Promoting Environmental Sustainability

Reducing paper use: At the start of 2020, we set an internal goal of reducing paper use by at least 50% and we’ve blown this out of the water, with our research and operations divisions achieving nearly 0% paper use and our sales divisions always offering electronic copies first. We accomplished this by prioritizing electronic communications and investing in electronic solutions already made necessary by our partially remote workforce and became increasingly acceptable to our clients, suppliers, and workers alike as a result of the global pandemic and increasing focus on the importance of implementing good ESG policies. Importantly, we did not encounter any significant obstacles to implementing this policy, highlighting the growing awareness of pursuing sustainable environmental policies.

Reducing emissions: Although we are not an emissions-heavy company, we believe that even small improvements add up. Indeed, if every smaller company made the changes we did, the impact would be huge. In addition to prioritizing the use of public transportation during work-related travel, our remote hiring and limited number of offices allows us to successfully decrease the amount of local travel (and corresponding emissions) required. We also embrace video calls whenever possible, a situation made more common and acceptable as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Encouraging Work-Life Balance

We have a deep understanding of the need for work-life balance and flexibility, both from recognizing the problem and risk of burnout and the individual experiences with struggling to balance careers and personal/family lives.

Even before the pandemic necessitated widespread remote work, we were hiring globally for remote work positions, a situation mad feasible through well-developed IT security infrastructure and policies already established with remote capabilities in mind due to the multiple offices/branches in the Sqope group. This, along with general policies that allow for greater flexibility, benefits the company and employees alike.

In addition to less time-consuming commutes to and from the office, our setup allows for makes daycare and school drop-offs and pick-ups easier, reduces sick leave, and permits our workers to more easily schedule medical and other appointments, deliveries, and repairs during normal working hours. It also means that we can hire a wide range of professionals, from the more typical full-time employees to those with part-time or formally established flexible schedules, whether this need arises because they are a parent, pursuing a degree, or simply prefer part time hours.

Pursing Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

With a high proportion of women in executive management (50%) and the majority of all executive managers who are also parents (83%), we intimately understand barriers to promotions and equal pay, as well as the importance of work-life balance. Our emphasis on equality and merit-based hiring, remuneration, and promotion, as well as remote hiring that allows us to onboard the best regardless of location, means that we don’t discriminate on any basis, including on race, nationality, age, ability, religion, level of observance, sexual orientation, family status, and gender/gender expression.

All of the above has resulted in diversity across the company. Not only do we have workers from Africa, the Middle East, South America, and Europe, women make up 50% of executive management and a significant portion of the company generally, including 55% of Intelligence Managers. Indeed, the issues of gender equality, women in leadership, and flexibility for parents is near and dear to us. Unfortunately, even now the burden on parents is high, with studies indicating that women are more likely to make sacrifices in their career due to parental responsibilities. We do our best to ensure that this is a non-issue: that gender pay equality is real, promotions and raises are based only on merit, and that no parent has to choose between a career and family.