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Nike generated plenty of buzz this week with its announcement that it would release a high-performance hijab for female Muslim athletes next year.

Although there are plenty of boutique athletic outfitters, including Capsters, as well as online stores such as Nashata, that design hijabs for women who wish to exercise yet adhere to Muslim norms of modesty, this is a bold step for Nike. Skeptics were quick to point out that Nike is hardly the first to make a performance head covering. But Nike is credited as the first global athletic brand to design and market an athletic hijab, which is significant considering the head covering is worn in various forms from Southeast Asia and the Middle East to Eastern Europe.

Nike’s athletic hijab makes its appearance a few weeks after the company sparked a social media sensation with a video campaign targeted to the Middle East that highlighted Muslim women participating in various outdoor activities. According to the pan-Arab news outlet Al Arabiya, that video was the precursor to the hijab’s launch, expected to hit store shelves a year from now.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9BAeEbz_TVE

 

The video generally scored favorable reviews, including from the demographic it targeted, Muslim women. Some observers, however, gave the video a thumbs-down for either showing women without a hijab, or reviving the debate over whether such dress is really required by the Quran in the first place. In an emailed statement sent to journalists, Nike made it clear that several female Muslim athletes were involved in giving feedback, designing and testing the hijab.

While the hijab is accepted and expected in many Muslim nations, it can be a nuisance when it comes to exercise and participating in athletic events, from obstructing vision to just being too hot and uncomfortable to wear. To that end, Nike said that several Muslim athletes, including weightlifter Amna Al Haddad from the United Arab Emirates, helped design its take on the hijab.

The company has featured Al Haddad within its news feed and blog, though as of press time her biography as a sponsored athlete has been removed from its corporate site. The company also claims that another Emirati athlete, figure skater Zahra Lari, is already wearing its hijab.

Nike’s attempt to appeal to a population approaching 1 billion women (2010 estimates suggested 1.6 million Muslims live worldwide) wins on several levels. First, the design is practical, especially during those Middle Eastern and Northern African summers where the mercury can hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius). And despite the Western stereotype of Muslim women as voiceless and oppressed, anyone who has lived or worked extensively in the Middle East and other societies where Islam is the dominant religion knows those assumptions are too often made in haste.

From a business perspective, this is a demographic that has disposable income, is often steadfastly loyal to brands, and will reward inclusion. Furthermore, a design like Nike’s can help silence critics, including some within FIFA, who in the past have said that the hijab has no place in women’s sports. FIFA lifted its ban on hijab in 2014; and having an apparel company such as Nike designing for these woman can only inspire more of their peers to pursue athletics, which can only be a plus for global sport.

And the challenges women face in athletics is hardly relegated to the Middle East or other Muslim-dominated regions. Nike estimates that only 1 in 7 girls worldwide participate regularly in local sporting activities.

Image credit: NikeWomen/YouTube

Garnier, the personal care products company owned by L'Oréal, wants you to make more of an effort to recycle those empty plastic bottles of shampoo and body wash.

The company says it is looking to boost waste diversion by preventing at least 10 million bottles from entering landfills. To that end, the company enlisted a popular YouTuber and partnered with DoSomething.org to spread the recycling gospel.

According to a widely shared press release, as many as half of all Americans cannot be bothered to pitch their bathroom “empties” into the recycling bin. So during this campaign, Garnier is taking a two-pronged approach. First, participants are encouraged to decorate a bathroom recycling bin and share a picture on DoSomething.org for the chance to win a $5,000 scholarship. Once that bin is full, recycling devotees can print a shipping label for free and then send those pesky empties to TerraCycle, which has worked with Garnier and other CPG companies to upcycle plastic waste into new products. And of course, consumers are expected to share their stories using the hashtag #empties.

Garnier is also trying to leverage peer pressure on college campuses: It selected 50 campuses to compete in a recycling competition, with the winning school scoring a garden funded by Garnier and TerraCycle.

In the meantime, Garnier recruited personal care products guru Remi Cruz to showcase why recycling is so important. And the campaign could use a little celebrity help: As of press time, the public service announcement had 171 views on YouTube.

Other consumer packaged goods companies have also attempted to raise awareness about plastics consumption and recycling. Unilever, for example, has launched similar campaigns in the past. And earlier this year, the food and personal care products giant announced that all of its plastic packaging will become compostable, recyclable or reusable by 2025.

Procter & Gamble is another global CPG brand that says it is determined to use more recycled content in its packaging. Garnier and P&G have both touted their zero-waste operations in the past; the waste from their products after they have been sold at retail outlets, however, has long fallen upon municipal governments to figure out.

In fairness, more packaging suppliers have found ways to reduce the plastic content in their containers, which means less waste going to landfill and money saved for personal care and food companies – though sometimes the results do not always make consumers happier, as in the fuss over the thinner Poland Spring bottle.

Of course, there is another solution, which is to curb the use of plastic in the first place. Plenty of health and beauty experts insist shampooing is not necessarily a daily requirement, if it is a requirement at all. Sustainability writer Katherine Martinko, for example, switched to a cider vinegar and baking soda concoction to cleanse her hair; recently she ditched all product and is now going “no poo” with water, which she argues resulted in even healthier hair.

That coconut oil you use for oil pulling, baking ketogenic brownies and frying your free range eggs? It can do quite well as a skin moisturizer. Got gunk on your hands from working on your car or in the garden? Kosher salt can do the trick. The half avocado that didn’t make it into last month’s Super Bowl guacamole that has since turned brown in the fridge? Heck, the Limey supermarket chain Sainsbury’s suggests using it as a facial mask.

Now that’s a way to reduce one’s consumption of plastic, while avoiding cleansing agents like sodium lauryl sulfate while going back to nature – and saving money. But in the meantime, recycling those empties is always a good idea.

Image credit: Garnier

Editor's Note: This post was originally published by Conscious Company Media. 

By Rachel Zurer

What really makes a great place to work? That’s the question the Great Place to Work Institute (GPTW) has been researching for more than two decades. Most publicly, the San Francisco- based consulting and research rm’s annual global survey provides the data behind Fortune magazine’s long-running “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, but its mission goes way beyond merely celebrating the most successful or innovative companies.

“We are building a better society by helping organizations transform their workplaces for all,” explains Michael Bush, GPTW’s CEO. “That’s why we do what we do.”After years of researching what makes a company good to work for, journalist Robert Levering founded GPTW in 1991, and the organization has since surveyed more than 100 million employees at tens of thousands of firms around the world via its offices in 44 countries. The end result is a surprisingly simple formula for creating a great place to work. “We’re trust experts,” explains Bush. “We help by measuring the trust level within organizations, and then we provide precise, focused actions to improve that trust level.”

