Building An Eco Friendly Workplace & A Better World

What’s The Big Idea?

The latest update to our tree planting mission is that we are introducing a new ‘Force 4 Good’ scheme for our Quokkas at The Happiness Index!

For every year of service as a Quokka, on their work anniversary, we will plant a clump of 25 trees through Ecologi in their name. Not only that, but we are going to backdate everyone's service to date. Plus we’re planning to plant 25 trees for every customer we currently work with. So, by Christmas we will have committed to planting 3,000 trees around the world!

This is on top of the trees we’ve already planted. We also plant a tree to recognise our employee of the week, who gets nominated from our shout outs recognition plan. More on that later…

The Neuroscience Behind Our Plan

You won’t be surprised to learn that there’s solid neuroscience reasoning behind our latest commitments!! There are actually two neuroscience themes that are at play here, but the first and most important is meaning & purpose.

Meaning & Purpose

Meaning and purpose are really important when it comes to engaging your people. It is tied to the reflective brain system.

We’re lucky at THI that many of our Quokkas are really committed to our vision and excited to be making a difference in the world of work. This gives our people Inspiration and Commitment, important elements within the meaning & purpose theme. The third strand is Values.

We have very strong values at THI and believe we live them out every day through our HR policies and procedures. But we know that there’s always more that we can be doing to walk the walk. That’s where Ecologi comes in. We want to change not only the world of work, but also the world we live in for the better.

Acknowledgement

We’re also using our Ecologi partnership to strengthen our acknowledgement programme. We have a lot of strings to our bow when it come to acknowledgement, but one of the ones we love most is the #ShoutOuts channel we have on our internal messaging service. This is a great way for individual quokkas to give recognition to the amazing superstars they work with.

Once a week, during our Employee Voice feedback session (another key element of our acknowledgement strategy!) one of the employees who received positive feedback from the team gets randomly chosen. We plant a tree with Ecologi in their name.

Acknowledgement is important in the emotional brain type, which feeds into Happiness at work. So by using our tree planting partnership with Ecologi in this way, we’re also linking the head and the heart! One of our favourite things to do!

Trees & Our Vision (ie. #FreedomtobeHuman)

Our vision, #FreedomtobeHuman, is our guiding star when it comes to everything we do, and particularly our culture. For us, #FreedomtobeHuman means creating a positive place to work for everyone around the world. Of course, we can’t do that if there’s not a safe place for everyone to live.

That’s why being sustainable and green is so important to many of the things we do at THI. Planting Trees with Ecologi is an important part of our mission. We’re working on becoming B-Corps certified, and this is just a small step in the process!

Why Partner With Ecologi?

We know that carbon capture and offsetting can be a controversial topic. So it was really important to us that we found a great partner who could help us do it properly and sustainably.

That’s why we love working with Ecologi. They go into the details on their website of how they make sure they’re partnering with local communities to plant trees that work well for both the local ecology, but also the local people.

What’s Next?

This is just another step along the road for us. We’ve got loads more big plans to keep improving the world of work, our own culture and the impact we have on the planet. We’re currently working on a programme to incentivise more eco-friendly travel to work. Make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter to hear our latest updates!

How About You?

We’d also love to hear about the creative ways you’re improving the planet in your workplace. Let us know on our social channels.

If you’re starting out on your ESG journey, then our ESG survey might be really useful. It helps you to understand how your people feel about your current ESG offering, and can uncover great next steps you may not have considered. Understanding how your people think AND feel about your strategy will ensure you get maximum benefit from your investment.