Connecting Local and Global Sustainability Strategies at a World-leading Agricultural Company
A global agriculture leader’s approach to embedding global sustainability strategies and optimising their local impact through collaboration.
Project Overview
Category: Sustainability localisation & integration
Client: Global fruit producer and distributor
Challenge: Embedding global sustainability strategy in local market and optimise its effect, taking into consideration the local culture and business environments
Solution: A Sustainability Foundations Program (awareness, ecosystem thinking, mindset & behaviours), including full tailoring to client’s needs, delivery, and follow-up
Results: Significant growth in sustainability understanding and engagement across the client’s national divisions, including stronger engagement, and client teams initiating collaborations across functions and with external stakeholders.
Next steps: The project’s success has led the client to explore possibilities for engaging enteleco for the delivery of similar projects in other countries
A globally recognised agriculture company was looking for a collaboration partner to support a project involving localising and integrating sustainability in its Japanese divisions.
The company has a long history of focusing on quality and sustainability throughout all aspects of its business operations. One of its core focus points for the collaboration was to integrate a well-defined sustainability strategy that was being rolled out globally in its Japan team.
Such plans will, in almost all cases, need to take local dynamics, including culture and business realities, into consideration to be most impactful.
The Japan team was looking to further build awareness and understanding of sustainability and related business areas. The goal was to create the best possible platform for the local team to engage in and help steer the implementation of the global strategy.
Central company collaborators included the company’s global sustainability head and APAC leadership, both of whom contributed to developing and tailoring the parameters of the collaboration. Through the process, it was possible to develop an in-depth understanding of the client’s objectives and challenges and created a bespoke solution.
A central part of the programme was delivering a Sustainability Foundations Program to key employees in Japan. The program was delivered to two cohorts of 15 participants. The cohorts were cross-functional (covering areas such as Sales, Admin, Finance, Operations, and Marketing) to maximise their effect and create the best opportunities for cross-functional knowledge sharing.
The Sustainability Foundations Program covers core sustainability-related areas, including:
Sustainability awareness
Ecosystem thinking
Sustainable mindset & behaviours
The program was delivered as a series of two-hour online modules (in-person is also an option). Modules were delivered in Japanese.
At the end of the final module, participants launched function-specific projects through a supported process where project teams’ progress was tracked and each team had assistance in writing up case studies of their project for the global team.
The project teams made presentations to key stakeholders from global and APAC on outcomes/progress six months after the end of the final module.
Thanks to the collaboration, the client has seen a significant rise in understanding of and engagement with sustainability in the Japan team, with some teams initiating collaborations across functions and with external stakeholders to address key sustainability challenges.
As a direct result of the good experience the client had and the following improvements, a proposal is now under discussion for a similar engagement covering the company’s Korea team.
