All Work is Work: Full employment, the end of volunteering as we know it, and the democratisation of philanthropy
There isn’t any shortage of work.
Just look around.
Hospitals, schools and colleges that need building and facilities that need modernising.
Things to be created, invented, made and moved.
Babies and children nursed and cared for.
Young people supported. Older people too.
Plastic fills our oceans and waterways and pollution contaminates our air.
Diseases of plenty and of poverty ravage our bodies, our communities, our lives and our futures.
The whole world can be reinvented a million times over. If we’re lucky.
So can we. If we like.
Invent yourself or invent something else. Imagine something and then create it.
There is an infinity of discovery, cure and invention. Just waiting for us.
Our high streets and shopping malls are abandoned. Children’s playgrounds are dilapidated. The youth clubs have gone.
Everyone is just so lonely and oddly disconnected.
Entire economies and industries need to be rebuilt.
It’s a real mess.
What do we do?
We are able to act if we so choose.
Doing something about any of this is work.
Work is something which comes naturally to everyone and to every living thing.
It’s part of the deal.
The problem with the world of work
The problem we find ourselves with is not a shortage of work.
It is in what we perceive to be work. It is in how we assign value to work. It is in how we reward work. It is in how we redistribute work.
Our current economy equates the value of work to the generation of profit at the exclusion of all else. All other forms of work, even though necessary, socially positive and generative, are placed secondary to the pursuit of monetary value.
Feminists fighting for equality identified early on the key social and economic roles (childrearing, parenting, housework etc) that women performed contributed towards the success of the nation.
They challenged the notion of unpaid and unrecognised work.
They demanded recognition for their efforts.
All work is work, and once understood, it is a statement of fact which cannot be argued with.
It is our society and the way it operates which is categorically wrong.
Seemingly little ground has been gained despite this.
The intellectual critique and foundations developed by feminist thinkers presents a highly advanced and proven methodology for examining and deconstructing the social and structural problems and realities of the societies that we live in.
Similar critiques exist for disability, race, gender and class.
All of these have an opportunity to reintegrate and hopefully support each other in the future. They are parts of a more complete understanding of humanity and society.
I mention these often marginalised and excluded groups as when it comes to work. We are all capable of doing it. Even if our society believes otherwise.
We all create and gain value through it.
It can give our lives purpose and meaning.
We all identify ourselves with it.
It can give us dignity and independence.
Our society gains from every single type of work and not just that with a monetary value.
In a world with no shortage of work for us to perform.
We should surely have a right to make informed choices about the work that we are asked to do.
For to have no choice, is to have no freedom.
A Theory of Value
When you start learning about ‘social enterprise’ you very quickly get introduced to the concept of ‘social value’ which is used to help evaluate and measure the social and environmental outcomes related to social enterprises and charities.
For example, a social enterprise in the form of a coffee shop that trains and employs disabled baristas would account for more than just it’s ability to; trade, pay wages, and pay the bills.
The coffee shop would look at; it’s contribution to the lives and wellbeing of the disabled people it is employing and the social outcomes involved in changing the perceptions of disabled people in general society and business.
The company may make purchasing decisions based upon ethical criteria that further; support it’s aims or other social, local economic or environmental concerns.
All of these additional considerations represent forms of ‘social value’.
Social value allows us to look beyond simplistic cost.
A community park may cost £20,000 per year to maintain. That is a cost.
It may generate £250,000 in social and environmental value once all factors are considered. This is the social value which is returned to society in the form of health, wellbeing, cultural, social, and environmental value.
Through measuring and understanding the work of social organisations/enterprises and the social value they generate, it becomes possible to better understand how and where public, social and philanthropic investment can and should be made.
In the instance of the community park, a £100,000 investment in facilities, services and activities could result in a positive social return. The social return being the social value realised by the investment.
In the instance of the coffee shop, a £20,000 grant could result in the generation of £100,000 of related social value.
Social value allows us to begin equating ‘monetary value’ with different forms of ‘value’. In this it can give us a more complete picture of the true cost, complexity and benefits of the work and activities that we and our organisations perform in the world and helps us to decide how we best apply our time, funds and resources.
Social value can, and does already, form part a system of exchange which lies beyond traditional economics, public spending, charity, investing and business.
A Theory of Work
Our notion of work has become strongly correlated with jobs, careers and employment.