An engineer by training, Bush spent 30 years leading various businesses before taking over as GPTW’s CEO in 2015. Under his influence, the company recently added the words “for all” to the end of its mission statement, a subtle change that signals an important shift in the way GPTW will evaluate companies and create its rankings starting with the 2018 list. After looking at differences in survey results for the top 100 companies across gender, ethnicity, age, and hourly vs. salary lines, Bush “found you could be a ‘Great Place to Work’ and have people who were having a not-great experience,” he told the 2016 Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit. “I didn’t think that was ok. That’s why I added the ‘for all.’ For the 2018 list, we’re going to measure disparity. We’re going to be sure it’s a great place to work for all. You’re not going to get the label just because a group of people are having a great time.”

We spoke with Bush about what GPTW has learned over the years about workplace culture, what his time there has taught him about values-based leadership, and why the conscious business movement needs to take a hard look at the types of faces that appear in top leadership roles if it hopes to drive the kind of systemic societal change it envisions.

The interview

Conscious Company: So what makes a great place to work? 

Michael Bush: The root of the tree is trust. You can’t have engaged employees if they don’t feel trusted. The key to a person feeling trusted is that they are treated with respect, they feel their leaders are credible, and they’re treated fairly. That’s what our research has shown us.

Do people get thanked for the work that they do? Do people feel that they’re cared for as human beings, and not just employees? Do people feel that when they speak, people listen, and they can see some of the results of things they’ve said in the decisions management makes? Are people asked for their opinions, so when they speak it matters? Are people developed as people so they’re being encouraged to give their personal best? Do people feel a sense of camaraderie, that they’re a part of something larger than themselves, and therefore take great pride in the work that they do because they know it matters?

The way those things show up is that people are inspired by the work they do and the people they work for and with. They can be themselves, which is what camaraderie is all about, and be a part of a caring group. Then, as a result, they take great pride in the work they do, and they’re willing to give extra to get the job done. That’s vital for innovation, where people not only have to do their work, but they also have to think about how to do it better, how to do it faster, or how to create something brand-new. For us, it all comes down to trust.

CC: Is that answer — trust — universal?

MB: It is. It crosses all industries. We have the data to prove it. And not only that, to be a great place to work in San Francisco takes the same thing as to be a great place to work in Bogotá, Columbia. I can prove it, because we do surveys in Bogotá, Columbia.

While people will say industries are different, technology sectors are different, nations are different — in terms of trust, it’s all the same. You can have a person making $150,000 a year who does not feel trusted in their job, and therefore, it’s not a great place to work. You can have a person making $15,000 a year in a country outside the United States who feels the place they work is a great place to work. And they say that because of respect, credibility, and fairness — not because of pay.

CC: What trends are you noticing around the idea of culture in the workplace?

MB: "Culture” was the word of the year in the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2014, so something has definitely happened. It’s something that people globally are talking about more often. Another popular term that has evolved over the last few years is “engagement.” It’s something people are measuring actively around the world, trying to see how connected people really are to the place where they work.

Net Promoter Score is a fast-growing popular metric which is basically asking employees very, very frequently what their work experience is like and whether they’d recommend the place that they work to someone else. Underneath both of those is trust. We’ve shown the correlation that trust is the best predictive analytic metric for how you’re going to do in Net Promoter Score and engagement.

In terms of trends, the idea of a once-a-year survey is being replaced with people wanting to provide feedback more frequently. Over the last few years, people want to be able to say how they’re feeling about their work experience whenever they want to say it — it’s fueling Glassdoor. GPTW is developing tools to make gathering feedback from employees happen in a way that’s more frequent and less cumbersome, and done from a mobile device.

I’d say the final thing, based on the Millennial generation, is that people expect to see change promptly after providing feedback. Other groups, say Gen Y or Baby Boomers, have developed more patience for how long it will take an organization to change. Millennials are saying, “Look, we’ve given you the feedback and we expect things to change now.” It means leaders have to be far more responsive to feedback.

CC: What common myths, mistakes, or misunderstandings do you encounter about being a great place to work?

MB: The first misconception is probably the three Ps: that a great place to work is about perks, programs, and pay. That’s not true. I’m not saying those things aren’t important, but they are definitely not the reasons that people say a place is a great place to work. The perks never come up for employees when they’re talking about what they love about where they work.

They talk more about the respect, which is being given challenging work; being trusted with that work; being asked for their opinion and that they can see that their opinion matters; being treated fairly; given flexibility; and being treated like a fully formed adult. They talk about those things. They don’t talk about free lunches and pingpong tables. But those perks are the things that the media writes about most often. That leads to a misperception that those things affect whether a place is a great place to work or not.

The second myth is that you can’t measure culture — you can’t measure trust. That’s just a misunderstanding.

The third is that only big companies can do it, which is not true. We have people on our “100 Best” list with as few as 1,200 employees. People, by thinking that only big companies can do it — they miss out on improving their business based on getting input from their employees. And they think that it’s expensive. Creating a high-trust culture is not expensive. That’s the beauty of it.

CC: From your point of view, how does this idea of culture relate to what people call management?

MB: Leadership has a responsibility to manage the culture. By managing it, I mean you’ve got to measure it. Then you have to have an action plan to improve it, and you have to hold people accountable, just like every other part of the business. Sometimes people look at culture as an HR thing that’s mushy. That’s totally the wrong way to look at it. It’s just like a product launch, a production line, or any other aspect of your business. You have to measure it, and then you have to take action and measure which actions are giving you the results you want. That’s up to leaders.

CC: How has your personal understanding of workplace culture evolved over the years?

MB: Through most of my business career I thought there were leaders who were good at creating what I would call a great place to work. They were “different” leaders, and they had the ability to do that. It’s like the flaw of thinking you either have charisma or you don’t; “the high-trust leader — you either are that or you’re not.” That’s not true.

There are some natural leaders who are great at it, but we have done the research to understand what creates that, and we help create a situation where any leader can improve. When a leader improves — let’s say a leader who does not naturally thank or recognize people, when that leader begins to do that — it’s like dropping a boulder in a pond. That’s the ripple effect. Because people see the change, they feel the change, and then they start to change.

We’re always asking employees to do more, but they’re only going to be inspired to do it if they see leaders are changing. It’s really a bunch of inside jobs. It’s more enjoyable to work with people who are changing, and then all of a sudden, “My leaders seem to be more thoughtful and more open to my innovative ideas, and they seem to want to help me develop and grow. And they’re sending me signals that regardless of who I am or what I believe in, I too can get to the top of this organization, provided that I work hard and I do a good job,” which is sending a signal of respect. When leaders make minor adjustments in the way that they treat others, communicate to others, and listen to others, they get huge results.

