Speaker 1 (00:00.29)
Hello, I'm Maria, host of the My Local Marketer podcast. In this episode, I'm speaking with Gurprit, Brad and Graham from Ethical Reading, a not-for-profit social enterprise dedicated to making reading a better place to live and work by helping organizations become more ethical. As always, please do share this episode with someone who you think may be interested. Now, without further ado, let's jump in.

Hello Gurprit and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. Thank you for coming on. How are you?

Very well, Maria. Thank you for inviting me. Delighted to be here.

You're very welcome. And we are here today in the Apex Plaza, which is actually beautiful. I've never been in here before, but you have some clients in here, don't you?

We're very lucky, yes. So we have very good relationships with the manager here. again, she allows us to use this space from time to time if clients aren't using it. We're also lucky that a number of our partners are here, as you said. We've got Nat West, Hugh Smiths, Penningtons, Blake Morgan, and I'm sure there are some others.

Speaker 1 (01:02.872)
handy to have them all on the wrong roof. that leads nicely into saying you are obviously from, you're the co-founder of Ethical Reading. So what is ethical reading for our listeners?

Integrating is a social enterprise. not for profit. The focus really is to encourage organizations to be more ethical in their practices. Of course, that's very broad. What does that mean in practice? And we kind of distill it down to three of four key things based around some core values that we all believe in. Values such as integrity, engagement.

with society, so this is social engagement, responsibility, accountability, compassion, because everybody goes through tough times. And what we do is we've taken this mission of encouraging ethical practice and we've distilled into four main programs. One of them is around healthy and ethical workplaces. We believe workplace culture is very important to get the best out of people that working in an organization.

to realize their potential, if you like. And it turns out, actually, if you create an organization in a workplace where people are valued, they're fairly paid, and the values inside that organization and the culture are actually lived rather than being out on the wall in big letters and so on, what you find is actually people are more engaged. They are more likely to share their opinions and views, and they're healthier and happier, they live longer.

There's all sorts of research that shows that if you have an environment like that, they're actually more productive as well. Something like 20 to 30 percent more productive. But we're very keen also to take what we do to a younger generation. So this is about ethics and education. And my colleague Brad will elaborate on that. But this is really about engaging with young people in schools, people from the ages of 16 to 18, who are about to

Speaker 2 (03:08.054)
going to the world of work or university are going to be our future leaders that they understand what ethical decision making is all about. Another program that we have is around environmental sustainability. We do believe that that actually is a moral issue because ethics is about obligations and responsibilities as well as values and we owe our future generations to leave the planet in

a better environment than we've inherited and actually we're doing the exact opposite. And my colleague Graham will talk about that as well. So we have a number of these programmes that we're very keen on and we engage with our partners. Pay an annual fee and that enables us to put on these events and programmes. And through that we engage the local community and thereby we encourage them to be more ethical in their practices.

So there are three general areas. So obviously you deal with the health area, say broadly. Obviously Brad deals with the education, physics, ethics side, and then Graham deals with the sustainability side. So those are the three broad areas that you do. Could you, from your point of view, an example? I know you said you do workshops every month. What else do you do for the health side?

So we provide some training. So this is actually created by experts. We're very small. have volunteer led, the three directors give their time for free. And we have two part-time staff. So we're a really small organization. But we work with some very passionate people who do provide some work pro bono for us. So we have specialists who have over 100 years of experience and training in

employee relations management and they have done you know first-hand research into some of these areas as well. They've run their own organizations and we've created some training around healthy and ethical workplaces, how to create one, what does it mean, what are the elements, how to get your staff engaged, how to track progress over time and we've delivered that to a number of organizations including Readingborough Council,

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largest department within that, adult health and social care and we've also delivered to the Thames Valley Police Force and some private organisations as well.

So how do you measure the impact of the courses, the workshops that you deliver? Like, so I imagine you have to track your progress over time.