But work simply means to get something done.
I would suggest that work acts in the world to bring about a change in conditions that would not occur otherwise. It is future creating.
That can be a widget popping off the end of an assembly line.
It can be a person performing their daily job.
It can be a calculator adding up.
It can be a residents group meeting each week.
It can be doing the school run.
It can be the course of an environmental or community project.
It can be a restored peat land storing carbon.
When we look at this work through an economic lens we find that with some types of work the ‘monetary value’ is easy to see. It becomes possible to arrive at a conclusion which says that there are some types of work which are useful and some which are not.
A man being the hardworking breadwinner and a woman a stay-at-home supportive housewife is an example of this incredibly simple yet ashamedly commonplace thinking.
But an economic lens does not provide the full truth.
All forms of work have multiple types of value which can be assigned to them. Personal (care work and emotional), social (community, intellectual or environmental) or economic (in todays’ economy this is the ‘monetary value’ only).
Whether the work we perform has value is; up to us, up to society, and up to the economy.
I’m interested in how change happens in the world.
I’m interested in how the future is brought into being.
Having an understanding of work is important to this.
It is work that creates the future.
When we consider the original meaning of ‘the economy’ as how we manage our home it is obvious that a purely financial understanding fails to give us a full picture.
Our current economic system disregards everything which is not financial.
Yet society exists by creating and exchanging all of these other forms of value. Money is only a part of the picture.
A more compete view might be to say that economic activity is ‘everything that we do’. It is also the resources that we create and consume but let’s keep it easy for now.
Social value offers a way to begin understanding and valuing much of this currently excluded economic and social activity.
This deeper understanding gives us a basis to construct something new.
Collaborating and Working Together
There is much interest and potential in communities, civil society, businesses and the state working together to effect change. They all have different qualities which they can bring to the table and different assets and resources which they can make available.
As a collective they are able to act at a scale and pace which is impossible for any single organisation or sector to achieve alone.
Collaborations between different parties create a type of economic system in miniature.
The collaboration, its resources, the work performed, the social, environmental and economic effects are all brought together and begin to interact and exchange.
At the scale of a collaboration, it becomes far easier to ask questions, measure, evaluate and understand what forms of value are being generated.
Individuals, communities, civil society, businesses and the state also have their own needs.
A carefully considered collaboration can work with these needs to create incentives for working together and expending valuable time and resources.
Some of this need can be met through the type of partners that are brought into the collaboration. For example, you are able to bring; facilitation, design and innovation expertise, or community mentors and coaches into collaborative spaces to deliberately generate additional forms of social, environmental or economic value from the work.
Some of this need can be supported by what the participants bring with them. For example, they may be part of a course, a professional network or a development programme and engaging in the collaboration in some way furthers their progress.
So, you can meet training, skills and development needs within the context of a collaboration. It all depends on who is there and what their needs are.
It is about creating co-benefits, additional value and incentives for participation.
By working together collaboratively it becomes possible to create co-benefits and forms of value which would not otherwise be generated.
You are able to move out of narrow thinking framed and zeroed in on cost and look instead at the totality of effect.
This isn’t transactional this is relational.
Working in this way is becoming more normal and there are multiple benefits.
The platform that you use to collaborate with itself can also link to and provide relevant learning and development opportunities as well as external organisations, platforms and networks who offer skills and training.
Moving towards collaborative working isn’t simple, but you can start small.
It requires new skills, new thinking and new practices but it gives access to all of the latent potential which currently sits behind gatekeepers and locked within silos.
The potential exists (and it always did) in and between the diversity of relationships, experience and ideas that we bring together when we collaborate intelligently as human beings.
Full Employment
Our current notion of work means you are in work or not. It’s very much either or.
I would propose that it is possible for a ‘social economy’ to provide work for anyone at any time. By work I mean ‘social value’ generating activity.
I don’t believe it’s as easy as clicking your fingers and you’re off to a job at the social bakery down the street. But I do believe that social bakery forms an important part of a ‘replacement welfare system’ when we look at the entire ‘social economy ecosystem’ collaborating together.
A couple of points before I move on.
The future we are moving into is one of consistent, exponential and unknowable change. This will be reflected in business and the types of jobs and careers they are able to provide as well as the need for these businesses to adapt and take advantage of the new opportunities that change represents.
