Easy Being Green

Sustainability is a challenge some companies find insurmountable, but digital platform WorkforClimate is looking to make the process easier. Founder and Director Lucy Piper traded the corporate sector for climate action to empower Australians to push for change within their workplaces. That action is WorkforClimate, an NGO that provides a platform and, through the WorkforClimate Academy, education for climate-concerned employees to help ‘greenify’ workplaces and decarbonize the planet.

A recent addition to the WorkforClimate Academy team, corporate employee Laura Wilson said in a recent press release that she was able to redefine her role to focus on sustainability as a result.

“WorkforClimate helped me realize that my job is the most powerful tool I have in taking climate action,” she explained. “The course has helped me understand what levers to pull here and there, how to apply pressure at different levels of the business and how I can find allies, because you can’t do it all alone.”

Piper argued that we’re in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for change. “What we need is ambition, courage, action and a little bit of hope,” she said.

Hardly Working

Feeling stressed at work? You may be in the wrong industry. A new study by personal injury experts claims.co.uk has ranked the most stressful sectors in the United Kingdom. The results were determined by the number of stress-related illnesses caused or worsened by employment per 100,000 workers, and the results aren’t likely to surprise you.

1. Human health and social work: Despite one of the largest average salary ranges, 3,530 people per 100,000 workers are impacted by stress at work.

2. Public defense: The experiences of security guards and prison officers helped take this sector to the number two spot.

3. Education: Perhaps the biggest surprise on the list. Almost three percent of education workers are stressed out by their work.

4. Professional, scientific and technical: Although this industry, which includes solicitors and barristers, is highly paid, it’s also fairly stressed – 2,310 out of 100,000 have been impacted by work-related stress.

5. Finance: The highest salary range in the top five is still subject to stress-related illness, with accountants and bankers among the 2,140 workers per 100,000 reporting stress.

Insta-Fortune

For the very few who doubt the power of social media to simultaneously reach a wide audience and bring in revenue, behold another example of ‘Taylornomics’. Melbourne SEO authority Impressive has done the numbers and found that ubiquitous singer, Taylor Swift, can earn more than US$630,000 for sending a single sponsored Instagram post to her 281.1 million followers.

The good news for the rest of us is you don’t have to be a superstar to pull in significant Insta-bucks; simply join her inner circle. Her friend, rapper Ice Spice, can bank up to US$52,000, while her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, can earn up to US$34,000 per sponsored post. Even Kelce’s mother Donna has amassed significant earning power, with up to US$5,400 per sponsored post. Forget agility – time to get swift.

Well Done, Done Well

As the dust settles in the wake of another Employee Appreciation Day, employers are taking stock of exactly how they express their appreciation for their team. According to Gallup, the love isn’t flowing as strongly as it could, with fewer than one in four employees reporting having received memorable recognition from their CEO.

What qualifies as memorable is fluid, but a survey by employee gifting provider Snappy found that 91 percent of working Americans wanted tokens of appreciation – meaningful gifts, shoutouts and other acknowledgements – from their company.

The rewards for businesses are there: “Investing in appreciation campaigns – not just on Employee Appreciation Day but also throughout the year – builds loyalty, reduces frequent and costly talent searches, and saves onboarding expenses too,” Wei Chen (Archer) Chiang, Founder and CEO of AI-powered gifting platform Giftpack, told HRM Asia.

Human on the Outside

As demand grows among consumers, employees and governments for greater corporate responsibility, B Corp certification is emerging as an effective way to hold businesses to account. March is B Corp month, a great time to highlight the fact that the certification is open to any business, and not just high profile B Corps such as Patagonia, Unilever ANZ and Bank Australia.

Adelaide yoga and physiotherapy business Human.Kind Studios has become the first health and fitness studio in Australia to become B Corp certified, and Co-Founders Tessa Leon and Triton Tunis-Mitchell say the rigorous process is worth it.

“It’s both a trust token and a demonstration that your business is a force for good,” Leon says. “It took us 18 months of internal improvements before the formal assessment from B Lab. It’s probably not the reason someone first walks through our door, but it’s the reason they want to stay.”

Tunis-Mitchell says B Corp certification is how Human.Kind matured as a business. “In our industry there’s a term called spiritual bypassing, a tendency to use spiritual ideas and tropes to avoid dealing with real issues,” he says. “In business the equivalent is greenwashing, which is insidious and needs to stop if we’re to overcome the great challenges of our time.”