Yeah, that's great question. So some of these impacts are more easily measured than others. So when you're tracking behaviors, it's very difficult to track in the short term or long term. Certainly we can measure when we deliver a course, the evaluation from the course. And the immediate feedback is great. But you're right, we need to track it over time. One of the things we have done is, for example, environmental sustainability, is planted trees.

So we can count the number of trees that we planted. Trees have the greatest impact in urban areas as the world warms up in terms of providing shade where there is a lot of concrete, in terms of the mental health side of things, and in terms of retention of water, particularly in the UK where we get a lot of flooding. So we've planted those in areas particularly where there are many trees. At the moment, I would say that is a

difficult question to answer because some of these things take a very long time to really understand the impact. What we can do in the short term is track measures around activity as opposed to outcomes. So this is things like, you know, we've engaged so many schools, we've engaged so many students, we've planted so many trees, we've done so many things. But over time we have to actually have hard measures around the impact as well.

Speaker 1 (07:09.74)
You mentioned that obviously the Reading Borough Council in Thames Valley, who do you cater for? Are there like, you know, the individuals who are interested in sustainability or maybe a small businesses with one person or a couple of people who are interested in being more ethical? Do you cater for them as well or what do you offer for them or is it just the large corporations?

This is where we try to cater obviously for our partners, which tend to be business organizations. A lot of our supporters are a mixture of organizations which are businesses, third sector organizations, but we also try to cater for individuals. So we have in the year a number of events which we call meetups, particularly targeted at the general public so they can engage around ethical issues.

We've had meetups around artificial intelligence, example. Social anxiety around the climate is another one which was popular. So there are a number of different types of subjects that we have which cater more for the general public.

So what are your goals for ethical reading for this year or maybe going forward if you've got a five year plan?

So we tend to have a number of specific things in our calendar, if like. So for the course of the year, we tend to have the Schools Ethics Fair, which my colleague Brad will go into. We have a number of events, both for businesses and for individuals around environment, which my colleague Graham will go into. And then we have meetups, as I mentioned. And we do have an event, which is called the Community Forum, where we invite our

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partners, business partners, but also the third sector to engage. So we want to get closer links between the third sector and businesses so they can see the value that they're adding and perhaps support them as well.

So would you say you have just a general awareness agenda so you don't have a set IO? We want 100 businesses in Reading to be classed as ethical within five years. Do you have any set targets like that or is it just a general awareness?

We have a general growth targets internally in terms of, you know, we'd like to have so many partners, we'd like to have so many people involved in these schools, fairs and so on. So we have internal targets which we try to exceed. But I wouldn't say that there are sort of hard targets in that sense. I would say over the last three or four years has been difficult for everyone, including the non-profit.

third sector, things are starting to look a little bit more stable now and looking forward I certainly am a lot more optimistic than I was in the past. So, you we're certainly looking to grow and we're certainly looking to expand our footprint, get more engaged with organizations and individuals.

Thank you, Gurprit.

Speaker 1 (10:10.072)
Could you just give a bit of background for who you are and what your role is in ethical writing?

Right, so first of all, I think you can probably tell I'm an American. I'm afraid I've lived here for many decades and I still can't put on a British accent, any British accent. I'm bit linguistically challenged, I think. But I grew up in America and then I came to Britain to do postgraduate work and went back briefly for an academic job in the US and then I worked at the University of Reading for 27 years in the philosophy department teaching ethics. So, when Gurprit

interviewed me to see whether I might be interested in ethical reading. I jumped at the chance because I could see that he had his heart in the right place and I was interested in the projects. So my background is in academia, not in business, but I hope I've been able to contribute something.

I find bridging the academia with the business fascinating because sometimes I feel academia is a bit isolated, so it's not really applicable. So how have you found translating what you've learnt in the academic world to what you do now for ethical reading?

Well, I hope it's made me more succinct and focused and accessible. But it's not been that hard, actually. mean, the people I've been dealing with in ethical reading, they know what they're talking about. And they, as I said, they have their hearts in the right place. And so do the businesses that we work with. So it's not been that difficult a transition. I think I'm more impressed by their skill sets than they are by mine. But anyway, it's been a nice transition.

