Trends that shape the business landscape matter. Those managers that react quickly to such forces, or even better, anticipate them, can use them to advantage by protecting or improving the bottom line by minimising risks, capturing emerging market opportunities and spurring innovation.

In 2012, Equilibrium is presenting “The Evolving Landscape: sustainability and trends in social and legal pressure on Australian business”,  a series of quarterly papers that lay out trends and highlight how companies developing products or providing services are operating in a rapidly changing landscape. In addition to daily operational challenges, a number of factors – social and legal – are converging to increase the risks of action and pressure against businesses with respect to environmental and social issues.

Not only can companies, as well as individual directors and senior managers and employees, find themselves being judged in a court of law for breaches, but with the rapid pace of technology and social networking they are increasingly being exposed and judged in the court of public opinion, where there are no judicial controls and processes and lawyers are worthless.

Together, this series of papers will help you better understand the dynamics of the sustainability space which present challenges, but also present new business opportunities and operational efficiencies. The papers provide insight and include case studies and constructive suggestions for ways to handle the emerging sustainability issues to help you build a more resilient business. 

The first paper, “Q1: Introducing the Evolving Landscape” is available for FREE and can be downloaded here

Shane Gladigau

“I have never seen anything equal to sustainability as far as attracting, motivating, and bringing people together”  (Ray Anderson, Founder and former Chairman of InterfaceFLOR)

Australia’s population is ageing. The proportion of people aged 65 years or over is projected to increase from 13% in 2010 to 23% by June 2050. At the same time the proportion of working-age people in the total population is expected to fall by 7% to 60%¹.

What this means is that as the baby boomers retire (barring an unprecedented change in fertility rates) there will be relatively fewer people of working age to support an increasing number of older Australians. The Australian labour market will tighten, as the new generation of workers is simply much smaller than the one it is replacing.

In such a tight labor market, employers will have to pull out all stops to continue to attract and retain top talent and maintain a competitive edge.  One way employers can differentiate themselves is to market their companies to employees and prospects as sustainable (ie. the company also takes environmental and social impacts into consideration and is not simply focused on the financial).