This stuff is vitally important for both sides of the employment picture.
Keeping up with progress and technology. Working out how to value and fund climate change related mitigation activity. Updating skills and knowledge consistently over a lifetime. And not making all of this a hard miserable slog… is important to all of us.
When we look at being ‘out-of-work’ in a collaborative social ecosystem we can see that there really is no need for it to happen.
The answer is in working out how to exchange value within the system so that work can be created and paid for.
When we bring a diversity of actors that includes employers into the system then we are able to arrive at a diversity of responses which are suitable for the person and the place.
We don’t need a job centre.
We need a system which can build and develop people at the same time as providing them with a mix of experience, skills, and opportunities. It needs to do this locally and it needs to do this responsively.
Please read about the Ethical Recruitment Agency — https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/great-divide/
We don’t need out-of-work benefits. We need to be able to transition between the two forms of economy as and when our circumstances dictate and/or be able to balance our work life between both systems on a permanent basis.
All work is work and all work should be paid work.
It is in how we exchange value which might allow us to create a living wage for those who need it when they need it. Because it’s very obvious that we do have the work available and there’s going to be much more heading our way — whether we like it or not.
No pun intended.
Volunteering and philanthropy
So, if all work is work then what is volunteering?
Report after report is produced telling us how wonderful it is for us. You could be forgiven for thinking it was something almost magical.
I’ll tell you this quite honestly, I’ve volunteered a plenty and although I’ve gained knowledge and experience and met lots of lovely people… a decent job would have done the same and provided me with an income.
If all work is work then what is work that you; perform for free, can feel pressured to do or maintain, comes with responsibilities and expectations, and still has bosses who tell you what to do and who do receive a salary and a pension that will be above the state minimum?
The answer?
It’s good for you apparently! Well fan daba dozy! Thanks for that!
Volunteering and charity work is loaded with questions around privilege and rights, yet nobody it seems is having the conversation. It’s like some kind of holy cow that no one has the right to offend or challenge.
Wealthy people can afford to do it and wealthy people often run the organisations.
Yet the majority of working for free in a society, in whatever form it takes, is done by poor people.
You know I’m pushing the point deliberately, don’t you?
Because I do see the good side.
But there is a side that needs bringing out into the open.
I feel that expressing the conversation as ‘all work is work’ is a good place to start.
It might focus our attention on what we are doing, how and why and what is really taking place in the sector and within society.
Who are we really working for? What kind of system are we working to maintain and support?
Is what we’re doing and how we’re doing it still sensible in todays society and with tomorrows challenges on the horizon? Or are we just going through the motions because it’s just the way we’ve always done it and we’ve never stopped to consider… well, any of it.
I believe that all work is work and that all work should be paid work.
It’s important to recognise and value the work correctly because it is an integral part of how society and the economy functions. When it is hidden, we are unable to see the full picture and act accordingly.
Do you want to know something blindingly obvious?
If you pay people for doing work that generates ‘social value’ then that gives them every single benefit of work plus every single benefit of volunteering, it gives society something that it needs, and at the same time it enables them to equally and fully participate in society.
This would be a better, fairer and more equitable way of doing things.
Do you want to know something less obvious but fundamentally system changing?
If you pay poor people or people who don’t need to work a wage for generating social value do you know what they can choose to do with it? They can choose to become a philanthropist. Just like a person with money can.
That makes every single person a potential philanthropist.
An entire society of more equal citizens all contributing towards the benefit of humankind.
If you’d like to incentivise this behaviour then simply provide matching funds from funders and government to the local community. I don’t think you’ll find any shortage of brilliant, caring and involved people in any community anywhere in the world who wouldn’t get stuck in.
Their potential just needs to be recognised, developed and released.
Philanthropy in its current form is largely about the acquisition of wealth and then doing some good with it. It’s become something for those with the money, the time and the privilege.
Charity asks you for money or time and then ‘it’ does something ‘good’ on your behalf.
How the bloody hell the average person became so removed from the love and care of his fellows, the natural world and the planet I’ll never understand.
It’s a story of separation.
Anyway, the original meaning of philanthropy is ‘the love of humankind’.
Charity was more about the giving of one’s self to others. A capacity we can access when we are with another person to go beyond our assumptions, opinions and beliefs and to create the space for something genuinely human to enter into the relationship and the experience. In this view charity is the transforming creativity of the human spirit at work in the moment and the world.
