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Even as the screens in trading rooms around the financial districts have been turning red, British business has been turning greener.

The findings of the second Sunday Times Green List published today show that businesses and other organisations have placed the environment at the forefront of their commitments, regardless of the external pressures being felt by all due to the recession.

Driven by workforces that are increasingly demanding greater environmental awareness from their employers, the 60 companies that feature in the 2009 Green List have improved their eco pedigrees markedly in the past 12 months.

This has allowed us to expand the Green List from 50 to 60 organisations, while simultaneously raising the standard. Last year, the overall green score, taking account of both our company and employee surveys, that was required by a firm in order to qualify for the top 50 was 57.6%; this year it is 66.7%. Had we maintained last year’s qualification level, almost 70 organisations would have been included in this year’s Green List.

Fuelling this rise in the overall green scores is our unique survey of workforce engagement with green initiatives, which accounts for 30% of an organisation’s final ranking.

This year, just under 21,000 employees completed the 52-point survey, which explores how committed staff are to green ideals and whether corporate pledges on the environment are values shared by management and backed up with concrete action.

Overall, the positive responses to the employee survey rose from 69.8% to 73.4%, an increase of 3.6 percentage points year on year, reflecting the rise in scores for 51 of the 52 statements that employees were asked to score on a seven-point scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.

The biggest jump in scores over the past 12 months — of 6.9 percentage points — was recorded by employees for being encouraged by their managers to use public transport or to share cars for commuting. The green score on this criterion last year was 54.8%; this year it has risen to 61.7%. The same rise was recorded by staff for receiving adequate green training at work, up from 63.3% in 2008 to 70.2%.

Our winning company, Forster, a London-based marketing, public relations and design agency, is in many ways typical of the organisations that made this year’s Green List. Although it is one of the smallest firms to enter, with just 51 employees, and has a low environmental impact, it has placed care of the planet at the heart of its operations. This spirit has earned the company a 94% green score from employees on this very point.

“This was a founding principle,” says Jilly Forster, of her company’s environmental commitment. “It’s part of my DNA.”

About a quarter of the staff at Forster are taking advantage of five minutes’ extra holiday accrued for each return commute to and from work they make by bicycle or on foot, earning up to 2.5 days of additional annual leave. This incentive has the dual benefit of cutting CO2 emissions and helping staff to keep fit, and is just one of the many innovations demonstrated by firms, both large and small, in this year’s list.