Optimizing Sustainability in an Organization

Course Duration: 2 Days

Sustainability is a key concern of organizations worldwide. While “sustainability” can be defined in many ways, this training focuses on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. By exploring these topics, organizations can better understand and manage both risks and opportunities, enabling them to optimize performance in the marketplace amid physical and transition risks in a rapidly changing world.

This two-day course is designed for those responsible to ensure their organization identifies both risks and opportunities when planning and implementing sustainability initiatives designed to benefit the organization and ensure its social license to operate. Sustainability Managers also contribute to the development of public disclosures that keep decision makers and key stakeholders informed of the organization's progress in managing identified risks and opportunities.

This training covers the key standards that support an organization’s journey to optimizing sustainability. It describes methods for determining the materiality of topics of environment, social, and governance so that key indicators and metrics can be defined, communicated, and disclosed.

This training also addresses how organizations can prepare for validation or verification of their pathways to optimizing sustainability. Organizations and their third-party assurance providers can use ISO 14019 – Sustainability Information to determine methods to establish requirements for reporting, improve data quality, and ensure both key decision-makers informed and all interested parties are informed.

This course will lay the foundation for reporting to voluntary or regulatory programs, identifying hot spots, and taking action to deal with actual or emerging issues.

Learning Objectives

  • Provide attendees with an understanding of the purpose and scope of sustainability topics
  • Equip participants with the knowledge and skills needed to conduct materiality assessments
  • Help organizations improve environmental, social, and governance performance and comply with regulatory and customer requirements
  • Prepare organizations for the implementation of an effective sustainability reporting and disclosure process

Course Outline

Day One

· Explain the context within which sustainability topics are managed and disclosed

o Examples of voluntary and regulatory frameworks include GRI, CDP, SB 261, and ISSB S1 and S2

· Determine topics that are material to an organization

· Assess critical supply chain dependencies, physical and transition risks, energy efficiency and decarbonization/net zero goals

· Engage interested parties and identify their key needs and expectations with respect to environmental and social topics

Day Two

· Optimize governance and promote an internal culture of managing sustainably

· Strengthen governance within the organization

· Measure success and use third-party platforms to disclose progress towards meeting key sustainability objectives

· Obtain third-party assurance for sustainability disclosures

Who Should Attend

This course has been developed for:

  • Sustainability Managers and staff responsible for meeting the requirements of California’s SB 261 or Europe’s Corporate Social Reporting Directive, and voluntary initiatives such as GRI or CDP
  • Environmental managers, Human Resource Specialists, and Regulatory Affairs staff who contribute information and analysis on sustainability topics
  • Internal auditors and risk management professionals

Course Materials

Each participant will receive a seminar manual including breakout exercises and case studies.

Note: ISO/IWA 42 is available as a free download from ISO. The GRI standards are publicly available at https://www.globalreporting.org/how-to-use-the-gri-standards/gri-standards-english-language/?id=29514. ISSB standards are available from ISSB at https://www.ifrs.org/issued-standards/ifrs-sustainability-standards-navigator/.

Note: Omnex does not provide copies of standard(s) during training courses, but clients are encouraged to have their own copy.

Pre-Requisite

A background in sustainability or environmental management is useful but not required. Participants should possess a basic understanding of relevant corporate policies and operations.

Upcoming Training

Optimizing Sustainability in an Organization Program is available in multiple locations globally, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, India, Europe, Thailand, Singapore, Middle East and China.