Organizations across industries are struggling to meet new environmental governance requirements — as well as employee expectations. Learning and development (L&D) leaders find themselves at the crux of this change, tasked with bringing individual employees and corporate culture into compliance with new laws, all while educating themselves on the fly.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) refers to a category of corporate performance indicators, including quantification of water consumption and carbon emissions. According to Gartner, “investors, stock exchanges and boards increasingly use sustainability and social responsibility disclosure information to explore the relationship between a company’s management of ESG risk factors and its business performance.” In other words, over the past few years, ESG has emerged as a major focus for organizations wishing to remain competitive on the world stage.
Barriers to an Effective Rollout
One of the most common challenges when implementing an ESG training rollout will be resistance to change — and this can come from learners at all levels. “To address this,” says “Michael W. Johnson, chief strategy officer at Traliant, “organizations should foster a culture of openness and communication, providing clear explanations of how ESG practices contribute to business results.” Be sure to highlight positive impacts in areas like employee engagement and corporate reputation.
The 3 Key Areas of Skills Training
While a comprehensive sustainability training program will look different for every organization, there are some base-level skills that apply to most industries.
Let’s take a look at three key areas that L&D leaders need to focus on in order to ensure that their ESG rollout covers all the necessary bases and prepares their learners and organizations for a successful future.
1. Company Products
One of the most common areas in which ESG concerns will manifest, and one of the areas that’s most immediately visible to customers, is the interaction between ESG concerns and product offerings.
By integrating sustainability principles into product development processes, organizations can not only meet evolving consumer demands for eco-friendly solutions but also cultivate a competitive edge in an increasingly conscious marketplace. Effective sustainability training equips product development teams with the knowledge and tools to assess the environmental impact of their designs, optimize resource usage and implement innovative strategies for reducing carbon footprint throughout the product lifecycle.
Moreover, by fostering a culture of sustainability across the organization, training initiatives can inspire employees to explore new avenues for product innovation that prioritize environmental stewardship without compromising quality or profitability.
Some specific skills you can focus on to ensure product sustainability are:
- Lifecycle assessment (LCA): Training in LCA equips product development teams with the ability to assess the environmental impacts of products across their entire lifecycle, from raw material extraction to disposal or recycling.
- Sustainable design principles: Training in sustainable design principles enables teams to integrate eco-friendly features and materials into product development, emphasizing factors such as recyclability, durability and energy efficiency.
- Supply chain management: Skills in supply chain management are crucial for understanding and optimizing the environmental impact of sourcing materials, manufacturing processes and distribution channels, including the ability to assess suppliers’ sustainability practices.
- Stakeholder engagement and communication: Effective communication skills are essential for engaging stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and employees, in sustainability initiatives and conveying the value of sustainable product offerings.
- Customer training: Effective customer education can help your buyers better understand best practices around the most environmentally sound way to utilize and dispose of specific product offerings.
Ultimately, by aligning product offerings with sustainability objectives through targeted training interventions, companies can position themselves as leaders in the global movement toward a more sustainable future while driving tangible business outcomes.
2. Employee Behavior
As most learning leaders will agree, changing employee behavior is the first step to transforming your organization. After all, you can talk about sustainability all you want, but it won’t amount to much unless you’re also enabling real change among your employees. Here are some of the key skills that can help your learners create lasting changes in their behavior:
1. Environmental awareness: Education on environmental issues, including climate change, resource depletion and pollution, can increase employees’ understanding of the importance of sustainability.
2. Waste reduction practices: This includes practical skills for reducing waste generation, and can include proper recycling, composting and minimizing single-use plastics.
3. Energy efficiency strategies: Educate employees on energy-saving practices, such as turning off lights and electronics when not in use, adjusting thermostats for energy efficiency and utilizing natural lighting.
4. Collaboration and advocacy: Encourage employees to collaborate with colleagues and management to identify and implement sustainability initiatives in the workplace — and empower them to advocate for sustainable practices both within the organization and in their communities.
5. Innovation and problem-solving: Encouraging creativity and problem-solving skills fosters a culture of innovation, empowering teams to identify and implement novel solutions for enhancing product sustainability while meeting customer needs and business objectives.
6. Monitoring and feedback: Establish mechanisms for monitoring employee behaviors related to environmental sustainability and provide regular feedback and recognition for efforts to adopt more sustainable practices, reinforce positive behaviors and encourage ongoing improvement.
When it comes to measuring the return on investment (ROI) of ESG training in your organization, metrics like course attendance/completion are important, but “real value is seen from how learning has supported individuals to have a personal impact on KPIs, team targets, divisional goals or organizational ESG commitments,” says Tom Griffiths, learning experience consultant at Sponge.
3. Company Impact
While it’s true that individual employee behavior change adds up to collective change over time, there are other skills that are more directly focused on immediate organizational change — and these are among the most important skills that an ESG initiative should account for, including:
1. Renewable energy integration: Training in renewable energy technologies allows teams to explore opportunities for incorporating sustainable energy sources into product design and manufacturing processes, reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
2. Waste reduction and circular economy: Skills in waste reduction and circular economy concepts can enable teams to engage in product reuse or refurbishment and design for disassembly to facilitate recycling and resource recovery.
3. Environmental regulations and compliance: Training on environmental regulations and compliance ensures that product development teams are aware of relevant laws and standards governing sustainability practices, minimizing the risk of non-compliance and associated penalties.
4. Sustainable purchasing practices: Equip employees with the knowledge and skills to make environmentally responsible purchasing decisions, such as choosing products with minimal packaging or opting for eco-friendly alternatives, to support sustainable supply chain practices.
To keep up with the shifting landscape, organizations may opt to “assign responsibility for monitoring regulatory changes to an individual or a team,” Johnson says. However, Johnson acknowledges that this can be a big ask for medium to small-sized businesses, for whom partnering with outside providers might be a more attainable path forward.
Keep in mind, the above training areas can and should be integrated throughout the employee lifecycle, rather than relegated to one-and-done sessions: “ESG is no longer a standalone subject,” Griffiths says, “and it’s vital to incorporate ESG principles and practices into existing training programs, such as onboarding, leadership development and even compliance training.”
By considering product design and implementation, individual employee behavior and skills related directly to company impact, you should be well on your way to crafting an ESG training plan that can keep your company up to date and competitive in the new green economy.
