It’s One Planet Week and there have been lots of events running this week on maintaining a more sustainable lifestyle. This got us thinking about what research you can do to find out how important ethical and sustainable practices are to companies you might be considering working for.  How important is it to you that the company you work for shares similar values and ethics to your own?

In a 2017 survey by Prospects, the three most common factors cited by respondents as the most important when choosing an employer, were opportunities to train or gain qualifications, generous pay and that a company’s ethical values matched their own.

So how can you find out what a company’s values are?

• Search ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ and the company name
  Most large companies will have information on their website about what they are doing to conduct their business in a way that takes account of their environmental impact, social impact and human rights.

• Research company values and culture and read their mission statement. These can usually be found on their website

• See how they treat their staff, look at staff policies on their website if available. Look at employee review sites such as Glassdoor and search on social media and LinkedIn to see what people are saying about a particular organisation
  
  
• Take a look at the Responsible Business Awards website and see who has been featured.

• The Good Shopping Guide  and Ethical Consumer – both ethical brand comparison websites that cover retailers, food producers, banks and insurers plus energy suppliers

• Ethical Performance – latest news and information on how companies are addressing corporate social responsibility
  
  
• 2019 Global 100 – an index of the world’s top 100 large sustainable corporations according to magazine, Corporate Knights.