Some people naturally like what I’m saying right now, but there are others who say, “I need quantitative information. This is too touchy-feely for me.” Well, we have that. That’s the beauty of it. We’ve done the research on great companies versus not-great companies; we’ve compared profitabilities, stock market performance, attrition numbers, products getting to market, quality, reliability. We’ve done all the work so that we can win on the “It’s good to treat people great” plane, and we can win on the [plane of] “Show me the facts and the path to profitability, and why if I treat people great, I’m going to have a more profitable business.”

We published a study recently where we showed that on the metric of diversity, great companies’ revenue grew at a 24 percent higher rate. It was a huge finding done by an outside agency that just took the companies that had passed the “Great Place to Work” threshold versus companies in their industry sectors and compared revenue growth; they found 24 percent more revenue growth from companies that are Great Places to Work.

We also just did a study with HIP Investor which analyzed small, medium, and large Great Places to Work companies that are publicly traded and compared their stock market returns over the past 15 years versus companies that are not on our list. The companies on our list outperformed those not on the list on the S&P by a factor of three, which is huge. It means if you invested $100,000 eleven years ago in an S&P 500, you’d have $200,000 today; if you’d invested in Great Place to Work companies, you’d have $400,000 today. We have that data.

CC: What changes to your own leadership toolbox or style, if any, have you made since coming to Great Place to Work and starting to absorb the lessons from all this data?

MB: In my business career, I’ve always tried to run the business in a way that our people would say, “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” and that our customers would say, “You delivered the best service we’ve ever had.” So, you’re always guided by those two things. Then you’re moving through your life making tradeoff decisions every day to try and make those two things happen.

Since being at Great Place to Work, I think about the people part all the time, and I realize that the people part is what gets you the customer service part. Really, the thing to be thinking about is “What do I need to be doing as a leader to make the employee experience better?” It’s a lot more than I ever was consciously aware of.

I know that the number one thing business leaders need to be doing right now is a better job of supporting employees through change. Change is rampant, the pace of it is nonstop, and people need support through it. It doesn’t just happen because you want it to happen. Culture work is the answer, and the top leadership team is there to provide the solution.

Often, leaders don’t want to do this because they’re more comfortable doing profit and loss analysis, product launches, innovation, entering new markets, or looking at new ways of selling. Those things are more comfortable because it fits our personality, and probably is the reason we got in the job. The problem is, none of those things make employees feel supported through change. And when employees don’t feel supported through the change, they start to loosen their connection to the business, they start to slow down. It looks like resistance. It’s not. They need communication more frequently, and in a very candid way, like a teacher would explain to a student, so they can connect the dots and understand why leadership is doing certain things.

It takes conscious work. Leaders say they want to do a bunch of things — they want to run a great company, hit profit targets, grow the business, increase the value of the business. You can see a leader get an award for great growth or market dominance, but when you see a leader get an award their people feel, you see the leader become a human being, which is what I believe they’re all after, including myself. I get to see it all the time. I fly around the world watching people get awards from our list, and you see that that’s what they were searching for all along, but they didn’t know it.

There’s a self-actualization thing that happens as a result of this work, but it doesn’t happen by accident — it takes conscious work and a plan for how you’re going to work in a way that supports people through the changes. You also get the benefit of people being innovative, you get products to market faster, you can do fewer offsite meetings working on communication. The place is just lined up.

I’ve run businesses through my whole career, and now I’m in a field that has been driven by human resource professionals, but I’m a business person, so I’m always thinking from the leadership point of view. But I am saying the same thing that the human resource professionals said, which is that people matter. Boy, do they really matter. And now I get it. They really matter. It’s made me a much better leader, and a much better communicator to other CEOs about the steps they need to take. Not their HR person, not their diversity person: the steps they need to take to create an environment where people feel supported through the change.

CC: What, on a day-to-day basis, does supporting employees through change actually look like?

MB: You have to do more education and development. You have to bring your whole company along so that they understand how to run the business like it’s theirs. You have to be frequently educating and getting everybody on the same page about why the business is doing what it’s doing. It’s really a back-to-basics movement. Leaders assume people know. People don’t. They’ve been hired, they do a task, and they start working a ton of hours on that task. They really don’t understand why they’re doing it in terms of purpose or business strategy.

You have to have frequent communications letting people know that this is why we’re launching this product, here’s what it does, and why. This is what it’s going to do for the customer, and the market opportunities. You should have your people having an experience once a month where they’re getting an education and getting developed at the same time about the basic parts of the business. That’s a way of supporting people through the change. You don’t have one group that gets it and one group that doesn’t. You’re bringing everybody along, and that’s how you let them know you care about all of them. That’s a conscious act, a conscious decision, and you need to follow up on it.

A lot of the best companies have a practice of having workgroups of people coming together with the role of connecting leaders to employees — we call ours the People Posse. They let leadership know what’s going on with employees and let employees know what’s going on with leaders. And a great place to work isn’t just the leaders’ responsibility. Every employee has that responsibility. You can’t just have leaders working on respecting employees, you’ve got to have it both ways.

CC: How do you see or understand the relationship between being a great place to work in all these ways we’ve been talking about and other forms of stakeholder responsibility or sustainability or corporate stewardship?

MB: If we are conscious, it means by definition that “we’re awake, we’re aware, and we’re sensitive to things.” If you’re awake and aware and sensitive to things, you know that profit alone is not being conscious. That’s being unconscious. You’re not aware and awake to know the role your people play in making that happen, the role your community plays in making that happen, and for sustainability, the impact you have on the environment and its role in making that happen. For people to really care and give themselves 100 percent, it has to be about all the things that people see and experience and are sensitive to.

Being a great place to work — because people are involved — often gets put on the HR bookshelf. That is unfortunate, because being a great place to work does involve the relationships people have with each other and the people they work for, but being a great place to work means you have a culture that fuels innovation. Otherwise, you’re going to have a great place to work that’s out of business in four years, and that’s not a great place to work. That was a great place to work.

Being a great place to work means that you’ve got long-term viability and sustainability, which means that you’ve got a business mindset, which means that you need a culture that loves new ideas, testing new ideas, experimenting, trying, listening — that a good idea can come from anybody regardless of their age, what they look like, their color, or their sexual orientation. We want them all, because the more, the merrier. There’ll be more needles in the haystack.

Our mission is building a better society by helping companies transform their workplaces in the way that people treat each other, because the way that you treat each other gets you more innovation, gets you more financial sustainability. Since I got involved, we added “for all” onto the end of our mission because there were great places to work on our list in the past that clearly weren’t great places to work for everybody. They were great places to work for some people, the dominant group. I added the “for all” for that reason, so that we’re sensitive to the whole sphere and not leaving anyone out.

We have the data to prove that in any workplace, there are different work experiences based on age, gender, job classification, whether you’re getting paid a salary or hourly, and on color. These are facts. In the world’s best companies, these are facts. Having a workplace where men feel like it’s great and women feel like it’s less great, it’s bad business. Forget about fairness and what’s right, you’re wasting human potential. You’ve got a group of people who aren’t feeling the same about the workplace — they want to, but they don’t know if it’s wise to fully commit themselves. I am very aware of the wasted human potential that businesses can seize and increase their profitability.

