Business: go woke or go broke?

Today consumers want to buy more sustainable products, employees want to work for firms that share their values, and in the investment world, ESG funds are all the rage. How are companies responding to these shifting demands and can businesses really do well by doing good?

Film supported by @cognizant

00:00 - Can companies do well by doing good?
00:50 - Environment and climate change
06:50 - Employee wellbeing
09:51 - Workforce diversity
15:50 - Ethical supply chains
19:26 - Environmental Social Governance

[presidentpower]

Diversity should never mean hiring unqualified employees to meet the requirements. It just hurts everyone in the end.

Talent should always be given priority

[weareallbrainwashed]

I don’t even buy Nike, or coke anymore. Adidas isn’t woke, and water bottle isn’t.

[Avengerie]

They can start their journey of being socially responsible by paying their taxes.

[Mokkel]

Being woke and being socially responsible is two different things nowadays. Wokeness are just privileged bullies.

[Tenchinu]

Why does it matter how ‘woke’ or ‘green’ a company is, when the overseas chain of manufacturing is not regulated to respect environmental and humanitarian rights?

[angliccivilization]

In the end, the American consumer still shows shopping patterns of wanting the cheapest product. There might be public discourse and people's opinion on surveys claiming to want sustainable products and such, but consumer purchasing choices show those claims to be falsehoods.

[deeksha]

Being "woke" is looking moral not actually being moral

[SamBankman-Fried]

I wish they wouldn't conflate woke with climate change action. The former is some recent BS spouted by the easily offended whereas the latter is a genuine issue.

[the-based-jew]

The saying is 'go woke go broke'

Becuase people don't need woke bs.

[TheArctofireHD]

I wish people would separate environmentalism from woke. All it does is make conservatives turn against action on climate change. I fully support being eco-friendly but not this obsession with political correctness.

[CAL-jjom]

A company using cameras & AI to identify employees who violate spacing or masks is not a positive thing as presented here.

[FatRonaldo]

I wouldn’t mind companies having principles, but what infuriates people is when companies use pinkwashing where it suits them, but keep quiet as a church mouse when it goes against the bottom line

[rando]

The woke businesses I've heard about generally do better than when they didn't practice what they preached.

[lypdmaxpane]

I wish I lived in the 80's where I don't have to see this weird BS, when time were a bit simplier

[Quasar_Squawk]

Obviously The Economist is not what it used to be. But wow... The mental gymnastics for this story is astounding.

[luiscastrokerdel]

2 Things:
1) Are companies really paying less attention to profit and more to diversity, social responsibility and climate change? or, because their customers are now more into these things, they embrace the issues too? That way they can sell more...and, make profit.
2) Can The Economist define what "diversity" is? I am very interested in the the Mckinsey study quoted. According to this research, diverse management in companies outperform non-diverse teams (I think they said, by 30%). If every single person on earth is different, how come a team (a group of people) be less or more diverse ? How do you measure diversity?

[raquetdude]

social responsibility but don’t allow unions wow how progressive

[Cry-AegisInquisitor]

Wow... George Orwell is turning in his grave

[purplenights]

I don't look at who works at a company, I look at what I want to buy and whether the store has it. It doesn't matter to me if they are all white or all black. If people do not want to shop in an all white store, please move on. If they do not want to shop in an all-black store, please move on. One of the nice things about owning your own business in the United States is that you can pick and choose the people you want to work there. It is MY business who i hire. If the customer is not happy with the employees that I choose, then they should not be shopping in my store.

[iankamau]

the fact that those judges still wear those silly wigs is hilarious