Among the questions this Tomorrow's Company report asks is if companies are prepared for the scale of the energy revolution in prospect whether the system should be updated to take more account of emerging risks of runaway climate change as well as the widely accepted evidence of global warming - and if so, whether business should be proactive in driving reform? It also looks at what policy frameworks business should work with government to prioritise, so that business can play its full role in building tomorrow's green and clean economy and what the transition to the low-carbon world might cost.

This Briefing Document, by Tomorrow’s Company, summarises some of the frameworks that have been established in various countries to support the transition to green, low-carbon economies.  Whilst each have followed their own path the importance of governments and business working together to establish effective frameworks is shared, as are the positive returns both economically and environmentally that are being generated.  This is not intended to be a comprehensive briefing - rather it provides indicative examples. The Tomorrow's Company Briefing Documents are intended to provide the reader with a comprehensive introduction to a particular topic. You can find the full list of Briefing Documents on forceforgood.com here.

On 15 November 2011 Tomorrow's Company launched the first report in a programme on employee voice being undertaken in partnership with the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA). The report ‘Rethinking voice – for sustainable business success’ describes how employee voice is critical for the future of UK plc. Employee voice involves a two-way communication and an honest and trusting relationship between the organisation and its staff. Other project partners include BAE Systems, British Gas, HSBC, IAC Group, Thomson and Unipart, who enrich the report with their own experiences and challenges of voice.  Finally it sets out a framework that pulls together the factors that we think impact on the quality and effectiveness of employee voice in organisations.

This paper introduces the Trust Enablement™ approach to corporate governance, as a natural and harmonizing counterbalance to prevailing risk management practices.Recent attempts to restore confidence in capital markets have been based largely on risk management practices that place greater emphasis on protecting organizations from further erosion of trust than on establishing higher levels of trust and confidence. Efforts focused on proactively building trust yield better results than recent risk management reactions to mistrust.  A complementary, offensive trust and confidence-building strategy is therefore proposed as more effective for reducing director and officer liability exposures and enhancing business value than a prevailing defensive, risk management strategy.Comparative examples of current governance practices and proposed initiatives when mapped to the Trust Enablement™ model reveal a deficiency in trust and confidence-building governance mechanisms.  Trust Enablement™,...

Higher levels of trust in business are known to reduce costs and improve business performance. This paper proposes a framework to help organizations monitor the efficiency of their business practices for indicating trustworthiness to stakeholder groups.  In Part I various trust indicators for customers are examined. Part II, contained in a separate document, examines trust indicators for investors.  New trust concepts are introduced and a novel framework is proposed for classifying conditions that indicate trust (such as the presence of name-brand products, organizational transparency, and warranties).  Examples are used to demonstrate various ways in which the framework can be applied to measure trust indicators for customers.