Facebook parent company Meta, online store builder Shopify, and a string of other tech companies have pledged to commit $1 billion to rejuvenate the carbon capture market.

A new joint venture will be created with the sole purpose of buying up carbon from other technology companies over the next nine years.

The move is especially significant for Shopify, now one of the world’s most popular ecommerce website builders, which has already purchased more Direct Air Capture (DAC) carbon removal than any other company in history.

Tech Titans Team Up

Along with Meta and Shopify, payment services company Stripe, Google parent Alphabet and consulting behemoth Mckinsey have pledged a total of $925 million to the project.

The companies have set up a new organization called Frontier, which will be given a $925 million war chest with which to buy up carbon removal from other technology businesses.

CNBC reports that “Stripe will also provide customers to Frontier through its Stripe Climate program, which allows online sellers using the company’s platform to devote a portion of sales to carbon removal.”

Shopify Swap Commerce for Capturing Carbon

Shopify’s involvement with Frontier shows that the company’s will to be green stretches far beyond its logo – before the project being discussed at present was even launched, the company had purchased 10,000 tonnes from Carbon Engineering and another 5,000 tonnes from Climeworks.

“Large-scale DAC-based carbon removal is essential to undo 200 years of burning fossil fuels” – Stacy Kauk, Director of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund.

Kauk added that Shopify “need[s] others to join us with purchase commitments so we can kickstart the market, scale this technology globally, and start reversing climate change.”

The company also has a sustainability fund that pumps $5 million a year into fighting climate change via a number of environmental initiatives.

Getting Carbon Capture off the Ground

Carbon Capture has been touted as a way out of the climate crisis for some time now, and despite promising signs that it may be able to bring the earth’s temperature back down to pre-industrial (i.e. safe) levels, very little has been done so far.

A type of dense, igneous rock called Periodite an excellent candidate for Carbon storage.

Carbon Capture involves CO2 being separated from other gases produced during the industrial process, such as those at coal and natural-gas-fired power plants. After being separated, the CO2 is then compressed and transported to storage via pipelines or vehicles.

Then, the CO2 is permanently stored in rock formations. A type of dense, igneous rock called Periodite is thought to be an excellent candidate for such storage.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the pre-industrial level could only be reached if 6 billion tons of CO2 are removed every year until 2050. However, only around 10,000 tons of carbon have been removed via carbon capture so far.

Indeed, the tide does seem to be changing – the US, UK, and EU have all made some sort of pledge over the last couple of years to capture large remove carbon from the atmosphere using this technique.

Money and Morals

It seems like there’s no limit to precisely how involved in our lives tech companies are, and how essential their applications or products will become to our day-to-day lives. Companies like Facebook and Google are already virtually inescapable.

This is why it’s important to continuously ask what role these companies should be playing in our lives, and what social responsibilities should subsequently flow from that – a conversation big tech businesses often want to avoid.

And whilst they will continue to fail to meet expectations in a variety of other areas, it’s encouraging to see so many big names putting themselves at the forefront of a green initiative that needs this kind of investment and exposure to really get off the ground.

Tech businesses across the US are cautiously bringing employees back into the office in line with hybrid and remote working policies.

But whilst companies like Google usher employees back into their buildings, the relaxing of rules at other tech businesses like Activision – which is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft – has caused mass unrest among employees.

But with web conferencing software now part and parcel of almost all tech sector jobs and facilitating smooth remote working arrangements – and the threat of COVID-19 still lurking – the question of whether we should really be going back into the office is an open one.

Tech Giants Head Back Hesitantly with Hybrid Plans

Google has been more adamant than most about an eventual return to the office, even when infections were at their highest – but like many companies around them, has found hybrid arrangements to be the compromise that suits everyone.

Their proposed vaccine mandate caused quite the stir among employees after the Alphabet subsidiary said those who refused to get a vaccine would have their contracts terminated.

Since this Monday, Google employees have been expected to come into the office three days a week unless an alternative arrangement has been made.

Starting Monday, Google employees are now expected to come into the office three days a week unless an alternative arrangement has been made. Many have been made, too – and Google has approved around 85% of them, signaling a dampening down of the hard line back-to-office stance.

In a similar fashion to Google, Amazon initially had grand plans for corporate workers to return to offices full time, only to be forced back to the drawing board in mid-2021 and nudged into creating a hybrid working policy. Now, it’s up to individual Amazon teams to decide on their arrangements.

Microsoft, on the other hand, started bringing employees back into the office in February, giving them a 30-day window “to make adjustments to their routines and adopt the working preferences they’ve agreed upon with their managers” the Vice President said in a blog post.

Will Employee Pressure Change Policies?

One Tech behemoth that seems to be struggling to get employees onside is Apple, which has instated a similar arrangement to its counterparts yet has faced backlash from employees – who would prefer to come in just one day a week.

Apple employees will initially be expected to come in for just one day, but that will shortly go up to two and then again to three by May 23.

Apple’s return-to-office policy slightly stricter than policies rolled out by Google and Co. because there’s less room for maneuver when it comes to relocations and alternative working patterns.

According to the New York Post, the stringent policy has led a number of Apple employees to pledge to resign once the new working policy comes into force on April 11.