What Great Place to Work is now bringing to the conscious companies and Conscious Capitalism movement is that “for all” piece. If you’re a conscious business, you need to look in the mirror, because what I see is that not all are sensitive, or super aware, or super awake, because the groups are dominated at the top by one group. That’s not conscious. There’s a ways to go, and I think “great place to work for all” can help that happen. That’s what we can add to it, because it’s absent today.

CC: When you say “one group,” just to make it more explicit, do you mean white men?

MB: Yeah. I probably shouldn’t have to even imply it. All we have to do is look at head executive teams, at the audience in a gathering of CEOs, but most people just want to move onto the next subject.

When hearing a lot about Conscious Capitalism and seeing what I was seeing, I was like, “That’s not really conscious. How can I help people get conscious?” The movement can be accelerated by being conscious of this piece. More people will want to be a part of it when they see people who look like them at the top of conscious companies. If you’re talking about Conscious Capitalism and your executive team all looks the same, I’m not sure that’s super attractive, except to others who look the same.

If leaders are willing to look around the room and feel like perhaps they need to change some things, and that it’s possible to get a highly qualified, awesome team that’s more inclusive, that’s an opportunity. That’s something that will help transform society.

The stats

When Bush analyzed survey results from some of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, he found large disparities in the answers given to certain questions along gender lines as well as by ethnicity, age, and other dimensions. A sample of gender disparities from one anonymous company’s survey is below.

GPTW’s massive data archive has allowed the company to make a strong, evidence-based case that creating a high-trust culture isn’t just good for employees — it’s good for the bottom line. Here are three ways that shows up.

Talent retention: Employees who experience a great workplace are far more likely to want to remain at their organization for a long time — saving companies money and effort on recruiting and training while fostering the higher performance of stable teams.

The graph below shows the percentage of employees who indicate the survey statement “I want to work here for a long time” is either “often true” or “almost always true.” Across generations, the employees agree with that statement up to between 7 and 25 times more often at companies that rank as “great places to work.”

Employee productivity: When employees — no matter their generation — feel they are at a great workplace, they are more than 3 times more likely to report that their peers give extra to get the job done.

The graph below shows the percentage of employees who indicate the survey statement “People are willing to give extra to get the job done” is either “often true” or “almost always true.” Across generations, the employees agree with that statement up to between 3 and 4 times more often at companies that rank as “great places to work.”

Stock market returns 1998-2015: According to independent investment firm FTSE Russell, comparative cumulative stock market returns among the publicly held Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For are nearly 3 times greater than the market average.

Rachel is Conscious Company’s resident words wrangler, in charge of all editorial content. Before joining the CCM in April 2016, Rachel spent nearly 5 years as a print and digital editor on the award-winning team at BACKPACKER magazine. Her freelance writing and radio reporting has appeared in a variety of national publications, including Issues in Science & Technology, Yoga Journal, Paste Magazine, Pacifica Radio, and Wired, where she was a fellow in 2011. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from Goucher College, studied linguistics and computer science at Duke University, and is a certified yoga teacher.

On Wednesday during International Women’s Day, H&M made headlines in some fashion blogs for the release of its new unisex denim clothing line.

But another H&M announcement made on Wednesday could make a far bigger difference: The fast-fashion giant will join the United Nation’s Better Than Cash Alliance. The organization, which so far counts 50 members including the Gates Foundation, MasterCard and Coca-Cola, aims to eliminate cash payouts for supply chain workers in favor of digital payments in order to boost financial inclusion and curb poverty.

The Alliance says far too many factories and countless other job sites around the world pay their employees in cash. Such a system is inefficient, lacks transparency and also puts workers’ safety at risk – after all, it is not too difficult for someone to figure out when payday is at the local neighborhood factory or workshop.

Conversely, switching to a digital payment system can reduce a factory’s costs, save time and also improve workers’ access to financial services. A program Standard Bank launched a few years ago in South Africa, for example, opened new job opportunities while allowing consumers to quickly and cheaply wire money relatives or buy funds with a cell phone or bank card.

An Alliance case study focused on the apparel industry in Bangladesh and suggests how switching to a digital payroll system can benefit both employers and employees.

In one textile factory, each worker spent about 18 minutes a month queueing in line to receive his or her wages in cash. That may at first seem like a negligible amount of time, until one realizes the result is 750 lost hours of factory production – an amount of labor that can make a huge difference in an industry where profit margins are thin. For workers, the vast majority of whom are women, digital payments offered less risk of theft and more control over their personal finances.

There is plenty of room for improvement across Bangladesh’s garment industry: The Alliance’s research estimated that of the $40.4 billion made in wage payments last year, 90 percent of those funds were dispersed in cash.

Some analysts suggest the benefits that digital payments give poorer citizens are overstated, and assert that banking fees and the growth of “big data” can actually marginalize the poor even further. But proponents of expanding digital finance point to the growth of bank deposit holders in Kenya, which surged from 4.7 million people in 2007 to over 35 million by the end of 2015. The result is that more citizens, including those in remote villages where the closest bank branch or ATM could be hours away, now have safe access to banks and, more importantly, their money. In turn they can then easily deposit, store and spend money, while also being prepared for a medical emergency or a similar crisis.

H&M was not specific about its level of involvement with the Alliance, nor has the company shared how it will work with its supply chain to expand employees’ access to financial services. There are many challenges, as in sorting out how to pay employees, whether by mobile telephony, bank cards or a hybrid system.

Nevertheless, the company’s move could nudge other large fashion companies to follow suit. After all, H&M claims that 1.6 million people work within its global supply chain. And if digital payments could be expanded to cotton farmers and the producers of other raw materials that are included in the company’s clothing, the reach could extend to as many as 250 million people.

Image credit: Asian Development Bank/Flickr

Plants are blooming early across the country as a result of this winter's ongoing record warmth, which many connect to climate change. And some fear that an impending freeze could destroy countless fruit flowers and wreak havoc on the industry.

It certainly seems like America's farmers can't get a break. Over the last few years they endured a record-breaking drought in the largest agricultural region, California's central valley. Now, California is wet (though still in drought), but another potential threat looms after the recent warm spell across the Midwest and East Coast.

To summarize: Since fruit trees flowered early, even a quick freeze later this season could be devastating, Bloomberg's Brian K. Sullivan, Megan Durisin and Jeff Wilson reported last week.

“Fruit growers are afraid the crops are developing too early and will get hit with a freeze,” Mark Longstroth, extension fruit educator at Michigan State University in Paw Paw, told Bloomberg. “Everyone would be happy if we had some cooler temperatures to slow down development.”

