Companies with Certified Sustainability Practitioners Increase their CSR Performance: 2014

Following last year’s study, CSE has just completed its 2014 global study on determining Certified Sustainability Practitioners (by CSE) contribution towards the overall Sustainability rating score of the corresponding companies, based on CSRHub data. CSRHub is a proverbial corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings tool that allows managers, consultants, academics and activists to track the sustainability performance of major companies. How does CSR Hub do this? By aggregating data from various sources and providing its users with a comprehensive source of information based on the four fundamental categories. These categories are no other than employees, environmental, community, and governance. In turn, the overall CSR rating score calculated by CSRHub creates a benchmark for companies to compare sustainability performance.

In CSE’s Global research 20 companies with senior sustainability professionals from Europe, Middle East and North America served as a statistical sample to investigate their overall sustainability ratings and annual performance, during the a period between 2011-2013. The aim of this research was to discover any impact between companies Sustainability ratings before and after having trained Sustainability Practitioners within their teams. Consequently, the actions taken to compare the 20 companies CSR scores comprised of looking into 1 year before as well as 1 and 2 years after CSE training, compared to the corresponding industry average of the last year.

The steps carried out to meet the objectives were carefully chosen, being as follows:
• Company with sustainability practitioners’ overall CSR ratings before CSE training and 1 to 2 years post training
• Company’s industry average overall CSR rating for the same dates
• The data  points were transformed into line graphs to illustrate the sustainability score trends

Fast-forwarding the process, the data points illustrated the sustainability score trends of the companies. For example the graphs below “Croda International Plc” and “Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce” represent the data point 1 year before CSE’s training, compared to 1 to 2 years after the training took place and indicate the impact that the trained Sustainability Practitioners action plan contributed on the company’s overall Sustainability score.

Overall, the results of the research indicate improvement in Sustainability scores in the companies that had trained senior sustainability professionals (Certified Sustainability Practitioners by CSE). This should come as no surprise as all sustainability practitioners’ completed CSE’s Certified CSR training and upon completion created a two year Sustainability (CSR) action plan for their company, in which a Sustainability strategy and identification of areas for improvement was included. This is a practical and measurable strategy that  is under review for 4 month by CSE experts and is approved by a third party (IEMA- Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment) to ensure it meets standards and includes a variety of tools for approach. The action plan implemented by the Sustainability Practitioners is evidence representing that knowledge gained during the training contributes to the improvement of the overall Sustainability ratings of the organizations.

In-depth knowledge by CSE trainers initiate a key driver for strategic sustainability improvements while the vast majority of the companies that served as a sample in Europe, MENA and North America increased their overall CSR rating from 2 to 10 points each the first year post training. Based on the conclusions of  this research, we value that CSE sustainability practitioner trainings have positively affected the sustainability performance of more than 300 companies globally. It is also indicated that our Certified Advanced training, our methodology and 2-year action plan that we propose after the completion of the training are very essential tools of an organizations’ CSR improvement. Read the executive summary here

Keen on improving your Sustainability ratings and integrating CSR within your external and external business culture? Then always keep an eye out for our upcoming Certified Sustainability & CSR Trainings approved by the Leading UK Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), delivered by CSE in Europe, North America and the Middle East.