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 blew this goal out of the water, with our intelligence, project management, 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 needed for a remote workforce that have become increasingly normalized and acceptable for our clients, suppliers, and workers alike. Importantly, we did not encounter any significant obstacles to implementing these practices, 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 culture allows us to decrease commutes (and corresponding emissions) required. We also embrace video calls whenever possible, a situation that technology has made significantly more easy, common, and acceptable.

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, as well as via individual experiences with the struggle to balance careers and personal/family lives.

Even before the 2020 pandemic necessitated widespread remote work, we were hiring globally for remote work positions, a situation made feasible through well-developed IT security infrastructure and policies already established with remote capabilities in mind due to the multiple offices in the Sqope Intelligence 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 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 flexible schedules, whether this need arises because they are a parent, pursuing a degree, caring for a loved one, or simply prefer part time hours.

Pursing Equality and Diversity

With a high proportion of women in executive management (40%) and the majority of all executive managers who are also parents (89%), 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 religious 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 in Africa, the Middle East, South America, and Europe, women comprise a notable portion of executive and leadership roles and across the company generally. Unfortunately, even after the 2020 pandemic highlighted the fact that women are more likely to make sacrifices in their careers due to parental responsibilities, the burden on parents remains high.

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.