This could be the norm if we don't start to tackle climate change soon. Weather patterns are getting weirder across the world, with extreme heat, precipitation and wind events growing in frequency. Plants can adapt, but on evolutionary time scales. Few plants can adapt to the changes humans have created in the atmosphere because they are happening so fast – hence, agricultural failures. How are America's fruit trees supposed to know its February when its 71 degrees in upstate New York?

Scientists say climate change will have wide-ranging impacts on agriculture around the world. In some areas, rains will become heavier, making it tougher for soil to absorb water, meaning it will be more difficult for plants to gain access to water when it's dry. In other areas, seasonal shifts could impacts the behaviors of symbiotic species, such as bees, upon which many plants rely. The truth is, we still know little about how climate will impact complex ecosystems due to limited research – except that it will likely be significant, and we're not prepared.

Unfortunately, as any electoral map can show you, those living in farming regions across the country voted overwhelmingly for a presidential candidate who blamed California's drought on environmentalists and, as we now know, is setting up an administration that will be historic in its denial of science. Sadly, it will be local farmers who will suffer the most from climate change if President Donald Trump succeeds in his anti-climate agenda.

Let's hope that cold doesn't bring about a massive fruit flower freeze across the U.S. this spring. But unless we act fast to both prevent further emissions and adapt to the expected climate shifts due to historical emissions, it's not a matter of if farmers will suffer. It's a question of when.

Image credit: Gosiak via Pixabay

This week the Guardian reported that Sainsbury’s, the second largest grocery chain in the United Kingdom, is reducing the scope of its food waste program after an expensive pilot program indicated changing habits was far more difficult than the company predicted.

Sainsbury’s immediately denied reporter Rebecca Smithers’ story, and instead claimed that the company would spend another $1.2 million to expand its campaign across the U.K.

Smithers argued that one year after launching its “Waste Less, Save More," a trial at one of Sainsbury’s stores in the central English town of Swadlincote indicated that the company’s five-year goal of halving food waste would be difficult to reach. Sainsbury’s started the $12 million agenda in part as a reaction to reports that the average British household wastes over $850 on spoiled or discarded food annually. Estimates on both sides of the pond suggest that as much as 40 percent of food in America and the U.K. ends up lost before reaching the table.

To that end, Sainsbury’s has decided to make the case in person to its customers, as well as on a dedicated portal that seeks to educate shoppers on what they can do to avoid throwing more food into the rubbish bin. Visitors to the site can plug their leftovers into a search engine to get ideas for recipes. For example, a random query for salmon, sweet potatoes and kale offered 53 results, though of course many of those recipes would require another trip to the store.

But in fairness, the “saving tips” of the Sainsbury's site can actually morph into a glorious time suck, especially if you didn’t realize old avocados could be used for a face mask or that butter could be frozen. (Surprisingly, the site did not mention that an entire banana can be consumed. Yes, the peel is bitter, but next time you make a smoothie, add a whole sliced frozen banana, peel and all – the extra B-vitamins and fiber are a health benefit, as long as you wash off those pesticides first.)

Changing consumer habits that were decades in the making is like reversing a ship’s course in the (still frozen) Arctic, and that is a struggle all food companies must confront if the world hopes to feed 9 billion people by 2050.

To Sainsbury’s credit, the company appears to be transparent about what is going on with its pilot food waste programs, by highlighting what works and where the company stumbles. In recent years, the grocer also experimented with selling “ugly” fruits and vegetables, as well as powering one of its supermarkets with biogas from food waste. Such efforts could eventually pay off, as one NGO recently concluded that food companies could save $14 for every $1 spent on eliminating food waste.

Despite Sainsbury’s progress, there are still plenty of hiccups the company, and its competitors, are facing as they try to reduce waste across their operations. For example, last week one user of the chain’s online shopping service was disappointed to discover her 53 food items were delivered in 23 plastic bags.

Image credit: Elliott Brown/Flickr

Editor's Note: This post was first published by Conscious Company Media. 

By Risa Blumlein

Ryan Turman doesn’t know much about socially responsible, mission-driven, or triple-bottom-line (3BL) business. He’s never heard of impact investing or the localist movement. He’s a George W. Bush Republican — he once had Christmas dinner at the White House — and the heir to one of Virginia’s biggest logging companies, the Turman Group (TTG).

But it just so happens that he and his father run a company that is planting trees, creating local jobs, employing a marginalized group, and offering company ownership to employees. Turman’s latest venture is Konnect Kloud (K2), a cloud-based truck-mapping system that in its proof-of-concept stage alone has already had a major impact on carbon emissions by avoiding 4.5 million trucking miles.

Not your typical example of conscious leadership

As one of the politically conservative leaders of an extractive company, Turman doesn’t fit many of our preconceived notions of what a conscious businessperson should be like. He’s a white male from a southern, rural, manufacturing community where a main local pastime is hunting. When it comes to business theory, he’s not shy about his margin-before-mission approach. In short, he seems like exactly the kind of businessperson we in the conscious business community are used to seeing — and treating — as our opponent, the evil foil to our better way of existing in the world.

Yet when we consider what TTG has accomplished in boosting its local economy over the last 50 years, and Konnect Kloud’s potential to make a huge impact on reducing pollution and slowing climate change, shouldn’t we wonder what we might learn from the Turman family? Clearly they’re doing something — or many things — right. If we want to truly integrate conscious business into the future of business as usual, those of us at the vanguard of the movement must set aside our idea that political conservatism is anathema to conscious business.

We also need to set aside our personal pride about how superior and socially responsible we perceive our own lifestyles to be. We need to broaden our search for allies and welcome progress no matter what skin it’s in. The future of our work — and our planet — depends on it. And if we take the time to pay attention with an open mind and heart, we may just discover that we are not so different from the Ryan Turmans of the world after all.

Despite the appearance of ideological opposition, several shared tenets run through both conscious business and the business ethic that has allowed Turman to succeed while doing good for his community and other stakeholders. He offered a few tips:

The people make the company

An important tenet of conscious companies is their human-centered employment practices. The socially responsible business movement honors, supports, and invests in companies that are building employment access points for undereducated, underrepresented, and previously incarcerated workers. We applaud leaders who dedicate core resources to providing exceptional benefits for their employees. So could we acknowledge TTG for meeting these standards as well, even though its primary revenue stream is harvesting and selling trees?

Ryan Turman explains that his father, Mike, TTG’s co-founder, was always driven by his desire to create jobs. “When my father and a few friends started TTG in 1967, they were focused on keeping the lights on and not going broke,” Turman says. “There aren’t a ton of people falling over to create jobs in southern Virginia. Employing 550 people is a big deal, especially in the rural counties where we work.”

