The Matcha Initiative
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Investing in your organisation's development ensures longer retention, better performance in terms of planet, people and profit, and better employability of your people.
Your role as an employer is to ensure that they stay on top of their game, continue to develop their skills and adapt to change in a meaningful and sustainable way.
Specifically for procurement and supply chain teams, which are the cornerstone of sustainable value chain transformation, the focus is on providing the necessary skills through internal upskilling and external skills leveraging.
Green Team, CSR Task Force, Sustainability Team…They have many names, yet the same goal and the fantastic power to accelerate and amplify all actions taken toward sustainability. Choose the set up most adapted for your organisation.
Think transversal. Identify a leader, according to your scope / priorities / objectives... It can be one person from each department. Identify the sponsor or mentor at Executive or Board level responsible to advocate the actions of the Sustainability Team.
Here is a quick guide to start one and develop it.
Officially allocate time for it on your employees worksheets and objectives. Remember that if you give it on top of another job responsibility, it should still be performed as part of the employee's job description.
If your team can not manage extra tasks, engage an external consultant that could act as a part-time sustainability manager.
When you are ready, or when the sustainability tasks demands it, fight for a full time Sustainability Manager and ensure a budget for a Sustainability team.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
(African proverb)
Focus on whole person, ensure all employees feel represented and develop awareness across different groups (under represented minorities). Use your initiatives to support greater equity between your employees.
Especially, accompany women and discrimated or under represented staff population to fulfill personal and career development.
You may use:
Implementing sustainable practices implies a systemic change in companies, and it becomes critical to prepare our staff in terms of change management, agile thinking, creativity ("think out of the box"). In a fast pace changing world, upskilling employees and allowing them to build and adapt their knowledge through personal training, is a critical asset.
Sustainability also requires expertise so you need to train each department team on its specific role. For example:
You can allow your employees to access e-learning on a on-demand basis:
Build a knowledge repository of your core processes, the way you do things:
Train your staff and offer them opportunities to develop their soft skills such as: change management, critical thinking, problem solving, agility, initiative, resilience, flexibility, disruptive design, systemic change. According to the World Economic Forum, 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025. Developing these soft skills will ensure their long term employability remains high.
Digitalise your trainings as much as possible, make them easy to follow in shorter length. You may be eligible to grants from governments. See below additional information and examples for Singapore.
The « sustainability journey » may feel overwhelming sometimes, but you are not alone.
Our Buddies have tried, succeeded, failed to implement change in their companies. They share their experience so you can learn, take shortcuts, get inspired and ask questions.
Everybody can become a Buddy and give back to the community; if you are keen, get in touch with us.
I am a Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) humanitarian and development professional who worked for more than 20 years in Indonesia for International NGOs and UNICEF. I founded my consultancy firm 7 years ago to support private sector to develop their strategy, engage stakeholders and implement in the field their sustainability projects/programs. I have a extensive network in Indonesia, from the local community/NGOs to several ministries. I am also GRI copywriter.
With a background in sustainability consulting and audit, Ivona supports businesses in their sustainability journey by building an impactful strategy, embedding sustainable practices across operations, and reporting performance to stakeholders.
She is the founder of Sustainao, a Singapore-based company specialized in sustainability consulting. Previously, Ivona worked as a sustainability auditor at KPMG France. She holds an MBA in CSR & Sustainability and a Master’s degree in Environmental Management.
I enjoy improving processes and creating data-driven insights. My background is in process development and operations as Quality Manager and COO. A few years back, I decided to re-purpose my career and have since then studied different aspects of Sustainable Business Development at the University in Sweden as well as the Sustainability Reporting Standards (GRI, SASB, TCFD and ISSB work in progress).
Now, I am here to help SMEs integrate sustainability into their business strategy and operations, focusing on the impact that environmental and social aspects will have on the organisation's ability to create value. By reducing the scope to the most relevant materiality topics, even SMEs with limited resources have a chance to start their transition to more sustainable practices.
I'm passionate about walking the talk, breaking the silos within sustainability and making pathways relevant for all walks of life (especially heavy industry) to diversify their current standard operating procedures.
Mary has founded Journey Makers to support organisations in their online presence blending customer experience and employee experience. She was previously in charge of Customer Experience for Lyreco Asia and worked on accelerating Digital and Marketing activities. In 2020, she was appointed sustainability ambassador as well for the region, as the topic was becoming a strategic one for the company. Thriving to drive the change internally and externally, she launched a Green Team that she co-led with her colleague.
Prior to this role, Mary had made her career essentially in the hospitality industry at global and regional role, from trade marketing, sales to Digital marketing. Before moving to Singapore in 2015, she was based in Dubai, UAE and France.
I am a seasoned consultant, brand strategist and user research specialist. I've run strategic consultancies in Singapore that focus on designing for futures, and ensuring that cultural insights and emerging planetary and human needs input into product, communication and brand decisions. Partnering with bluechip companies like Unilever, P&G, Ford, Microsoft to help innovate, design, communicate the brand, my experience spans diverse categories.
I can run projects about user research, design research, cultural strategy, and off late applying all these skills towards regenerative practices.
I have an academic background in Psychology, English Literature and have recently done courses on Circular Economy and Regenerative Economics.
Mun Wei is the founder and principal consultant of SustainableSG, which provides advisory and training services in sustainability, strategy, risk and entrepreneurship.
He has worked with corporate, government and non-profit clients on strategy and implementation, reviewing organizational programmes and targets related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, benchmarking and communicating sustainability and other corporate programmes and achievements, promoting inclusive hiring, developing compliance policies and reports, and formulating innovative business models.
He is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
I have over 15 years experience in Responsible Value Chain. I started as a Sustainable material experts to slowly cover the entire Value chain and life cycle of products.
Radhika is the Co-founder of Tulyā, A Sustainability Management Accounting (SMA) Services company. Her work includes measurement and understanding of the impact environmental and social factors will have on the value creation for SMEs. She develops tailored tools and practices that integrate material topics (ESG & Business) with accounting statements line items to demonstrate financial impact of action vs inaction.
She has worked with Lehman Brothers, Barclays and IT services companies before starting her entrepreneurial journey in sustainability.
She is a graduate in Chemical Engineering and has been certified in SASB , PMP, CSM & Design Thinking-MIT.
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Sammie is the Director of Social Impact & Sustainability at Williams-Sonoma.
At Williams-Sonoma, she collaborates with leadership across the business to achieve the goal of 75% of products purchased from suppliers who offer worker wellbeing programs by 2030.
She is a CSR practitioner with 20 years of experience. She has managed CSR and sustainability programs at Target, C&A, Abercrombie & Fitch, and American Eagle Outfitters.
I am a change management practitioner with more than 12 years of experience in this field. In this context I have accompanied various initiatives to drive operational excellence, to improve cross-silo collaboration, and strengthen leadership qualities. In addition, I accompanied companies to establish new strategies, values and behaviours with the result to nudge cultures.
With Hive17, I focus on supporting companies along their sustainability journey. Key questions are how are the targets & strategies implemented across the organisation? And how can we create a culture that leads to success in sustainability.
I have more than 20 years experience leading change and transformation in Europe, Africa and Asia. I have had the privilege of managing and contributing to diverse industries, organisation (Humanitarian and corporate) to secure engagement and impact. In my last role I worked in a large MNC supply chain environment engaging external partners to increase our impact in sustainability.
