Some of you may have noticed that I have not written a lot of posts over the last 18 months or so. It wasn’t just pandemic malaise…I was mostly working on a new book with the former Unilever CEO, the great Paul Polman. The result of that 2-year endeavor is finally out in the world.
Our overall purpose with this book is to help leaders raise their ambitions and build companies that profit by solving the world’s problems, not creating them. The time is right for a re-set. There’s been more change in the expectations of business and the role of business in society in the last couple of years than in the previous 20. Many things have come together — climate change moving into the foreground, not as a model to debate, but devastating and expensive extreme weather today; rising transparency about all a company does and stands for; the murder of George Floyd and the pandemic, both raising awareness of the very different treatment, and life and health outcomes, of minority communities, especially in the U.S.; and much more.
Our biggest challenges, inequality and climate change (plus the destruction of the natural world and decline in biodiversity), are accelerating. It’s time to think bigger about what business can and should do.
We define a net positive business as one that:
“…improves well-being for everyone it impacts and at all scales—every product, every operation, every region and country, and for every stakeholder, including employees, suppliers, communities, customers, and even future generations and the planet itself. This is a North Star. No company can achieve all these aims at once, but it’s where we should be heading if we want a viable economy and planet. To exist as a relevant business today is to enrich the world.
The ultimate question is this: Is the world better off because your business is in it?“
In the book, we…
Lay out key principles of a net positive company including, most critically, taking ownership of all your impacts on the world through your products, services, operations, supply chains, and influence)
Explore the attributes of net positive leaders (courage is a big one)
Provide the steps and key elements of building a company that profits by serving the world:
finding your personal purpose,
unlocking organizational meaning,
blowing up mental and organizational boundaries to set big goals,
building trust and transparency,
seeking out broad partnerships to solve big, shared problems.
Highlight some of the “elephants in the room” that leaders don’t want to talk about: companies avoiding taxes, executives making too much money, corruption, human rights, and more.
For a quasi-summary of the big ideas, please check out our article, the cover story of Harvard Business Review this month, “The Net Positive Manifesto“.
[I co-wrote this article with my friend and mentor Hunter Lovins. The original is on MIT Sloan Management Review.]
President Joe Biden takes climate change seriously, calling it an “existential threat.” His executive orders are reducing oil and gas exploration on public lands, promoting electric vehicles for federal fleets, and more. The federal charge is being led by John Kerry, the United States’ first special presidential envoy for climate, and Gina McCarthy, the first White House national climate adviser, but the whole Cabinet is talking about climate in an unprecedented and impressive way.
Fossil fuel companies and go-slow politicians predictably chant that this perspective will “destroy the economy” and “kill jobs.” The first is absurd. Which is more expensive — a cleaner, healthier economy powered by renewable energy, or extreme weather and tens of millions of climate refugees? Doing nothing would cost much more than doing something.
But the critics have an undeniable point about job losses in some sectors. States with the most to lose are understandably worried. In hearings in January 2021 with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, legislators from coal-mining states expressed concern about people left behind and said the energy transition must be about innovation and job creation, not elimination of jobs.
A just transition means not leaving people behind. Jobs extracting fossil fuels for energy have a limited future. Barring impossible improvement in carbon sequestration, Morgan Stanley predicts the coal industry will disappear by 2033, propelled by economics more than policy. If carbon policy does get as strict as climate science demands, this could happen even faster.
The battle is over; fossil fuels will never catch up. Because renewable power is drawn from the wind and sun, its “fuel cost” is effectively zero. Renewables also provide the only true form of energy independence — no cartel can corner the sun.
The accelerating transformation in energy gives us unprecedented opportunities to create millions of jobs in solar and wind power, energy storage, energy efficiency, and updating our grid. It will take time to retrain workers and create all those jobs. But we also have a faster solution to bridge the gap: Pay the workers losing fossil fuel jobs.
Compensate Workers Whose Jobs Are Going Away
Providing direct financial assistance to people losing fossil fuel jobs would cost less than you might think. After years of efficiency improvements, far fewer people work in these sectors now.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counts about 43,000 coal miners today, down from 84,000 in 2010. For perspective, as others have pointed out, the coal industry in its entirety employs fewer people than the fast-food chain Arby’s and about the same number as the skiing industry. The BLS estimates that 133,300 people work in oil and gas extraction and about 565,000 work in all of “mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction.”
