The Emerald purpose story

#engagetochange

The golden thread across everything we do is our passion for sharing knowledge. We believe that knowledge and learning can diminish divides and be an inclusive force for change. Our collective aim is to empower everyone to thrive in education, workplaces, communities, and society at large. 

But we know not everyone has the same life chances or access to education and learning. So, we have made some simple commitments we hope will have a positive impact on our people, our communities and our world. It’s just a starting point, but here’s what we’ve set out to do and how we intend to do it, all with a shared goal to empower people through knowledge.

Our 3 Ps

Prosperity

We want prosperity for all that empowers and enables everyone to thrive. We believe that knowledge can change lives, so our pledge is to curate tailored and relevant content from across Emerald and place in the hands of those that need it most, without cost.

We are planning to build a knowledge hub for social enterprises which:

• Provides longevity to our charitable commitments by giving our partners access to the hub beyond our yearly partnerships
• Showcases the breadth, depth & social relevance of the knowledge Emerald collectively has
• Has curated content packages from Emerald Publishing and external partners to provide knowledge packs that address the greatest challenges our communities face today.

Planet

We’re making measurable changes in the planet, as a business, and individually. It all starts with knowledge and building awareness of our impact on the planet, so we can reduce the potential harm caused and understand the personal & business impacts we have.

Collectively, this looks like:

• Yearly planet pledges which we measure, track, and hold ourselves to account to. We embrace a virtual culture, travelling less but staying connected, sharing ideas for reducing our personal carbon footprint and moving to more sustainable business practices to care for the earth’s future.
• Build a solid foundation for future work, benchmarking where we are today in terms of our impact on climate, circular economy, and nature. This will guide the work we need to do to make improvements in our goal to reach a net zero position.
• Through our ‘NetZero’ platform we encourage colleagues to get involved and learn how they can personally contribute to the areas that matter most to them. As ‘Zero Actioners’ you can pick and choose which activities you want to commit to from reducing your carbon footprint, going plastic free, to supporting local food supply chains, or cutting down on paper use. And as each activity has a personal impact score you can see how your individual actions are collectively adding up to a bigger, meaningful change.
• We’ll provide good planet practices training & access to educational resources for all colleagues across the globe to raise awareness, share knowledge and motivate change.
• We’ll create a clearly defined calendar of events aligned to national and international initiatives that all our teams across the globe can get involved in and play their part.

People

We empower our people to help them thrive, at Emerald and beyond. Whatever that means to you personally, within your career or your mental well-being, we want to give our people the time, the tools and the support to always keep learning.

To make our employees’ experience extraordinary at Emerald we:

• Nurture an ‘everyday coaching’ ethos, where everyone can develop their coaching skills and feel supported in becoming the best version of themselves.
• Encourage job crafting, where you can shape your role around your personal needs, passions and strengths.
• Provide a dedicated space for talent to grow, Talent-space, encouraging secondments across the business if you want to develop your skillset and learn something new and by encouraging honest feedback to empower all our people and support them in their personal development in a positive way.
• Provide opportunities for ad hoc days to spend on anything you like to help you concentrate on self-development and wellness.
• Encourage mutual awareness, one culture made up of many cultures from around the world – each with a voice and opportunity to grow & learn from each other.

We are doing our best to get all of this done. We hope we’ll get there, but even if we don’t and only get part way on the journey, we are learning as we go – and that’s the important part.