitalisation and the growth of artificial intelligence and inequality among others.”
Masuku said more than ever, it is urgent for the world to deliver and to contribute to bringing solutions to people’s daily problems, and to do so in a more efficient and coherent manner.
She said the ILO has proposed the Global Coalition for Social Justice with the aim to, “balance environmental, economic and social considerations in the global conversation, including in the reform of the international financial architecture” and “advocate policy coherence and investment in social protection and decent work”.
“Bringing together relevant actors with a common ambition to promote strong, sustainable, and inclusive development through strengthened global solidarity, policy coherence and concerted action, the coalition would pave the way towards the emergence of a new global social contract,” she said.
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For the biennium 2024-2025 and as part of the implementation of the Decent Work Country Programme 2022-2026, the ILO has dedicated programmes to harness the full potential of employment and business member organizations (EBMOs) to enable them to ensure the policy and institutional environment necessary for the pursuit of economic, social, and sustainable development.
This work will focus on facilitating actions of EBMOs at various levels to co-create joint policy solutions and measures, including awareness-raising and advocacy, aimed at advancing progress towards the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
It will also enhance the private sector’s contribution to sustainable development through greater engagement and leadership of EBMOs with national and global actors on social justice, climate change, diversity, equality and inclusion, crises situations and environmental, social and governance strategies.
The focus will expand the knowledge and resource base to address non-conducive policy and institutional environments and to support EBMOs to harness their institutional value as key contributors and drivers of positive change in the world of work.
She said there was a need to build a better world for people today, tomorrow and for the future generations.
“By working together and aligning our actions with SDG 8 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, we can create a favorable environment for businesses, enabling them to flourish and contribute to shared progress,” she said.
The congress is running under the theme: Adapting to a changing landscape towards sustainable economic and business growth. It ends on Wednesday.
