Dr. Anirban Kundu,
Senior Manager – Sustainability,
Mahindra Group
Conversation on climate change, sustainability, and ESG practices is no longer the sole preserve of activists and policy-makers. It has become the concern of the corporation as well, which must transform business models to solve world-scale problems associated with the environment and social considerations. The biggest gap in sight remains the absence of all-around sustainability and ESG education for corporate employees. That education gap is much more than an oversight but could derail both the climate ambitions of corporate organizations and the global sustainability agenda.
Why Sustainability and ESG Education Matters?
Collective effort at each level of an organization is the key to advancement on sustainability and ESG. The employee must understand the impact of their work on the environment, society and governance structures regardless of their level in the company; from the top management to the employee at the factory floor. Even though the senior leadership has taken bold climate and sustainability goals, an employee who is not educated on ESG and sustainability may ignorantly act differently and undermine those goals.
Every employee of a corporation works as a change agent for sustainability strategies as part of the daily activity. In the absence of knowledge and awareness, priorities and resources may get misdirected with lost precious opportunities for innovative and sustainable solutions. When ideas of sustainability and ESG are not even integrated into company culture and the work flows of daily work, making long-term corporate ambitions in climate becomes an overwhelming task.
Effects of an ESG Education Gap
The lack of sustainable education for employees can negatively impact a company’s ability to realize its climate ambitions in the following ways:
Misalignment with company ESG goals: Without an understanding of the company’s specific ESG goals, employees may act to enhance the environmental impact in unintended ways, such as a supply chain team choosing cost effectiveness over sustainable sourcing, causing the organization to fail in attaining its sustainability objectives.
Green washing Risks: Employees who do not have information on the right ways of addressing sustainability in an organization will most likely risk making unintentional mistakes on green washing. This will result from companies that overstate, exaggerate, and typically communicate false claims regarding environmental activities undertaken within an organization. Mostly, it results from uninformed action, where people do not realize what constitutes action toward sustainability. Green washing does not only discredit the business but also harms the trust relationship between consumers and the business, leading to regulatory implications.
Missed Opportunities for Innovation: Sustainability and ESG principles may become one of those business areas where an organization can encourage its employees to come up with innovative solutions to make the business much more efficient and environmentally friendly. Underdeveloped Education and Skills in Employees-Inner, innate skills are missed opportunities for innovation since when employees are not educated or equipped with particular skills to find such a scenario, there lies missed potential innovation that could have advanced the business’s competitive advantage.
Operational Inefficiencies: ESG aspects relate to every department, from operations to marketing. For instance, if the operations teams are not adequately trained on the aspects of ESG, then they might not consider some energy-saving initiatives or waste-reduction programs that can benefit in cost savings and sustainable ways.
What Companies Can Do?
ESG Literacy Building: The Way Forward Companies must adopt ESG literacy at every stratum of organizations to bridge the gap in sustainability and ESG knowledge. Here’s how they can do so:
Integrate ESG Training into Employee Onboarding and Continuing Learning Programs: Aligning sustainability and ESG training with the on-boarding program and providing continuous education for all staff to support the sustainability culture from day one. For example, Unilever has introduced training for all employees on the UN Sustainable Development Goals to ensure its employee workforce is well aligned with its sustainability strategy.
Cross-functional collaboration: Collaboration on ESG initiatives should be encouraged. Teams in different departments need to work together to meet ESG goals. Therefore, cross-functional ESG projects and training sessions should be facilitated across departments so that employees can also learn how sustainability affects the various functions in achieving the ESG targets.
Establish Clear ESG Goals and Communicate the Progress Employees: An open book about ESG targets, performance, and problems fosters transparency, which in turn helps with accountability. Those updates at regular intervals are motivational and ensure how one’s roles contribute to the sustainability objective of the organization.
Foster Employee-Led Sustainability Initiatives: Companies can empower employees by giving them a platform to propose and lead sustainability projects. Organizations such as Google have sustainability employee groups that can work on green projects related to waste reduction and renewable energy initiatives, thus imbuing ESG practices into company culture.
The future of sustainable business practice is anchored not just in the vision of leadership but also, indeed, in every single action of every employee. However, unless well-educated, engaged, and aligned with the company’s climate goals, even the most ambitious climate commitments shall go in vain. Closing this gap in ESG education today, in this high-stakes era, is a matter of business success-it will remain an essential part of our collective commitment to creating a sustainable future.