“I’m going to go in to say hello and meet everyone since I haven’t since I started and then sending in my resignation when I get home,” one employee wrote on a message board called Blind. “I already know I won’t be able to deal with the commute and sitting around for 8 hours.”

Another tech entity that has faced unrest relating to its back-to-work plans is Activision Blizzard, the gaming company behind Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush Saga.

The company, which made headlines recently as the world’s most valuable acquisition, after Microsoft made an eye-watering offer, ruffled employees’ feathers by ending the company’s vaccine mandate as part of its return-to-office plans.

The news prompted plans for a virtual walkout staged by Activision staff, but Brian Bulatao – the Activision employee who sent them an email detailing the plan to relax the vaccine mandate – subsequently walked back on the promise and instead said the company’s many studios can decide for themselves whether to enforce one.

According to TechCrunch, 117 employees still went ahead with the virtual walkout.

Is a Return to the Office Really Right?

For the first time in a long time, it is looking increasingly like we’re coming out of the main “stage” or “phase” of the pandemic, at least in the US. Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told Financial Times that we’re coming out of the “full-blown” pandemic phase and that he hoped restrictions would end this year.

The data seems to back up his assertions too – according to the CDC, infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are all down month-on-month after a huge spike in January:

A plausible argument detailing why employees who can perform their jobs from home should do just that will be able to be made until COVID-19 cases are almost non-existent.

Arguably, it does hold water – 37% of all jobs can be completed entirely from home, and this number will be a lot higher in sectors like tech – so why not be safe than sorry if there’s no loss to productivity, and efficiency or overall achievements?

Well, many of the companies that are hauling employees back into the office have long complained about how hard it is to collaborate in remote environments, even with advanced web conferencing software and the tools provided by internal comms apps like Microsoft Teams.

But employees unhappy with their company or manager’s attitude to them working from home could also hamper their desire to innovate, and there’s no guarantee that replacements would be more skilled, especially if the applicant pool is narrowed to people within acceptable commuting distance.

Getting your return-to-office policy right is evidently a delicate balancing act that has to take into account the genuine, tangible pitfalls of working remotely, as well as employee health and welfare. But with no one really knowing what COVID-19 could have in store for us in the near future, being able to adapt to sudden change will prove crucial.

A leading platform for monitoring workplace culture and corporate brand reputation has revealed that Microsoft’s employees rate the company’s culture higher than any other company’s workers.

Hubspot and RingCentral were also among the top 10 companies ranked by their own employees’ feedback, praised for their “vision” and for “never lead(ing) with results” respectively.

The mass shift to hybrid, flexible and remote working arrangements over the last two years has ushered in a new era of company-cultural norms, and tech companies are evidently among the most willing to embrace that change and accommodate employees’ needs.

Microsoft: The Best Place to Work

The report, carried out by Comparably, derived company ratings from the anonymous feedback of current employees at over 70,000 businesses, over the past year.

Comparably claim that nearly “20 different workplace culture categories” were measured, including but not limited to “compensation, leadership, and work-life balance to professional development opportunities, and perks and benefits.”

“Satya Nadella is really inspiring. He has a good vision and the global strategy is excellent. In these complicated times, it’s reassuring to be in such a strong company with a strong leadership team” – Microsoft employee, quoted by Comparably.

Overall, employees at Microsoft rated their company’s culture higher than any other company with more than 500 employees. Google, often touted as a trendsetter for contemporary corporate culture, finished in third place.

Other notable companies that made it into the top 10 include fellow computer-manufacturers IBM (2), software company Hubspot (4), ed-tech business Chegg, (6), and cloud-based comms platform RingCentral (8). CNBC reports that this is in part due to their willingness to offer flexible working options.

What Makes a Company a Joy to Work for?

Leading global authority on workplace culture Great Place to Work identifies 6 key elements that combine to make a good company culture: community, fairness, trustworthy management, innovation, and trust.

Community is important, Great Place to Work says, because it’s vital for team and company cohesion. Feeling like you’re coming together with everyone else and contributing to something greater than the sum of all your parts can have a powerful, unifying impact that forms the foundation of positive company culture.

Community, fairness, trustworthy management, innovation, and trust are needed to build a great company culture.

Unsurprisingly, fairness and trust are both crucial – employees feeling like they’re on unequal footing, or getting fewer opportunities than they deserve, will breed widespread dissatisfaction.

Trust is equally as important – and nothing says you trust your employees like taking their mental health into consideration, giving them the freedom to book time off work when they like, and not clock-watching.

How Can You Improve Your Company’s Culture?

There are loads of ways to improve your company’s culture – but before you commit to any actionable changes, it’s important to define your company’s values, why they’re important and how they’ll make employees feel.

RingCentral doesn’t have a better company culture than, say, other telephone system providers just by chance – they’ve worked hard, over many years, at developing a value-laden belief system that dictates how their businesses run. Hubspot is the same in its industry.

A positive environment for employees can be fostered via lots of different means, even if you’re managing remote employees. Showing you trust your workers by giving them responsibility, for instance, can improve trust. Ensuring employees have the proper equipment shows you value what they do for your business.

The most important thing to remember is that, in almost all cases, granting workers responsibilities, autonomy, and freedom, as well as treating the workforce as a whole with dignity and respect, will pay dividends in the long run.