Inclusive hiring: When interviewing job candidates, TTG managers look primarily for strong work ethic. Degrees, criminal records, and past job history mean little — less than 5 percent of the company’s 550 employees have graduated from college. Turman knows that great mechanics, experienced fabricators, and precise lumber graders define how competitive TTG is in a global marketplace. “If you’re prepared to work, then the logical step for us is to find what you excel at and how that fits in,” he explains.

Employee ownership: Shared ownership is another identifier of mission-driven businesses, and the Turmans are excellent at finding the right people to manage and operate individual facilities and business lines. In fact, they’ve been offering employee ownership for more than 40 years, and currently 32 employees have partial ownership in one or more TTG subsidiaries. “Nine times out of ten, the most qualified and loyal employees end up with ownership,” Turman says. “That person realizes the ownership they have represents their savings account. It’s a way for them to get ahead, and it comes with a lot of responsibility. Meanwhile, it’s how we grow.”

Feeding passions at work: Turman also points out that many TTG employees get plenty of unquantifiable satisfaction from their jobs, just as we expect in more obviously conscious workplaces. “Many of the people who cut the forests live in these same forests,” he says. “They camp and hunt and absolutely love being outdoors. They’ve chosen to work in their favorite place, and we give them that opportunity.” Sounds pretty similar to your local 3BL business, does it not?

Take responsibility for the future

Yet another similarity between the Turmans’ approach to business and the approach of iconic socially responsible businesses is a long-term sense of responsibility and accountability. Time and time again we’ve seen the destructive effects of short-term business vision: the severely disproportionate ratio of oil creation to oil use, the monoculture cropping on much of the US soil, or the housing crisis of 2008, to give just a few examples. Much of what is broken in our current economy is the result of action taken for short-term gain.

Value the long-term: TTG, while considered a conventional business because of the product it sells, has always looked far down the road. “From our standpoint, we’re absolutely social,” Turman says. “Replanting the trees we cut has always been part of the equation. We ask ourselves, ‘What is the need for tomorrow?’”

In the last 15 years, the market has moved away from white pine, which will grow back in 20 to 30 years if replanted, toward slow-growing hardwoods like oak, cherry, and walnut. Since these trees need to regenerate on their own, and do so more slowly, TTG is building partnerships with other hardwood landowners to disperse the harvesting burden over more acreage. The company now only harvests 1 percent of its privately owned 22,000 acres every year, and recently set a new goal to achieve complete native species regeneration on its private lands within 40 years.

Reduce, reuse, recycle: In addition to land stewardship and ecological health, recycling is also critical to TTG’s business. “Every form of waste in a supply chain will result in an economic and social cost,” Turman adds. “The lumber industry is no different. Sawdust that isn’t being recycled as a heat source for lumber kilns will lead to the unnecessary burning of fuel and a deflated bottom line.” Since 1997, TTG has recycled 100 percent of its sawdust to heat kilns and produce residential heating pellets.

Look for win–win mechanisms

In the world of traditional business, the word “win” earns attention. In the world of socially responsible business, however, it’s really the phrase “win–win” that sparks interest. The idea that a business owner can win while their employees, suppliers, and investors are also winning is the crux of this movement’s work. The 3BL community views profit as a complex web of financial return, employee satisfaction, societal improvement, and environmental protection.

Instead of buying into a “scale” economy in which one side has to go down for the other side to go up, the mission-driven business model suggests that a “web” economy could work better — one in which all components are interconnected on the same horizontal plane. New conscious companies are now emerging with business models based on win–win mechanisms, and Turman’s newest business, Konnect Kloud (K2), is no different.

Konnect Kloud’s win–win model

K2 is an online database that matches import and export truck loads to create a more efficient transportation system. It developed out of a need Turman identified within TTG. “Producing great lumber products was only half the battle,” he says. Getting those products halfway around the world, into a global market, became the project of the second generation of Turman businessmen. “Our initial challenge was geography,” Turman explains. “We were 300 miles from a port and we couldn’t compete because of trucking costs.” So TTG reached out to a few neighboring importers and asked if it could use their empty containers to send TTG’s goods to port. The truckers increased their revenue and both shippers reduced their trucking costs. TTG’s lumber products then became viable in the global marketplace.

“The initial goal was to match seven containers a week,” Turman says. “After we surpassed that, the logical next step was to do the same thing for other companies. We were blown away by how many containers were going in and out of ports empty.”

Thus K2 was born, as Turman saw the incredible opportunity (and the incredible waste) in the intermodal industry. Under current practices, the average shipping container will spend 56 percent of its life empty: importers receive full containers from a port, but send back empty ones; conversely, exporters send full containers to port but receive empty ones. This antiquated system costs the US import/export industry $16 billion annually in wasteful truck trips simply to reposition empty containers. By matching up neighboring importers and exporters to share the same truck, K2 helps two trucks driving four legs become one truck driving two or three legs. “It took us five years to refine a manual process,” Turman says, “and then we started to build Konnect Kloud as a platform that allows any person in the international shipping community to match a container.”

K2 is solving a very real need, and in using the platform nobody loses and everybody wins: trucker drive-time goes down 40 percent while pay increases 15 percent; shipper costs go down 25 percent while per-mile earnings increase 35 percent; and best of all, every trucking-trip match that K2 facilitates eliminates a cubic ton of carbon emissions from our atmosphere.

Turman’s first case study, with Lowe’s in 2015, generated remarkable results, avoiding 216,000 truck miles by matching more than 350 import and export trucks. Now West Coast port shipping communities are very interested in the technology: last year Turman started discussions with a leading national environmental group to launch a California pilot of K2 in response to Governor Jerry Brown’s 2015 executive order setting an aggressive carbon emissions reduction target. If he is successful in scaling the company, Turman expects K2 can further reduce carbon emissions tenfold in the next two or three years alone. This sort of across-the-aisle partnership is the exact relationship Turman needs more of as he looks to launch similar pilots in Charleston, SC; Norfolk, VA; and Savannah, GA.

The beauty and elegance of K2 is that importers, exporters, dispatchers, and truckers now have a platform for collaborating on their own. As adoption of container-matching grows, everybody wins, and not just from a revenue, wellbeing, or emissions standpoint. The shipping logistics community is now being connected in a more efficient way than ever before. And as this traditionally Boomer-led industry transitions into Millennial leadership hands, we can expect greater innovations in the coming years. What many call one of the dirtiest industries could have the greatest opportunity for cleaning.

To scale our values, we need a broader definition of “conscious”

K2’s partnership with environmentalists is a perfect example of the business relationships we risk losing by overlooking partners because of our own stereotypes. Turman’s key to success, in many ways, has been his ability to ask for help and organize not just his colleagues but his competitors and opponents as well. In an ironic twist of fate, TTG, K2, and leading environmentalists are all connected now and moving into the web economy together. This unlikely partnership demonstrates that the most fertile ground for progress is often far from the world of black-and-white thinking.

