Social Enterprises as Spaces of Wellbeing Toolkit
We present some evidence-based tools that can be applied by social enterprises to help reflect about spaces for wellbeing, what spaces help to do and how that can impact on individuals and the community. The tools and checklists can be downloaded to assess social enterprise spaces and relationships with the community.
These tools can also be found in our report Mapping the impact of social enterprise on disadvantaged individuals and communities in Australia’s regional cities.
Spaces of Wellbeing Checklist
We have developed a checklist and an observation tool to help identify and understand wellbeing realisation in social enterprise spaces. This checklist is intended for social enterprise managers.
How to use it
This could be done in-depth by using both the Observation Tool and Checklist or as a reflective exercise using just the Checklist. It could be done involving the staff team and employees.
The Observation Tool involves observing places in the social enterprise at different time points and describing the spaces, people, movement, and activities in the location.
The aspects of wellbeing checklist gives you an overview of which aspects of wellbeing are being realised over a range of spaces
Download the Aspects of Wellbeing Checklist
Wellbeing Spaces Typology
This tool draws on our Typology of Spaces. It highlights that there may be different kinds of sites, locations, spaces or rooms in social enterprises that could be helpful in realising wellbeing.
How to use it
Using the typology, you can reflect on spaces that already exist, design for wellbeing or understand that function that different types of spaces might have.
This can be undertaken as a reflective, co-evaluation or pre-design exercise involving staff and/or employees.
Download Wellbeing Spaces Typology
Social Enterprise Networks Checklist
This tool can help social enterprises assess their interactions with other community organisations. It can support you to reflect on a social enterprises’ contribution to local social capital and community capacity.
How to use it
This assessment might be useful led by the social enterprise management and board. A more in-depth assessment could involve conducting a thorough listing of known contacts or conducting a set of interviews with key informants in the community including Local Government and the Chamber of Commerce.
Download the Social Enterprise Networks Checklist
Community Economies Score Card
This tool is adapted from Gibson-Graham et al. (2014) and enables social enterprises to explore how their work aligns with Diverse Economies theory. Social enterprises contribute to the economy of communities, beyond commercial understandings and this tool can be used to assess diverse forms of wellbeing in/from social enterprises.
How to use it
It is important that different points of view are captured, so when undertaking this activity make sure a representative group from across the different levels of the organisation has the opportunity to take part. The experience and perspectives of managers will differ from the perspectives and experiences of frontline staff.
On the basis of this assessment, the organisation can develop a profile of how well it is doing in supporting the wellbeing of employees, staff, and contributing to the wellbeing of the wider community. The outcomes can be used to inform programming for the future. Using the Wellbeing Score Card, you can rank how well the organisation is doing across the different wellbeing dimensions.