1. Send an email or book in a time here to chat with me

2. Download the programme overview here

Traditional sustainability consulting services support a business with clearly defined tasks, outputs and requests (E.g. design a strategy, complete a sustainability report, calculate our GHG emissions). In short - you tell me what you’d like, I charge you an hourly rate and we get the job done!

Although each of these tasks are incredibly important in any modern sustainability practice, what is often missing is integration of these outputs into business day-to-day. I’ve seen many sustainability documents get published on websites, popped in the policy draw, only to be looked at again a year later with no change being made.

In the decade of action, we decided this wasn’t enough. So we designed an alternative approach to sustainability. One that is grounded in action, mindset and building culture and momentum for sustainable change. This is where the SBA comes in. The Sustainable Business Accelerator is an 18-week virtual transformation experience for businesses who want to become leaders in sustainability. The SBA is a uniquely created methodology based on leading sustainability frameworks. It is a fully immersive experience for your business to learn, take action and embed sustainability in your day-to-day business operations and culture.

If you want to read more about the difference between a sustainability consultant and sustainability programme you can read more on our blog here.

The SBA covers all 4 pillars of sustainability - environmental; cultural; social and economic. We believe that sustainability is only possible where all 4 of these pillars are addressed.

That’s perfect. Companies join the SBA at different stages of their sustainability journey however, where the SBA is most powerful is when organisations are just starting their sustainability journey or are missing that ‘X’ factor in their current practices.

What’s most important is that you come fully committed to leading in sustainability, willing to learn and try doing business a little bit differently.

If you are unsure where you’re at on your journey why not start with Third Era’s FREE Sustainability Audit. You can access the audit via the following link.

One of the key deliverables of the SBA is building your organisation's unique sustainability policy and commitment to change. However, a sustainability policy is only one part of your organisations sustainability practices. It must be accompanied by good data and a resourced action plan.

Not only this but policies are only as good as you have communicated it with your team and staff. Even if you have a sustainability policy through the SBA methodology we will review, and if required, refresh your policy to ensure that you have alignment across your teams and organisation as well as building connection and alignment to the vision.

It’s time to end back draw policies!

Along side the scheduled workshop sessions and project management meetings a member of the Third Era team will be allocated as your go to Sustainability Lead. With this team member you will set up a communications channel such as Teams or Slack where you will share success stories, reminders and be able to ask questions. Your sustainability lead is a member of your team for the duration of the programme who you can contact via email or phone Monday - Friday 9-5 with any questions, blocks or ideas.

The SBA has been specifically designed to be a virtual experience. Many organisations have offices and teams based across New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific and we wanted to make sure that all team members could be involved in the SBA experience. This means you can join from anywhere.

NB: Certain aspects of the SBA have optional in-person experiences. There are additional travel costs associated with any in person workshops and can be discussed through the onboarding process.

It is vital to have members that represent all departments including but not limited to finance, property, communications, marketing, operations/delivery, customer service. The SBA works best where senior managers are the key participants in the programme - we have found that change works best when there is a commitment from leadership to learn, participate and that decisions can be made more easily.

There will be staff surveys, communications, integration challenges and actions for leaders to bring back to their teams to create wider organisational participation in the programme.

The SBA is an 18 week programme with a variety of meeting times for different team members. On average each participating member ought to schedule for 1 hour of workshop session time per week alongside take-home integration challenges and action activities to be completed with their teams.

Results are company specific and will depend on what sustainability priorities your organisation commits to. However, in our experience companies have the most successful results when they have full commitment from senior management including a commitment to resourcing and being prepared to budget for change. Also where teams across an organisation are involved in the sustainability process. Sustainability is not something that can be delivered in a silo by one team. It needs to be integrated across the organisation.

Where teams struggle is when they are asked to “do sustainability” with no further support for delivery.

Have a different question email us at hello.thirdera.co.nz, book a free discovery call or reach out to me on Linked In.