Cultivating Confidence: How a Sustainability Course Builds Shared Knowledge for the Workplace
Challenge
Shearer’s Foods commissioned TripleWin Advisory to offer a custom version of the 11-week Cultivate personal sustainability course to the company’s employees.
At the time of the project, Shearer’s Foods was undergoing a change of ownership and taking it as an opportunity to re-examine their sustainability commitments. Meanwhile, key customers were setting sustainability targets and asking Shearer’s to set targets of their own.
To meet these shifting expectations, company leaders needed their employees to be more knowledgeable and conversant on topics related to sustainability, especially when talking to customers. They wanted employees to feel equipped to answer inbound sustainability questions confidently and effectively on their own.
For Shearer’s, the Cultivate course presented a unique value, different from other educational offerings on the market, in that it was:
- Comprehensive: Cultivate offers foundational knowledge that goes beyond a “Sustainability 101” course, providing in-depth, carefully curated information packaged as impact modules.
- Engaging: Based on the Nautilus Award-winning book Planting a Seed: 3 Simple Steps to Sustainable Living, the Cultivate curriculum makes sustainability personal by guiding learners to identify the values that drive their behaviors and decisions. Content is delivered on a custom-designed multimedia platform to capture and sustain learners’ attention.
- Action-oriented: Interactive tools walk learners through the creation and execution of their own personalized sustainability action plans. Behavioral assessments show how actions taken during the course lead to real, quantifiable reductions in their personal environmental footprints.
Solutions Delivered
TripleWin’s Educational Team facilitated a seven-week asynchronous Cultivate course customized for Shearer’s Foods employees. The learner cohort included 16 employees from a range of functions, including procurement, R&D, corporate quality, HR, and commercialization.
The custom course featured 7 of the full course’s 11 modules: 3 providing a holistic overview of sustainability, along with strategies for successful behavioral change; and 4 covering categories of environmental impact selected by Shearer’s Foods based on their relevance to the company’s operations.
The impact modules linked participants’ personal values to specific sustainability measures they could take using interactive “DIY Sustainability” cards. Learners selected cards that aligned with their values, ambition, and desired size of impact and then used them to outline a personal action plan.
Project Learnings
To build their personal sustainability action plans, course participants were asked to sort the DIY Sustainability cards into three “buckets”: already doing, want to pursue, and not now/not applicable.
Shearer’s Foods employees showed an unusually high willingness to shift from passive to active learning. Altogether, the 16 participants created action plans for 65 “want to pursue” measures, roughly 4 actions plans per participant.
Participants were most inspired to “pursue” action on Energy and Travel & Transportation measures, such as installing solar panels at home, or investing in an e-bike or e-moped for commuting. Many of the most popular actions had a “large” impact and a “beginner” difficulty of execution, showing that the most appealing actions were ones that balanced impact with ambition.
Client Outcomes
Shearer’s Foods employees showed high levels of engagement in the course, achieving a 90% overall completion rate. Learners stated that the course had a “great mix of reading, listening and interactive elements to keep interest and attention.” Topics were presented in ways that “really hit home” and were “super enlightening.”
Behavioral assessments showed that Shearer’s Foods employees made significant changes to their daily habits. By implementing their sustainability action plans, course participants reported a reduction in their personal carbon emissions by 20% and water use by 20%.*
Course participants also found their learnings on personal sustainability to be highly relevant to their work environment. Employees quickly began noticing opportunities to improve environmental impacts in their corporate office.
For companies like Shearer’s Foods, deploying Cultivate across the entire workforce—as an on-demand, self-paced course, or as a next-generation employee benefit—would be TripleWin’s recommended next step to operationalize sustainability across the company.
*Estimated based on self-reported behaviors.
Experts
TripleWin Advisory is a boutique corporate consultancy focused on circularity solutions for industry. TripleWin offers a suite of tools to support clients in charting a practical, circular and sustainable course for their business. These tools include:
- Carbon inventories and setting science-based and Net Zero carbon goals
- Materiality assessments and sustainability roadmaps
- Building circular business models supported by financial analysis
- Risk scenario models using the TCFD framework
- Workshops and courses to build employee agency and corporate competency
We work with leaders in the following industries: apparel, footwear & textiles; information technology; metals; beauty; food & beverage; healthcare; building construction; human resource management; and retail.
TripleWin Advisory is an approved CDP climate change consultancy Accredited Service Provider (ASP). We are woman-founded, owned and led; a public benefit company.
Shearer's Foods is a contract manufacturer and private-label supplier of salty snacks, cookies, and crackers across North America. The company operates multiple production facilities and emphasizes sustainability through factory LEED certification and efficient resource management. In addition to private-label products, Shearer's Foods manufactures snacks under its own brand, maintaining a strong emphasis on quality and consistency.
Headquarters:Massillon, Ohio
Industry:
Food manufacturing
Main Product:
Private-label and branded snacks, including kettle-cooked potato chips and tortilla chips
In their words
“So many of our customers are setting sustainability goals and asking us to do the same. It was important for our employees to understand sustainability better and have confidence when talking to customers about it.”