Incept Sustainability training: keeping our team engaged

Once upon a time, corporate sustainability was more about paying lip service than taking responsibility. But as concerns have grown over climate change in the past two decades, we’ve seen real, positive change – both in consumer shopping habits and in the commitments that brands are making to sustainability.

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For GPA, innovation has been key to our sustainable development. So it was only fitting that our entire team had access to the most innovative sustainability training out there.

We spoke to Sofie about how Incept has changed the game when it comes to sustainability training; offering the corporate world the training it not only wants, but needs.

Thanks for speaking to us Sofie! So tell me, how did Incept Sustainability come into being and why did you develop an E-learning tool?

“It’s great to speak to you! So, the journey started back in 2018. At the time I was interning at a start-up in Stockholm. The company started a team-building exercise where employees were invited to present internally on a topic that interested them. Being passionate about sustainability, I took no time getting to work on my presentation. The reaction was as encouraging as it was shocking. I was amazed that the sustainability angle had hardly been explored in a company full of potential – but I guess, when you’re in the sustainability bubble, it’s very hard to see outside of it. Nonetheless, a lot of discussion was sparked afterwards, with input coming from such varied places within the company – allowing me to see nuances I hadn’t before. I knew that the gaps in people’s knowledge was a real red flag – feeling compelled to do something, I contacted Katherine and our journey began. Shortly after, Alexa came on board and Incept Sustainability was born.

In the beginning, we had intended to run the tool exclusively as a training program – a training program that sought to provide respondents with direct impetus to operate more sustainably.”

“For instance, instead of testing people solely on what they know about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the questions we pose delve deeper – exploring how motivated respondents are to work with SDGs, while also allowing them to discuss what obstacles are preventing their organization from fully embracing them into their sustainability strategies.

It was just before the first pilot that Alexa said: “why don’t we study the answers from activity questions afterwards? I think there might be a lot to learn” – and she was right. From this, we started to actively combine the training and the surveying, creating an unprecedented type of training! With a pool of feedback, we could then provide an analytics service, allowing companies to build a two-way communication around sustainability.”