As Turman scales K2, he says he will consider becoming a Benefit Corporation. However, after bringing six previous products to market and leading business development for a $120-million-a-year company, he also knows that you only have 168 hours in a week. “There are only so many things you can focus on,” he says. In the end, he wants K2 to be a profitable company even more than he cares about the formal hoops and certifications of the conscious business community. But that’s not because he doesn’t value mission. Turman echoes something I’ve heard countless conscious CEOs say: “A successful company is in the best position to have the biggest impact on the greater good.”

So this is where the rubber meets the road. Donald Trump is our president. All of a sudden, the mission-driven business community stands faced with one of the most impactful choices of the decade. Do we dismiss the work of someone like Turman? Do we dismiss his values? Or do we acknowledge his innovative achievements through awards programs, give him access to impact capital, and connect him with advisors who could help him scale K2, like we would with a typical emerging and innovative B Corp?

A broader idea of diversity: This is where we must stare hard at our own values. It’s a frightening moment, not just because of what changes we might dislike, but because of the power we have gained thus far and the opportunity that is now before us. We have the potential to become a force for good, not just in business but in the world at large. We cannot, however, be champions of diversity and inclusion if we are only willing to include individuals diverse in appearance but not in point of view.

If we want the world to be more accepting of those with varying sexual and gender preferences, for example, let’s also do our part by being more accepting of those with varying tax policy preferences, for example. We need to welcome great ideas no matter where they come from — and fast.

It’s time for conscious capitalism to cast a much wider net than we ever thought possible before. We need to be engaged in the principles and detached from the personalities. We need to evaluate ideas, programs, and collaborations with a newly refined objective fervor.

It’s now or never for expanding conscious business leadership: This year marks a new frontier for the 3BL movement. Business as a force for good is rapidly becoming mainstream, and a serial entrepreneur in the White House will draw a new level of attention to national and global businesses. Furthermore, margin and mission are shifting into deeper alignment as many conscious businesses, like renewable energy companies, become profitable.

There has never been a clearer opportunity for socially responsible leaders to step into the limelight. If the mission-driven business movement can proceed strategically and open-mindedly, we may stand to gain more traction and attention than ever before. In a sense, the opportunity before us is one we face every day in our own work: we need to scale. But this time, instead of scaling a product or service, we need to scale our values. If 3BL business values were a product, what would it take to get them into every household? Into the hands of every consumer?

The answer may lie in making our movement less partisan and banding together to confront dangers that know no party line: natural disasters, water scarcity, poverty, and disease, for example. We need to take collaboration to a new level. Business can no longer remain a two-party system — conscious and unconscious. To become united, we need to start by acknowledging any progressive initiative within any company, and any leader who is doing the right thing.

The time of pettiness and policing is over. We need all business leaders to know that we will not reject them for not being just like us. Rather, we will commend them for any attempts they make to put people and planet on the same line as profit — the bottom one. If the need to judge arises, let us commit to turning the magnifying glass on ourselves before examining others. Am I being inclusive? Am I being tolerant? Am I being compassionate? Am I listening to — and really hearing — what others are saying? Am I focusing on our differences or our similarities?

In the end, Konnect Kloud will always have been founded by a Republican logger. So when Turman drastically reduces carbon emissions while caring deeply for his employees and bringing the intermodal industry into the 21st century, will we congratulate him? Partner with him? Invest in him? Or will we dismiss him, because of the political party he’s historically supported?

I hope we choose the former. I hope we reach out across every proverbial aisle — front, back, and sideways. If we do, we will build the greatest single force for good, business or otherwise, that has ever existed.

Images courtesy of Heather Turman

Risa Blumlein has led and advised nonprofits for 14 years and is delighted to serve the Social Venture Network community as Finance Director. She volunteers with the Nonprofit Overhead Project, the SF Bicycle Coalition, and SOCAP, and serves on the finance committee of the SF Wholesale Produce Market. Risa enjoys writing on Evox and Medium as @TheEmoBiz, a question-asking blogger exploring the juicy and provocative intersection of emotion and business.

It's well documented that food date labels confuse American consumers. Shoppers are often faced with conflicting terminology, such as 'sell by,' 'use by' and 'best by,' leaving them unsure of when to throw leftovers in the trash. Experts have long associated this industry failure with increased food waste.

Last month, grocery manufacturers and retailers came together on a standardized labeling system in an attempt to make things simpler for their customers.

Companies now use more than 10 phrases to accompany freshness dates on food packaging. Two trade associations, the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), led the new initiative to adopt standard wording on food packaging. Retailers and manufacturers were encouraged to start phasing in the new date-labeling system, with the goal of widespread adoption by the summer of 2018.

The new system is voluntary and narrows date labels to just two phrases:

• “Best If Used By” pertains to product quality such as taste or performance. After the date, the food is still safe to consume.


• “Use By” applies to products that are highly perishable with a safety concern over time and should be consumed by the date listed on the package.

But the new system could be moot if industry doesn't match its efforts with consumer education, food waste guru Jonathan Bloom argued in an op/ed in the Guardian. Bloom authored "American Wasteland," the 2010 book many say helped bring the food waste issue onto the mainstream stage.

And while he praised the labeling initiative as a step forward, he insists it isn't a panacea: "Why do we need food companies to tell us when it’s best to eat our bagged kale, rice or pasta?," he asked rhetorically in his op/ed published last week. He said he's come to trust his eyes and nose when it comes to food safety, but insists most Americans haven't developed this skill -- a hurdle industry must surmount if it hopes to move the needle.

“Structural adjustment and the desired shift in consumer mindset are both needed and, fortunately, not mutually exclusive,” he continued.

It's true we have a lot to contend with: About 40 percent of the U.S. food supply ends up in the trash every year, which adds up to $218 billion in costs, and two-thirds of those costs are associated with household food waste. Date labels, and the misunderstandings of them, are driving household waste.

A 2016 survey by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, National Consumers League, and John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found that 84 percent of Americans discard food close to or past the date on the label at least occasionally. A third of Americans said they always discard food close to or past the date on the label. A third believe date labels are federally regulated, while another 26 percent were unsure.

There is part of the survey that indicates the new voluntary labeling system is a much needed improvement. “Best if used by” was viewed as an indicator of food quality by 70 percent, with only 12 percent viewing it as a food safety label. 

ReFED, a multi-stakeholder group launched in 2015, operates in alignment in Bloom's argument, emphasizing both consumer education campaigns and standardized date labeling as the two most cost-effective solutions to reducing food waste. And these efforts yield much in return: Prevention solutions can yield almost $1.9 billion a year business profit potential for consumer-facing companies.

