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Ayers Saint Gross publishes JUST Disclosure!

Allison Wilson

Sustainability Director

Ayers Saint Gross

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

March 8, 2019

I've got exciting news to share! Ayers Saint Gross' JUST disclosure went live on Monday. See our blog post about it here: https://asg-architects.com/ideas/blog/. That has a link out to our actual disclosure as well. It's been a bananas week with our internal communications campaign on it in full swing. I know a number of your firms, based on discussions at the Winter Summit, are considering doing similar disclosures and I'd be happy to share our experiences in both getting to the point of publishing disclosure as well as what the aftermath has already started to look like.

Please feel free to reach out if you'd like to talk more!

Aley

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Jim Nicolow

Director of Sustainability

Lord Aeck Sargent

LEEDuser Expert

10 thumbs up

Fri, 03/08/2019 - 23:53

Well done, Aley. Transparency is an important tool for positive change. It looks like ASG opted out of reporting on the Living Wage indicator and I'm curious to hear the thinking behind that. We 'just' completed our first biannual JUST Label renewal last month, and the Living Wage indicator prompted some pretty energetic discussions when we realized we would drop from our previous score of 2 to a (frankly embarrassing) score of 1 for Living Wage (based upon the lowest paid employees in the firm and the current wage benchmarks for each office location). I felt like we should report it anyway, warts and all, hoping that the low score might ultimately provide some pressure for us to address it. JUST is an imperfect system, but I the process prompted some really uncomfortable though ultimately healthy/productive discussions on each round, especially where indicator scores didn't necessarily align with our self image. Thanks for sharing insight into your process, and congratulations! -Jim

Allison Wilson

Sustainability Director

Ayers Saint Gross

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

Sun, 03/10/2019 - 18:40

Thanks! We opted out of the Living Wage indicator for a couple of reasons and continue to have ongoing dialogue about it, especially since the disclosure is now public and a larger swath of our firm is looking at the information we've published. Ultimately our powers that be elected to opt out of the Living Wage indicator for a couple of reasons: A) We have an internally published compensation philosophy that aligns with the fact that we're an ESOP and addresses the fact that we as a company had to take on debt to buy out the previous shareholders to make that transition. Until we're free and clear of that debt, our powers that be didn't want to confuse the discourse on compensation by adding additional statistics and benchmarks to the dialogue. B) We earned top marks in the Pay Scale Equity indicator and honestly we're well below the 1:15 ratio but JUST doesn't have a way for us to report that. There was concern from our CFO in particular related to wage compression across our organization in relation to the Living Wage indicator. We're continuing to talk about Living Wage because folks internal to our organization have raised the same question - the fact that we didn't disclose our information says something too and we're sorting through that. I don't love that we didn't disclose on that indicator; the whole point is to show our organization with warts and all, but we didn't win that debate on every indicator. We won it on Animal Welfare, but unfortunately lost it on Living Wage. Good for Lord Aeck Sargent for disclosing information even if it isn't glowing! I think what's ultimately great about JUST is that since it's always a work in progress, it gives us all something to keep working on while having measurable accountability. Fingers crossed two years from now we can show progress!

Jim Nicolow

Director of Sustainability

Lord Aeck Sargent

LEEDuser Expert

10 thumbs up

Mon, 03/11/2019 - 20:42

That's great insight. I do like that the program allows for some 'opt outs' as it doesn't afford the opportunity to provide clarifying details or narratives where an indicator might not be a good fit for whatever reason. Thanks for sharing more detail on your process, I think it will be helpful for others pursuing a JUST label. -Jim

Audrey Alverson

Director of Marketing

Hacker Architects

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Tue, 03/12/2019 - 20:55

Congrats Aley and ASG for joining the JUST crowd! Hacker is a fairly recent addition to the JUST organizations - we are one year in, which means one year until our next renewal. Thought I'd share a little bit about our experience as well, particularly with Living Wage as doing the JUST assessment helped us make some changes. We ended up using the living wage guideline to determine starting salaries. We bumped all of our lowest paid employees (admin and all) to the point of hitting the 3-star living wage mark. This has impacts, of course! But our leadership has currently taken the approach of keeping the highest paid employees' salaries flat and increasing from the bottom. We are below a 1:4 ratio between lowest and highest salaries, and wrote the 1:4 ratio into our Pay Scale Equity policy. (I realize we have a much smaller company than many, so issues like this are easier to take on.) I'm also not entirely certain we'll be able to keep up with the 3-star rating on living wage; it'll be interesting to do the assessment in another year. I've really appreciated having the JUST assessment as something to lean on when we are making decisions; I think it's helped us make a lot of positive changes and keep accountable to the policies we set. It also points out very clearly where work needs to be done - for us, it's gender diversity. I can see the argument for allowing the opt-out of one category, but I pushed for us to report on all. I felt that opting out made it look worse than just putting it out there (warts and all, as Jim mentioned) - and since the whole point is transparency, let's get uncomfortable! :) I'm really pretty entrenched in this JUST process and all that goes along with it - would always be glad to chat with any others about it!

Allison Wilson

Sustainability Director

Ayers Saint Gross

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

Tue, 03/12/2019 - 21:06

Thanks for jumping into the discussion! @Nadav and company - at some point maybe a panel discussion webinar from SDL firms that have gone through JUST or BCorp to share lessons learned for people who are exploring the disclosure/certification might be valuable?

Yarden Harari

CallisonRTKL Inc.

LEEDuser Premium Member

2 thumbs up

Tue, 03/12/2019 - 22:59

Thanks for sharing all these insights, and congrats! I would absolutely raise my hand to listen in on a webinar discussion on the process of pursuing the JUST certification. Did your firms consider any others (like bcorp, etc.) before deciding on the JUST label?

Allison Wilson

Sustainability Director

Ayers Saint Gross

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

Tue, 03/12/2019 - 23:17

Hi Yarden! Ayers Saint Gross did consider B Corp and I'm not entirely sure that's off the table for us now that we've done JUST. At the moment at least JUST had fewer barriers to entry and greater project / client benefits so it was easier for us to get buy-in on and advance, but I think our executive committee is still talking about whether B Corp has any additional benefits for us or not.