Today’s versions of philanthropy and charity are connected to today’s form of economic system.
The current concepts and practice leave little space for the public to be philanthropic or even fully human. The public role is to support the system by giving money or working for free.
In a social economy where we value all work it may be possible to change this situation.
In a system of exchange, it is important to measure and value the exchanges and flows which are taking place otherwise it cannot prove itself or operate effectively.
You have to put it all together.
When you do it becomes possible to create something else.
An Alternative Economic Engine for the Social Economy
What I would like to propose, and I have written about elsewhere, is that there is a possibility for an alternative economy which works in a different way.
Like an engine or other types of system it exchanges different kinds of forces, values, purposes and energies in order to work.
Part of its working is in its understanding and acceptance of multiple forms of value.
Through this it is able to enable and foster new forms of work, social organisations and also businesses to emerge.
It does this by exchanging multiple forms of value within itself so that we can move beyond the narrow economic paradigm that is getting in the way of us developing as a society.
I’m not going to elaborate on the details here but the Socially Enterprising platform and ecosystem, by connecting all of the constituent parts, could play an important part in understanding the flows and exchanges taking part within the system.
As a quick outline the system would bring in resources and funding from the state, civil society, and philanthropic organisations. It would mix this with social value generating work initiated and performed by communities and supported by businesses.
It would reward individual and business participation by providing access to lifelong learning, development and skills.
It would create and pay for work that met actual community, social and environmental needs.
This would take place at massive scale.
Everyone would benefit in some way.
It may help to enable some quite big changes in society.
Making Social and Environmental Investments
As an ending thought, I was recently on a webinar that discussed and highlighted projects and practice related to funding the restoration of the natural environment.
The environment and climate change are obviously areas of concern for me but I remain aware and cognizant of questions of privilege, inequality and unearned wealth.
I am really focussed on social need and community wealth and community rights.
I’m a believer in the rights of nature.
Creating investment vehicles for social investment might be one way achieving results at scale but if the landowner isn’t committing without financial reward and philanthropic funds aren’t investing unless they get a return then it feels to me that somethings really amiss with it all.
Perhaps if we really care about making a difference now and for future generations then we need to look at things differently and build something else entirely .
Project Skyline is far closer to my own view of what an active, economically, socially and environmentally aware community could do when it comes to stewarding the natural resources of our nation.
Project Skyline is a feasibility study that is looking at the possibility of communities managing the landscape that surrounds their town or village.
I don’t know the details but I’d bet that when we read the reports in a couple of years’ time, we’ll see a story of collaboration and a system of exchange in action.
I feel that these kind of things are something that Socially Enterprising could help bring about.
It could help create an entirely different way for funding to be moved to where it is needed to effect rapid change and achieve long-term social and environmental impact.
What would happen if we handed to local people the means to shape their own environment? Not the current piecemeal approach, a small patch of woodland for a few years, but hundreds of hectares for hundreds of years — to the “skyline”. What might a community choose to do with the land if it could plan not for the three years of a Lottery grant but for three generations? Create jobs from forestry? Support small-holdings or food projects? Improve public access? Support wildlife? Or a combination of ideas and more besides.
Project Skyline is seeking to answer these questions. We will be working with three communities in the Valleys — Treherbert, Ynysowen, and Caerau — as well as all of the key stakeholders such as NRW, and the Local Authority, to understand whether and how land that is currently publicly managed could be managed by a local community.
“Höschele argues that it is not reprehensible to ask something in return for receiving an income. As an alternative to the UBI, he suggests that a new opportunity to generate income should be created and coordinated by the state. According to this idea every adult could make a proposal for a socially productive activity, and once it has been accepted they would receive a monthly income of €1,000 for carrying out this activity part-time. According to Höschele, this would still provide time to pursue other income earning activities, if people wished to do so.”
“A group of students at the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland had a different idea for expanding the sector of voluntary civic engagement and getting all of the citizens involved. They propose that by law all employment contracts should provide employees with the possibility to spend 20% of their work time volunteering. The state would provide a tax break to companies as compensation. The appeal of this proposal is that such non-monetary engagement could become part of normal life and in fact create social norms outside the market paradigm.
Switching off the autopilot: An evolutionary toolbox for the Great Transition — Smart CSOs