ReFED mentions three corporate consumer education campaigns that seek to reduce food waste. One of those is a three-year public service campaign launched in 2016 by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Ad Council. The “Save the Food” campaign encourages consumers to reduce the amount of food they throw in the trash at home. Several public service announcements (PSAs) were developed for the ad pro bono by SapientNitro. One of them is an oddly emotional television ad that chronicles the life of one strawberry from the farm to the grocery store to the trash. It ends with the link SavetheFood.com across the screen.

The campaign also features print and Internet advertising and includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest campaigns. Just as the television ad directed viewers to SavetheFood.com, the social media campaigns and print and internet advertising do as well. On the website, consumers can find information on how to reduce their food waste, including how to decipher dates on products and shopping guidelines to buy only what is needed.

The campaign generated a flurry across social media and can be easily replicated across the food industry to educate consumers about the new date labels.

In the end, reducing food waste will benefit both the wallets of consumers and the environment. But does industry have the will to follow through? 

Image credit: Flickr/Abby

By Patrick Riley

Most people can shrug off just about anything — regular workplace conflict, mandatory overtime, the ever-present threat of layoffs, narcissistic management — for a regular paycheck.

When you think about it, it’s kind of amazing that humans can work alongside each other on a regular basis. A recent study found that a whopping 90 percent of office workers have experienced conflict with their co-workers. We might have different goals, visions for the future and personalities, but we still need to collaborate on a regular basis.

Still, there must be a way for leaders to foster corporate cultures where people actually enjoy working together. In other words, we must evolve rather than devolve.

In most offices, team meetings rapidly deteriorate into heated gripe sessions — everyone leaves demoralized and frustrated. Productivity spirals downward, and tensions make office dynamics and drama ugly. It might seem insurmountable, but a slight change in thinking can turn things around.

Flipping the script

When I first became CEO at the Global Accelerator Network, I made it my mission to buck the “negative meeting” trend. After quite a bit of experimenting and research, John Mackey at Whole Foods became my inspiration.

Mackey successfully changed the tone of his company’s meetings by asking employees to say something nice about every other person in the room. He called these “appreciations.” It was a novel concept, and I set out to see if it worked.

We instituted “Appreciation Mondays,” setting aside time after our weekly meetings to share positivity and gratitude. It felt unusual and a little touchy-feely at first, but it quickly had an incredible effect: Our team left the meetings buoyed and optimistic instead of drained and dispirited.

By showing a little gratitude to each other — a novel concept, I know — we started to see each other as human beings rather than work machines. Suddenly, we were prioritizing humanity in our office. Fortunately, this sort of paradigm shift isn’t overly difficult if you believe in the principles of responsible, respectful leadership.

Show your team some appreciation

Interested in bringing appreciation sessions to your office? At the end of each meeting, pick out a team member at random. Ask everyone in the room to share why they’re thankful for that specific person. Expect statements like “I really appreciate how you stepped in to help me when I was struggling,” and “I’m thankful for how you speak with clients because you’re so engaging and thoughtful.”

After the first round is done, pick another team member. Repeat the process until every person has been chosen. This activity takes a bit of time, so factor it in when you’re scheduling the meeting. For reference, my team of seven needs about 30 minutes to complete the weekly exercise.

It might sound simple, but appreciations have had a profound effect on our company. This routine has helped team members know exactly where they stand with their colleagues. It also helps us recognize our own strengths after hearing them confirmed repeatedly from trusted sources. Better yet, nobody feels the need to waste time talking himself up during meetings.

Remember basic physiology

In our office, we pay for everyone’s gym membership. Why? Because we’re all humans with the same needs. If you want to have a healthy work life, you need to have a healthy lifestyle outside the office.

Something as simple as promoting exercise or telling our colleagues we only want them to work 40 hours a week helps change everyone’s perspective for the better.

Choose your colleagues carefully

It’s interesting how many people forget about their friends after they get a taste of success. It’s important to surround yourself with people who have similar goals and values.

If your friends are obsessed with work and “maximizing potential output” (what are we, robots?), they won’t support you on your journey to rediscover the appeal of humanity. Water seeks its own level, and surrounding yourself with similarly motivated individuals can help push you to stay true to your mission and ideals.

Ditch the concept of work-life balance

While plenty of people talk endlessly about achieving a perfect work-life balance, I don’t believe such a thing exists. Instead, I like to think of it as work-life trade-offs. Both work and home life have unlimited demands of our time. Trying to balance a desire to play with our kids against the need to complete an email for a customer creates unbearable tension.

Instead, I like to lean into the tension. I recognize whatever decision I make will always have some sort of pull in the opposite direction. We can’t shove both activities into the same time frame, so we instead must pick whichever option is more important at that given moment. This allows us to take ownership of our decisions and eliminate some of the anxiety that typically accompanies this sort of tradeoff.

The novelty of putting people first

Does the idea of a confident workplace chock full of happy, smiling employees sound about as realistic as a purple unicorn? Given the current business climate, perhaps.

It’s understandable if you’re dubious, but treating workers like actual human beings can have amazing outcomes. It isn’t a panacea for every issue, but it can help unite teams while promoting gratitude and loyalty. Co-workers might be willing to deal with quite a bit of nonsense to keep a job, but all the money in the world ultimately isn’t worth it if you hate it.

Would you rather be the final destination in someone’s career or a steppingstone along the way? Be the employer they want to work for by giving them the respect they deserve.

Image credit: Pixabay

Pat Riley is the CEO of the Global Accelerator Network, a group of respected startups and the organizations that support them from around the world. More than 5,500 startups are in GAN, and many grew through one of its startup accelerator programs. Startups in GAN get access to its partner network and venture fund, which provides capital for startups to create and grow their businesses. For more information, visit gan.co.

Stanford business school students are arguably the future business leaders of America. Which is why it's awfully scary to take a peek at what they think is funny. The song uses banal biz-speak as sexual innuendo, which is then acted out in the video by students proudly sporting cardinal-red Stanford gear.  Unfortunately, the scenes are all too familiar to anyone who has experienced sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

Check out this video from a group of current graduate students -- if it's still up.

[the video was originally posted here but has since been removed]

One wishes these students, some of the brightest business students in the world, would use their platform to promote principals of egalitarian leadership. Instead they've taken it to the lowest common denominator and revel in the potty humor. Consider the following lines:  "I want you to know you've got freak cash flow in my spread sheets," and "Time for a 1:1, babe let's have some fun, I think you're needing an all-hands meeting."

This video promotes gender stereotypes and sexual harassment -- issues one would hope Stanford students and faculty would be actively working against in the classroom. While the video was published last month on Valentine's Day (how sweet!), it caught a second round of promotion on Twitter yesterday for International Women's Day. Sarah Lacy, founder of Pando, called it the "video version of Travis [Kalanick]'s boober joke," which is to say it was gross, unfunny and unbefitting an individual in corporate leadership position.