Education, Knowledge, and Skills

Being an Effective Change Agent

How can you prepare yourself to be a more effective sustainability change agent? This guide was designed to share insights on how change agents can support their CEO and influence thinking on sustainability. It is based on a review of prior academic research on CEO decision-making and combined with the practical experiences and insights gleaned from interviews with over 200 CEOs, board members, and sustainability executives. It explores a broad range of global companies and industries including finance and insurance, material extraction, retail, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, utilities, and agribusiness, as well as a diverse array of ownership structures, including public corporations, privately owned businesses, and co-operatives.

To further support you in bolstering your own effectiveness, we have also developed the Being an Effective Change Agent: Personal Inventory. We encourage you to use this as a tool for reflection, and to help you plan your future personal development.

The Role of Human Resource Management in Corporate Social Responsibility

This is a useful resource if you are looking to partner with HR in your company. This guide provides helpful background research on the connection between sustainability and a variety of HR functions, including recruitment, onboarding, and employee development. It also lays out ten steps that HR managers can take to support embedding sustainability within their organisation, along with examples from leading companies.

Talent, Transformation, and the Triple Bottom Line

This book by Andrew Savitz talks about how sustainability can be incorporated into employee recruitment, selection, onboarding, career development, rewards, and retention. We specifically recommend Chapter 5, which will help you understand how orientation programs at companies now include modules dedicated to CSR and sustainability. After orientation, targeted sustainability programs are also being incorporated across corporate training curriculum.

Reinventing Employee Onboarding

Onboarding has traditionally been about getting new hires to adopt a company’s values. This study questions the traditional approach by looking at what happens when we do the opposite: engaging new employees to think about their strengths and values, and asking them to bring these to the company.

Supporting the Next Generation of Sustainability Leadership

This article from the International Institute for Sustainable Development makes the case for training the next generation of sustainable development leaders, and provides an overview of the types of programs, groups, and training that exist for young sustainability professionals.

What is Skills-Based Volunteering?

This quick primer on skills-based volunteering from Realized Worth will help your organization take a more impact-oriented approach to volunteering. It offers insight into misconceptions about skills-based volunteering, as well as who it's right for and what it looks like in practice.

Employee Engagement and Going Green

Designed for HR managers, trainers, and employees responsible for health, safety, and the environment, this 5-page guide by the Network for Business Sustainability provides ten ways to engage employees in your company’s environmental and social goals. The methods are based on 30 years of academic and industry research by the NBS team and Dr. Stephanie Bertels. In addition to helping readers understand how to educate their workforce on the importance of good business ethics and corporate responsibility, the report draws on case examples from the retail, services, and manufacturing industries.