Speaker 1 (11:43.928)
So take in your background then, what's your role been for ethical reading?

I guess for the first two or three years I was a volunteer and did a lot of volunteer work for them. I co-wrote a code of ethics for them, participated in podcasts and events and helped organize events. And then I was asked to be a director and I started as a director in January of 2020.

When we look at business ethics and education ethics, what do those two umbrellas mean? What do do for them? Are there programs under them?

I mean, I guess business ethics is in some sense, maybe our core topic because Gerber's idea was to embed ethics in organizations here in Reading. Well, most of the organizations are businesses, although we also deal with some other organizations that are not businesses like Thames Valley Police and Reading Borough Council. But still, most of the organizations we deal with are businesses. And the idea was to improve the business ethics in the workplace.

But there's, of course, a huge number of things that come under that umbrella. And they've evolved as I've been here. So you might say that ethical recruitment is under that umbrella. Of course, lots of other HR issues are as well. Healthy and ethical workplaces are, we call that a separate program, but that's really kind of broadly under the business ethics umbrella. But now new things are coming up. Artificial intelligence is a huge topic, and ethics

Speaker 4 (13:17.334)
around artificial intelligence is a huge topic. But so are questions about sustainability and then relations between companies in Reading and the wider world, including the EU. We have a huge range of topics. One of the new ones I'll just very briefly mention is we're getting involved with topics to do with property and property development and property management. Now,

One of our partners is Grant Thornton. And Grant Thornton proposed to us a few years ago that they would like to get involved with young people in Reading, partly because they saw this as their future workforce. And they said, we thought it would be desirable for these young people to start thinking about ethical issues that arise in the workplace. And because of that suggestion, we got in touch with some local schools and asked them whether they would be interested in some kind of

cooperative arrangement between them and businesses in the area to explore these topics with their students, particularly now of course A-level students who are interested in business or economics or philosophy or religious studies, but other areas as well. And the schools jumped at it and what's evolved is a one-day ethics fair hosted at a local school with say five or six schools each year sending students, GCSE and A-level students.

and then say 10 of our partners supplying business representatives who then in small group discussions talk about problems that arise in the workplace. should say not just businesses because Thames Valley Police has participated in this as well. So organizations. That's been a huge success that business ethics fair and to the point where we're even talking about doing it in other cities as well.

So you've got the education side, which is aimed more at the students, like you said, the up and coming workforce. And then you've got the business ethics side, which is businesses that are already there, that you just give workshops to help teach them or give them guidance on how to be more ethical with hiring.

Speaker 4 (15:27.894)
So that's it. I'm glad you put it that way because actually in some cases we are giving guidance but I'd say quite often we're putting people in the room some of whom have a lot of experience in an area and there's discussions of best practice and I wouldn't really say that ethical reading is standing up as the teacher on these occasions. Somebody else who's got expertise in that particular area is providing the leadership. But in other cases we've had workshops on

where in a way nobody is an expert yet because the topic is so new it's very much exploring something that we all need to start thinking about because it's a growing phenomenon. should just mention by the way on ethics and education we also have a program that we run with the University of Reading for final year undergraduates so we have a prize every year for the best ethics essay by a final year undergraduate.

at the University of Reading where the essay has some connection with business ethics. doesn't have to be exactly on business ethics. We've run this competition now for three years and it's been a big success as well. So that's aimed at final year undergraduate university students, whereas the other program is aimed at really years 10 and 12.

Has there been a programme or project you've done so far that you've really enjoyed, like a specific workshop that you think has gone really well?

Some of the ones I've run, I think, have gone well, but some of the ones that other people have run perhaps have gone even better. so I've learned from a lot of the different workshops. Yeah. In fact, I confess I have a sort of pocketful of stories I use to tell people when they're bored of things that I've learned in workshops, on a huge range of topics.

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Do you have any favourite topics? Areas where you think businesses maybe need to improve on this area?