As fossil industries decline, imagine a transition with dignity. Give displaced workers a living wage pension to thank them for helping bring about a modern world. Or hire them to clean up the mess that a century of coal mining has left across Appalachia. Where would we get the money? A tiny financial transaction tax on the froth of Wall Street trading could raise upward of $2 trillion over a decade. Before you worry about depriving bankers of their livelihood, remember that bonuses — just the bonuses — paid to Wall Street bankers in 2018 totaled three times the amount paid to all full-time minimum wage workers in the United States. Just a fraction of that could comfortably retire all displaced workers, as we create training and useful work for those who need it.
In a dynamic economy, job losses are constant. Many people once made typewriters. Blockbuster once had 84,000 employees overseeing video rentals. Even before the pandemic hit, private equity firms alone had cut 1.3 million jobs in retail over the previous decade.
For decades, claims of concern for our coal miners have shaped U.S. politics and our energy and geopolitical strategies. Protecting fossil fuel workers above all can’t continue, both for economic reasons and because winning the climate battle is not optional. We have to decarbonize now to avoid large parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable — literally underwater or too hot to survive.
The transition to renewables is underway. Pretending otherwise, and promising to save disappearing jobs, is a lie. Coal miners who do a job they’ve known for generations now face obsolescence. We imagine that these American workers would want leaders to be honest about the future. In their shoes, we would want policymakers to show understanding and humanity, and offer financial support to help find a new path. Those jobs are going away, but we will create a new, better, healthier economy with greater opportunities for all.
__________________________
Andrew’s new book, Net Positive(co-authored with Paul Polman) is coming, October 5! Pre-order now.
Building on efforts to tackle digital poverty, Jisc has written to the Local Government Association, urging authorities to provide free internet access to students in public spaces via our eduroam connectivity service.
Councils that are already using Jisc’s govroam public sector roaming service are being invited to enable eduroam, a service developed for the education sector that connects millions of students and staff at universities and colleges nationwide.
This initiative has the potential to make eduroam available in thousands of public spaces across the country - such as libraries, community centres and public halls - extending access to ‘zero touch’ internet connectivity.
Jisc’s CEO, Paul Feldman, says:
“We see this as a springboard to bring about exciting collaborations between Jisc, local government, and national government. A lack of access to quality, inexpensive connectivity affected many learners during lockdown - and this issue isn't going away. It's crucial we come together to address this, moving quickly and creatively. Extending internet access in public spaces is one solution, which we really hope local authorities will work with us to deliver.”
The impact of data poverty became clearer during university and college site closures and COVID lockdowns, with many students unable to access reliable connectivity or a suitable study environment, despite the government’s ‘Get help with technology' scheme. In fact, Jisc’s recent student digital insights survey found that 62% of students in higher education (HE) and 36% in further education (FE) experience poor wifi connection, and 22% in HE and 15% in FE struggle with mobile data costs when learning online.
Yet students in England are increasingly studying online or choosing more remote and flexible models. To overcome the digital poverty barrier and make learning as accessible as possible, wherever it takes place, we need to offer the best possible digital environment, Feldman reflects:
“Throughout the pandemic, Jisc has worked with the Department for Education and national education sector bodies to help find ways to support college and university students. We are now looking for support in tackling digital and data poverty. We see this as a great opportunity for Jisc to work closely with local authorities in a collaboration that we hope will help improve digital connectivity for all citizens.”
In our second ‘HE Leaders’ podcast debate, Jisc’s managing director of higher education (HE), Jonathan Baldwin, chairs a conversation around the post-COVID student experience.
“Being connected as a community has been really important,” says Julie Lydon, vice chancellor of the University of South Wales. She observes “a strong sense of collegiality” and “great creativity” among learners throughout the pandemic.
“Students have been remarkably resilient. They’ve made the best of what has been a challenging period for them, and I think they have really appreciated efforts that have been made [by the university], seen that we’ve innovated as we’ve gone along, and participated in that innovation.”
In a comment echoed by all panelists, Owen notes:
“We’ve seen really high levels of engagement.”
