Over the last 18 months Covid-19 has changed the way many of us work and put real pressures on how we organise our lives. To find out more about how the culture of work has changed, the rise of burnout and the inequities the pandemic has exposed, Bernard Hickey talks to tech leader Rowan Simpson and clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More and more companies are committing to doing sustainable and ethical business by becoming B Corporation accredited. Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank CEO Steve Jurkovich about what B Corp certification means and why they’ve done it, and B Corp ambassador Tim Jones from Grow Good explains what companies have to do to become accredited. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the last 30 years, we’ve built an incredibly complex supply chain to give us stuff really cheap. But is it really? Or have the costs just been pushed onto the environment and other workers? How do we find out which products are produced cleanly and don’t impose those unseen costs? On this week’s episode, Bernard speaks to John Holt, who’s launching All Things Considered – a global directory that collates, organises and fact checks the sustainability claims of companies and organisations. He also talks to Sam Jones, founder of apparel company Little Yellow Bird, about how she’s using this information to do business in a sustainable, transparent way.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing is a movement that has arisen over the last decade or so, where big fund managers invest only in companies with sustainable, socially responsible policies. It turns out this is often also the most profitable approach in the long run. One of the leading players in this movement has been the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and its CEO Matt Whineray joins Bernard Hickey in this episode to talk about how the fund operates its ESG policy. Bernard also talks to Barry Coates, founder and CEO of individual ethical investment tool Mindful Money, about how to tell if a company is really as ethical as they say they are.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recognition of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori and what the language means to the fabric of Aotearoa, The Spinoff’s commercial editorial director Simon Day speaks to Teahooterangi Pihama, head of Māori advisory, and Keita Te Ngoungou, Kiwibank Māori advisor. They’ve been given a mandate to steer the Kiwibank waka on it’s journey into te ao Māori, and talk about why te reo Māori is important for all New Zealanders, and how lifting the cultural competency at Kiwibank can improve outcomes for Māori staff and customers, support the growth of the Māori economy and raise the financial capabilities of Māori. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is Good” era of shareholder-driven global capitalism is ending, but what and who will replace it? Bernard Hickey interviews renowned Chicago School economist, author and podcaster Luigi Zingales (Capitalisn't) about what went wrong with corporate capitalism and how it could be fixed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Businesses face a big task and some big decisions in the months ahead. They need to ensure as many staff as possible get vaccinated, without breaking the law or alienating their workforces. They’ll have to look at their own vaccination programmes, their own testing policies and their employment policies. Should they adopt a “no jab no job” policy? Can they? To discuss where these lines will be drawn and who should be doing that drawing – businesses or government – Bernard Hickey talks to BusinessNZ CEO Kirk Hope and Frances Hughes from Oceania Healthcare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When New Zealand’s second national level four lockdown was announced in August, it was a situation many New Zealand business owners were already familiar with and prepared for. The Spinoff’s commercial editorial director Simon Day speaks to Quentin Quin, chief customer officer – business banking at Kiwibank, about what businesses have learned from the last 18 months and how that’s changed their response to the most recent outbreak. Before joining Kiwibank, Quentin worked in ​​a number of post conflict countries, emerging economies and unregulated unstable business environments, and he compares that experience to the economic uncertainty of Covid-19. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last year the government paid out $14 billion in wage subsidies to businesses as part of the Covid-19 response. This included a number of large companies who went on to deliver big annual profits and dividends to shareholders – and very few of those companies have repaid it. In this week’s episode, Bernard Hickey looks at the ethics of the wage subsidy scheme and asks: where is the accountability? And is the social license that was there for wage subsidies in March 2020 still there now? Guests: Professor Jilnaught Wong from the University of Auckland and Peter Vial of Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How big do we want Aotearoa to be? How fast do we want it to grow, and where? And are we still a classless society, or are we becoming a country of owners and servants? In this episode, Bernard Hickey looks at the need for an actual population policy alongside new migration settings. To find out more he talks to demographers Paul Spoonley and Tahu Kukutai, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission's Geoff Cooper and geographer Francis Collins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices