Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company has launched a Sustainability Academy, to help organisations better equip their clients for the net zero transition.
The program, designed by consultants from McKinsey Sustainability and learning experts from McKinsey Academy, offers learning experiences to help talent acquire new knowledge and skills through practice and feedback.
“Making our economic system more sustainable and more inclusive is an imperative that is felt by all types of stakeholders, from governments and regulators, to clients, suppliers, and end consumers,” said partner Pietro Sorrentino, who helps lead Sustainability Academy.
“Private organisations have a central role to play to decarbonize our economy, but to do so they must build skills and capabilities that today they do not have. McKinsey’s Sustainability Academy was created exactly to do that: help companies accelerate change by supporting them in building new knowledge for their employees.”
Teams can apply this in a real-world context to unlock lasting behavioural change.
The program recently partnered with an unnamed Fortune 500 company to accelerate their net-zero journey and help them with their ESG initiative.
Industry research by McKinsey has shown that in some sectors, nearly 100% of companies have defined and communicated sustainability strategies, but only 40% believe they have sufficient internal knowledge and capabilities to achieve their targets.
Pietro Sorrentino, McKinsey partner, said: “Private organisations have a central role to play to decarbonize our economy, but to do so they must build skills and capabilities that today they do not have. McKinsey’s Sustainability Academy was created exactly to do that.
“Completing the online training modules, supported by the virtual forum sessions and open office hours, helped our client’s people build a fact-base for working with their suppliers, which enabled them to have productive conversations at the supplier summit,” says partner Maria Fernandez. “Today, this work is the foundation upon which their multi-year ESG transformation resides.”
The Sustainability Academy is being launched with a potential global recession on the horizon, which has led to many chief executives side lining their companies ESG programs.
A recent KPMG survey of more than 1,300 chief executives across the globe found that around half of bosses are planning on “pausing or reconsidering” their environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) efforts in the next six months and that more than a third have already done so.