There have been difficulties too, however. The CEO of Studiosity, Mike Larsen, says students report feelings of “isolation and anxiety” – combined with “gratitude for the efforts being made by universities to continue to support their learning and deliver their programmes.”
Baldwin praises the work that has been put into make this transition successful:
“All universities are grappling with this. Leading and managing in the digital world is very different from managing and leading in the physical world.”
Overall, Lydon says:
“HE in the UK has, for many years, been exploring ways in which there can be a greater partnership with our students, from the design of curriculum and learning experiences right the way through to students being on the governing body.”
COVID has accelerated the delivery of digital, remote and online teaching and learning, and Lydon welcomes greater accessibility and inclusion, and greater student participation, as a result.
SCONUL, the professional association for academic and research libraries and Jisc, have negotiated a national agreement with not-for-profit Our Research.
The agreement will help individual SCONUL members in the UK to use Unsub, a data analysis and dashboard tool that enables libraries and consortia to independently assess the value of the journal subscriptions they hold with publishers.
The agreement will also allow universities to assess and share various scenarios of selecting journal titles. Modelling different scenarios gives university libraries greater insight into the value of their subscription packages, with the opportunity to share their outcomes with the Jisc consortium to enable greater oversight in support of national negotiation activities.
Ann Rossiter, Executive Director of SCONUL, says: “We are really pleased to support SCONUL members in obtaining greater insight into the value of their academic journal subscriptions. We believe that price transparency and user statistics will help institutional decision-making, especially in these times of financial uncertainty.”
Jisc already uses a dashboard developed by Unsub, bringing together data on journal subscription fees at a national level. This data informs in their negotiations with publishers. Members will have access to selected views of this dashboard to understand the national picture.
Jason Priem, co-founder of Our Research, says: “We are delighted to be working with SCONUL to support UK institutions. The Unsub dashboard will streamline workflows and can estimate the extent to which open access (OA) scholarly articles can replace existing subscription access. Due to the growth of OA, more than half of newly-published articles are now free to read.”
The agreement has been arranged in response to sector demand following a consultation by SCONUL.
Caren Milloy, director of licensing at Jisc, comments: “This national agreement recognises the value of working collectively in terms of Jisc streamlining effort through the central provision of data to the tool. Also, in working with Unsub we enable institutions to model and assess different scenarios that can be shared centrally to inform negotiations.”
Mobile apps come within scope of public sector accessibility regulations from 21 June this year. The implications of this new requirement need careful consideration, says Chris Heathcote, product manager for the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO, Government Digital Service) - which is why he’s leading a live clinic on 12 May, which has been jointly organised by Jisc and CDDO.
"Just as institutions test their websites across many browsers, they should test mobile apps with different accessibility settings to check they function correctly.”
Piers Wilkinson, student voice commissioner on the Disabled Students’ Commission, agrees: “I use the accessibility functions on my mobile, so I know from experience that, when an app meets the new guidelines, it enables mobile operating systems to work as intended. If apps are not compliant, it can require Herculean effort on my part to utilise in-built functions to adequately support my usage and understanding.”
Partially accessible apps aren’t much better, says Wilkinson:
“They often cause anxiety. You end up in a cycle of ‘is it me or the app or the phone?’. It would make a huge difference if designers could support app developers to understand how accessibility functions work, and enable developers to test their app before launching. The onus shouldn’t be on disabled people to figure these things out or complain.”
Taking responsibility
Many universities and colleges have staff who are already familiar with the steps involved in auditing their digital estate for accessibility and making a plan to fix problems.
Heathcote says additional support is available too.
"We’ve published a guide on how to carry out basic accessibility checks, on top of using automated tools such as Ally or Axe.”
It is anticipated that the approach to auditing mobile apps will involve more manual testing, rather than automated tools, and this will require teams to keep their skills sharp.
Wilkinson adds that accessibility should be an integral part of any software procurement process, to ensure that both institutions and staff are confident in using automated tools.
"Including accessibility standards in conversations with software developers is an incredibly important step. It can support uptake of inclusive design and reduce adjustment support for disabled staff and students.”
