People keep getting packaged up by business. Be it in gender pay gap reporting, racial equity programmes, menopause initiatives or the muddle of staff surveys. But shouldn’t the conversation about people be about the sweet spot where business looks after its people and people serve their employers?

And shouldn’t there be measures in place that demonstrate that this sweet spot is meaningful? Perhaps there could be a correlation between happiness and productivity, between health and profit, or between mental health and share price.

But we don’t know whether these correlations exist because a company’s people exist in payroll and pension systems, performance reviews, statutory reporting, non-financial disclosures, whistleblowing systems and all sorts of other siloed receptacles of corporate information. It’s likely that people show up in the various corporate reports – but not linked to the financial statements or the share price.

And where people do show up in the corporate reports, this is rarely a model of how people – a company’s talent and generator of ideas – contribute to the success of the company as it goes through transition to a carbon-neutral (or hopefully carbon positive) future.

We are paying a lot of attention to carbon – even in 2025 when net zero transition is being whispered rather than shouted in boardrooms. We have become familiar with the language of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions – with the latter relating to indirect emissions in the value chain – but a company’s impacts are greater than its emissions. Companies have impacts on people too.

Although siloed, most companies will know about their impact on their people from their churn rate, the nature and extent of complaints, sickness leave and the incessant collection of information by the ‘human resources’ function, along with listening sessions and the like.

But unless that information is standardised and linked to other data – audited or external but verified data – it cannot be used.

Why is it a problem? Because an unhappy and unproductive workforce is a risk. So too is a workforce that experiences above average ill health and poor mental health. This is a risk in any individual company, but it also exists in a supply chain.

And it is a risk to the reputation of a company. So, not only would top talent not want to work for a sluggish, sad company; neither would other companies want to do business with it if they only knew the facts.

Today we look at Glassdoor, Fishbowl and the like to find out if we want to work for a company based on what other people who have worked there say about it. These resources are also where analysts look, future partners and future members of a business’s supply chain.

This is an imperfect way of going about understanding a company’s people culture. No wonder the Covid pandemic left companies reeling and slow to tackle the return to the office.

So wouldn’t it be great if trailblazing companies set out to report differently? We Dragonflies think so. If companies could find a way to demonstrate the value of productive, healthy and happy people, there would be a new Scope 3 to think about.