Green Cities Named to Mergers & Acquisitions’ 2024 Best Places to Work in Private Equity
Green Cities believes a flat structure provides career mobility, an attribute that won the firm one of Mergers & Acquisitions’ 2024 Best Places to Work in Private Equity awards. Here’s what the firm told us:
What is your approach to training and career mobility?
The Green Cities Company is a small company, yet we work actively to build our team members and their competencies through a performance equity management process. To enhance equity, we established clear behavioral competencies and integrated them into our performance reviews, mitigating proximity bias and promoting fair compensation practices.
We also work with a third-party HR provider to give training to the full staff on facilitating this development through educational sessions around giving and soliciting feedback and setting performance goals.
In 2023, we particularly focused on manager training for both giving and receiving feedback as well as working with their direct reports for career pathing and development. We believe our flat structure actually provides advanced career mobility relative to hierarchical approaches where employee careers are stunted by levels rather than supported by the development of their skills and potential.
Describe your firm’s achievements in DEI over the last year.
DEI&A (the A stands for access) at Green Cities is shepherded and stewarded by our volunteer DEI&A committee, which includes participation by all four managing partners. In 2023, we continued to make progress against goals set by the committee on actions both internal to our firm and external to our properties and partners.
Internal Engagement:
- Creation of a Green Cities mentorship program and onboarding program for new employees.
- Creation of a glossary of terms to provide access to information about our business, our industry and ESG.
- Advancement of our performance equity management system with the rollout of key behavioral competencies and an equitable review process.
External Engagement:
- Development of a shared quick reference calendar with our property management staff to identify opportunities for tenant and community connections.
- Creation of the Green Cities “Yellow Pages,” a directory of local, minority, and women-owned businesses for tenant events and property spend.
- Connection of a significant portion of onsite management bonuses to DEI&A goals on a quarterly basis.
In what ways is your firm advanced in ESG integration?
Our history of ESG leadership dates back to our development roots, driving real estate innovation going back to the mid-1990s. Over time, and through the buyout of the firm by the current managing partners in 2020, we have continued to innovate to lead our industry in ESG results. In 2023, we updated our proprietary Green Cities Index (GCI) to continue to measure the performance and materiality of ESG-related opportunities and risks for each property.
Green Cities’ responsible investment policy describes how ESG is integrated at all stages within the investment process, how ESG is monitored and measured, reporting requirements, and roles and responsibilities for ESG execution. It also includes distinct ESG policies. This policy is shared freely with our limited partners and is embedded in our publicly available annual environmental and community impact report.
Green Cities has been a United Nations-supported Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI) signatory since 2017. It has also reported to GRESB, a benchmark that measures the ESG performance of property since 2015, and has been certified a B corporation since 2015.
