Waking up in the cool of the morning in a wood near Reading, southern England, with the first rays of dawn streaming through his bivouac and a crick in his neck, Steve Waygood could be forgiven for thinking he’d signed up to the wrong course.
But this is “experiential learning” in the raw: an increasingly popular practice used by businesses to connect their workforce to the real-world substance of their environmental policies.
As head of responsible investment at UK insurer Aviva, Waygood is already more on board than most. But eco hat or no, he still sees the value of ditching his suit for a few days and stepping into the wild. “If we forget to savour the world,” he says, quoting the acclaimed American children’s writer, E B White, “what possible reason do we have for saving it?”