Well, my specialty, my personal specialty in ethics is fairness. And one of the key components of fairness, if not the key component, is treating people in ways that ignore irrelevant differences between them. So treating people in a way that ignore irrelevant differences, but then teasing at what are the irrelevant differences, what are the relevant differences, and what are the irrelevant differences. And that often comes up in business.

Context is this person's disability an irrelevant difference or relevant difference is this person's need? relevant difference or an irrelevant difference So I'm since that's something I'm academically interested in it's also something that piques my interest particularly when it comes up in workshops

fascinating because I hear a lot of conversations in businesses and when speaking to people where people say, you know, for example, so and so always gives me work and they demand it to be done straight away and I'm busy but I have to do it's way to move around mine. Would that come under fairness?

absolutely. guess unreasonable demands come under fairness.

Speaker 1 (18:33.354)
that's quite a big one.

What are reasonable and what are unreasonable? That's right. Yeah.

Brad, thank you so much for time. think we could really get into, you we could spend a whole hour talking about fairness in business, so I'll let you go. Okay.

Thank you.

Speaker 1 (18:50.072)
Could you please introduce yourself and what your role is on the board at Ethical Reading?

My name's Graham Roberts. After a long history of working and living in Reading, it was only at the point of retirement about two or three years ago, a long time in engineering, procurement and finance, that I came out into the world of the voluntary sector and found it completely different. I left my organisation, South Pristeria, and didn't really have any idea about what I would do and had no idea what was going on in Reading.

So I think at the point that I met Gertrude just after the pandemic and he invited me along to a business review, I could then see that I could probably use my Excel skills to help with managing the finance and making sure that the first point that we're talking about, the sustainability of the organization was in place so that we could actually work forward over the forthcoming period and where we are today to make sure that

We had enough money basically to keep ourselves going because ethics is a very difficult thing to imagine and to actually put into practice. And it's these programs that were just described by Gertrude and Brad that give it some form of solidness. So the first point was to make sure that our organization was sustainable in finance. And that's what I've been doing on an annual basis and helping the organization just monitor where it's going and what it's doing.

and to help us both grow.

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I'm really glad you mentioned that. Sustainability first and foremost comes from the finance side. Your business needs to be financially viable in order to be sustainable. Because if you don't have that, then it doesn't exist. You can't help anyone.

So that has been a focus since the pandemic and since our turbulent times of just economic change. So we've had to cut the cloth accordingly, which has meant that there's been a definite focus on doing events or maintaining programs that actually have meaning to those in our partner community and supported community. And the thread of voluntary sector versus commercial sector, I find that

Ethical Reading is pulling this thread along our community and people are joining up from both large corporates last year, like the University of Reading joined us as a partner, KPMG joined us as a partner. Companies that normally wouldn't associate themselves with small organisations like Ethical Reading have found that common theme of sustainability, of ethics in education, ethics in business.

very important and we're providing, I believe personally, that we provide that focus and the forums for people of like-mindedness to come together and discuss say difficult subjects or subjects that one or two in an organization might have identified as important. People in the voluntary sector have been working on it for years and bringing the two together can actually create a better environment and fulfill

ethical reading is that place where we make reading a better place to live.

Speaker 1 (22:11.852)
You've mentioned some really interesting, what I would call challenges or maybe opportunities, whatever word you want to use there. First of all, we're talking about the financial side, making sure, especially with the pandemic, that ethical reading was financially viable. But then also you mentioned that you've managed to get some larger corporations, organizations on board. Have you faced any other challenges in that? Because obviously some of these organizations, is it?

difficult to get them to invest in sidereal sustainability and an ethical approach.