Within each university or college, Bethany Winkler, student experience manager at Edinburgh College, says responsibility for accessibility compliance should sit with a member of the senior leadership team:
“Whether you work in further education (FE) or higher education (HE), gaining support from above can be difficult. I recommend writing a paper as this means concerns about accessibility are more likely to be heard and considered. Also, the accessibility community is a great support for anyone working in the tertiary education sector, providing guidance and recommendations on all aspects of accessibility compliance. That can be a really good starting point if you do not know what your next step should be.”
Embedding accessibility training
Without the required support – and sometimes even with it - the truth is, accessibility is often an afterthought. It should be ‘built in’ to all students’ learning experiences, says Megan Hector, policy and research manager at Policy Connect:
“There should be an expectation that staff make all their work and resources accessible, and it would be really positive if teaching courses included training on how to do this, for people working at any level of the education system.”
Students could benefit from greater awareness too, Hector adds: “What if part of studying in further or higher education was about learning how to make your essays and presentations accessible? This is a valuable skill to carry through to the world of work.”
Wilkinson agrees:
“We need to embed the skills of creating accessible materials right through education. This is the answer to building a sustainable future for inclusion - and the education sector would be remiss if it failed to deliver such skills development for graduate employment.”
Culture change
Culture change is needed, Wilkinson adds, to build inclusive systems that work for all learners.
“We need to break the culture that silos adjustments into disability services and support,”
he says.
“Many of the adjustments commonly seen on personal learning support plans for disabled students are just good pedagogical techniques for inclusive learning, from providing lecture slides ahead of lectures to glossaries of key terms. Similarly, a disabled student and an international student may both face a language barrier that could be overcome with the same pedagogical change, yet one has to seek support for disability services and the other the international office."
Wilkinson goes on to recommend that universities and colleges pivot away from a diagnostic focus for support towards a barrier-based conversation, explaining,
“knowing my diagnosis as a wheelchair user is unnecessary when the conversation is essentially that I need step-free access."
The power of artificial intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments can further support personalised teaching systems, says Kellie Mote, Jisc’s subject specialist in accessibility and assistive technology.
“AI underpins speech recognition technology. I think we will see software becoming more accurate, and that it will be able to recognise more diverse speech patterns over time.”
AI presents other opportunities to remove barriers, Mote adds:
“For example, Jisc recently supported a knowledge exchange project with researchers from the Open University to share experiences using an AI-powered virtual assistant as an alternative to form-filling. Working with educators across the country, the project explored potential benefits, and enabled participants to reflect on what is needed to get these tools working effectively. We know that administrative burden is a particular barrier for disabled students, so using AI to remove this obstacle is an example of using tech for good.”
Seeking to develop a portfolio of tested, trusted AI tools to recommend to universities and colleges, Jisc’s new national centre for AI in tertiary education will support the use of ethical AI for teaching and learning.
Looking to the future
There’s much to be positive about as universities and colleges continue to improve the accessibility of their digital materials. As Winkler concludes:
“A positive byproduct of the pandemic is that online learning has incorporated some reasonable adjustments, such as recorded lectures. It has also highlighted a number of digital inequalities, which have required a response at a national level. I hope the insights gained during the past 12 months will result in institutions’ greater and continued awareness of the gaps that exist within accessibility, thus demonstrating a strong need for inclusive design, sector-wide".
This week’s episode is all about teaching students on the autism spectrum, with the incredibly inspirational and creative Charlotte Judd, from Weston Bay College.
Weston Bay is the only residential autism training environment in the UK, and Charlotte paints a brilliant picture of what it’s like to work, and study there. Everything from ensuring the wellbeing of students, to improving digital skills, and training students for the workplace, is perfectly tailored to the needs of each individual student.
Charlotte explains how they supported students during lockdown – including everything from online cooking classes, to work experience placements in COVID-19 test centres.
It’s true what Charlotte says, every day in her role is completely different, and this chat proves how the college rises to challenges, pivoting, adapting and finding solutions that suit their students.
Charlotte also shares some helpful resources for those teaching students on the autism spectrum.
Show notes
Don’t forget, if you’d like to come on the show, you can email podcast@jisc.ac.uk, and if you’re enjoying the series, please do leave us a review on Itunes and share with those who you think might like it too.
If you have any comments or have solved a challenge with technology and would like to share your story email us podcast@jisc.ac.uk.
Episode guest
Charlotte Judd
Digital coach and specialist autism practitioner, Weston Bay
