According to Paul Polman’s 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer, half of UK Gen Z employees report having previously resigned from a job because their company’s values didn’t align with their own.
Indeed, it’s widely reported that young people today want to make a difference in their job, favouring companies with sustainability plans and policies.
As a university, we understand the importance of sustainability when it comes to our students researching their career options. We also appreciate that reviewing a potential employer’s website and reports for information about their mission, purpose, and social and environmental impact is time-consuming and that each company presents their data in varying formats.
That’s why we’re delighted to be able to point you towards Windō, a great free resource for students to easily access, digest and compare the sustainability plans and progress that employers are making.
Windō – an employer’s sustainability, beautifully simplified.
Windō holds sustainability profiles for the FTSE250 and the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, covering their environmental impact, DE&I (diversity, equality and inclusion) and employee wellbeing initiatives.
They’ve also built a CSR comparison tool so that you can compare organisations side-by-side on different metrics (if the organisations you’re looking for publicly reports the data).
You can find a short demo explaining how to use Windō here.
Why is it important to work for a company that aligns with your personal values?
A survey by Deloitte revealed that 77% of Gen Z say it’s important to work at organisations whose values are aligned with theirs, and by joining a workplace that endorses your values, you know you’re working within an environment that shares the same goals as you do. With retention rates being significantly higher in organisations that value and prioritise their employees’ personal beliefs, it’s clear why aligning with your company’s values is so important.
Where to find out about a company’s values and purpose.
Learning about the values and purpose of a company is a great way to get an idea of its culture. You can start by visiting the company’s website where most organisations will articulate their mission and goals. Research the charities that they support and look at the targets they have set themselves across their CSR and sustainability. This will give you a good understanding of the causes that they care about.
Social media also offers valuable insight: by following a potential employer on social platforms such as Twitter or Instagram, you can gain access to press releases and other bits of related information which might shed light on how the company sees itself in the market. Ultimately, engaging with a prospective employer online is one of the best ways you can get an understanding of what it stands for.
Do you believe that employers should report their sustainability, values and purpose more transparently?
The team behind Windō are on a mission to make sustainability reporting more transparent and more relevant to you so that you can make better-informed decisions when researching your career options, whilst also helping organisations accelerate their plans to be more sustainable. Windō would like to now improve their sustainability profiles to reflect what you really want to see from each organisation, not just what employers or the government think you ought to see.
If this is an area that interests you, you can support them on their journey, share feedback and connect with their founder, Oli Coles, on LinkedIn.
Windō are taking part in our Sustainable Careers Panel and Networking: Emerging Careers in Sustainability which is taking place Wednesday 1 March. You can book your place on mycareer.
Check out the other events running as part of the Sustainable Series:
- Spring Sustainability Series: IBM – The role of large companies in improving global sustainability.
- Spring Sustainability Series: RWE – Explore your future career with a leading supplier of renewables