I think Gerber is a very proactive person and we try to take our leadership from him. It is just that common theme that doing the right thing just is something that everybody can simply understand and follow along. How you do that is through the programmes and I think the programmes bringing ethics into action bring it to life and then you can identify with sustainability programmes like Tree Sir Reading.

where nearly five years ago at the beginning, Ethical Reading was very lucky. I think they did it very well. They applied for money, £20,000 of grant money to provide trees in urban areas within Reading over a five-year period. And that grant was successfully won by Ethical Reading on behalf of Reading Borough Council. So the money is donated back into Reading Borough Council. It has, as corporate

explained earlier on the Trees of Reading program has planted many trees in areas of urban deprivation where it is much more important than putting it in a field. These trees that are substantial and are quite expensive to put in and course maintain over a period of five years. That program has been very successful and has been attributable to ethical reading.

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really like how you said at start there that in order to communicate what you do, you need to bring ethics to life and also make it identifiable. I think that is a great approach. It's so important for everyone, but people need to understand how it's relevant to them and how it helps them and then you can get them on board. So I think that's a brilliant approach. Have you got any other targets or programs that you'd like to do for the sustainability side?

become a member of our sustainability network and that's a group of just like-minded individuals. Maybe in their corporate life feel a bit lonely at times if they've given that single job. I know I was when I had to do diversity in Motorola many years ago before it was even understood what that word meant. So if certain individuals come along and join this network then those like-minded others

provide inspiration and support, if not new ideas that they can explore when they go back to their workplaces. And with the backbone of the network in place, those individuals actually have somebody they can refer to. And ethical reading is an entity that has legal position in the society. So it's not just a bunch of chaps meeting around the pub, but it does have some gravitas.

I think being supported by three mares of Reading in a row, personally, who have done broadcasts for us and have publicly supported what Ethical Reading does, has given some kudos to the bigger organisations which then have been attracted to us through personal recommendation. And as such, we haven't had a hard sales job to try to convince them to become partners. They have just said,

This is a great idea. We want to come on board. So knitting all that together provides energy for sustainability programs for what are we going to be doing in the future in 2025 and beyond? think strategically, Reddit Climate Change is bringing out a new strategy in June this year, but it's going to require the community to implement some of the ideas that

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coming out of that for the 2030 or maybe 2035 net ratings target. And that's where ethical breading can be a vehicle to the communication into small businesses and now larger businesses and the university about what the community can do. And we can work with voluntary sector people to communicate the same information.

Please let you mention communication there, because as you said, whether you do something is one thing, but how you communicate it and getting people to know what you do is a different thing. Could you go into a bit more with how you communicate what you do for the sustainability side of ethical reading to the wider community?

Mainly I would say through our chief champion, Catherine, who has the handle on our social media and advertising and things like what we're doing now. Hopefully we'll be helping that communications channel. But generally it is just taking an idea, finding some experts in the field and using our partner supporters and general public members who can come along to our meetups. And it's self-simulating, so.

there'd be maybe a talk on something that one of our supporters wanted to be aired, like neurodiversity for example. We met with people who were neurodiverse in that company and how it affected them and what they've done about it, how the company's policies affected how they work now and in the future and others coming along because they're interested.

So connecting with the experts already, tapping into their networks, yeah. Is there anything, any message that you'd like to leave our listeners with on the sustainability side or ethical reading overall?

Speaker 3 (28:16.386)
Well I think on the network side is join us in the network. Use the link that must be in this podcast somewhere.

Yeah, it'll be on the landing page, all the links, everything we've discussed will be on the landing page.

Thank you. So that's number one. The more followers we get, the more interest we get. And if you would like to volunteer, if you've just recently retired, it's a great way of getting to know your community. I've met so many interesting people that had I not joined Ethical Reading, I'd have no chance on this earth of meeting the Vice-Chancellor of Reading University, the three mayors of Reading, one of whom is also our accountant that I now know personally.

So all these influential characters, if you've got a bit of business background, if you know how to build relationships, if you've been a salesman in the past and you just want to get out there and do something that helps Reading be a better place to live and work, then Ethical Reading is the place to come.

and that's a great thing to leave our listeners on with. So Graham, Gurprit, Brad, thank you all so much for coming on the podcast and yeah, let's get people signing up to ethical reading.