Etsy’s 2013 Values & Impact Annual Report
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Etsy News Blog on February 13, 2014.
Today we’re releasing Etsy’s 2013 Progress Report to our staff and to the public. Our report is unique in that, unlike a typical annual report that focuses on financial performance, this is a measure of the delivery on our commitments to our employees, our community, and the planet.
We created our first values report in 2012, which acted as a baseline, cataloging the initial measurements of our ecological footprint and community impact.
2012 was also the year we became a certified B Corporation. We use B Lab’s rigorous analysis as a means of checking our progress against a third-party standard. Over the last year, our hard work netted an unprecedented increase of 25 points in our B Corp score.
We are proud to be a values-led business and think it’s important to be accountable to all of our stakeholders, not just our investors. We recognize that the company’s success is intrinsically tied to our collective success.
We believe all businesses are obligated to minimize their harm and maximize their benefit to people and the planet. That is why we continuously work to increase the health and happiness of our employees, contribute to our communities, and track and improve our ecological footprint.
This report is for you — our members, our employees, and our peers in the business community.
Here are some of the highlights!
Employees:
Many companies use employee engagement surveys. Our Employee Happiness Survey is different in that we measure the personal well-being of our employees, in addition to their relationships to the company. We understand that one’s personal happiness can be deeply affected by his/her work, and vice versa.
The survey revealed that our employees are a happy group, with 84% positive personal well-being. Our overall employee engagement is 80% positive, compared to the national average of 60%.* We did exceptionally well in Values Alignment, at 91%. The category that we need to work on most is Workload at 46%.
We share our survey results with all of our employees, and publicly, because we value transparency in all of our operations.
Community:
In 2013, we formalized a policy to give all employees 40 hours of paid volunteer time every year. We helped our employees make use of their volunteer time through company-wide volunteer days, as well as customized placement with nonprofit organizations. We leveraged the professional skills of our staff to provide pro bono services to charities and mentorships to educational groups.
Our employees made the most of it by volunteering 1,151 hours with 15 nonprofits in five countries in the last year. We also hosted and mentored 48 nonprofits and education groups in our offices around the world.
Planet:
We expanded our baseline measurements to include more of our offices, business air travel, employee commuting, and domestic shipping in our marketplace. We are continuously working towards getting a completely comprehensive picture of our impact on the environment and, more importantly, reducing it.
As a technology company, our greatest greenhouse gas consumption comes from our data centers. We were surprised, however, to find that our business travel is a close second, comprising 39% of our overall greenhouse gas consumption.
In the last year, we have made our website more efficient, reducing the amount of energy we use per dollar of revenue earned. Our employees contributed to lowering our office electricity use by 19%, and reducing the amount of trash we send to the landfill by 40%.
We publish this report to hold ourselves accountable for delivering on our values and to publicly share our approach to bettering our business. We aren’t perfect, but we are improving. We have learned a lot from our members and our business peers, and we want to continue the open exchange of information.
