Sustainable team activities raise awareness on environmental or inclusion issues and can spark employee initiatives, says Cintia Procaci, founder of consultancy A Beautiful Green.
Since launching in 2019, sustainable consulting agency A Beautiful Green has worked with a wide range of clients, from smaller web design companies to international legal and financial firms. Some might want to foster awareness-raising activities within their organisations or get advice on more responsible procurement. Others approach the agency with a desire to obtain B Corp Certification or Luxembourg’s ESR label through INDR.
As managing director and founder Cintia Procaci explains, the work focuses on the company level—not at, say, a product level. And this can be quite extensive, from reviewing governance, suppliers, purchasing activities, diversity and inclusion policies within the company, determining the impact they have on their own clients, and more. In the case of B Corp Certification, she says: “We take a picture of the company today, see how we can improve the impact of your company, and then work on a very robust action plan based on the B Corp questionnaire.”
But it’s work she enjoys doing. After a career in Luxembourg’s financial sector, she decided to switch paths and earned her MBA in 2010. And in 2014, “I discovered sustainability, reading and watching documentaries about what’s going on with our planet. I started getting quite worried about it because I was pregnant, bringing a human being to this planet.” A couple of years later, she studied at the Institute for Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge, launching her business not long after. A Beautiful Green today counts a team of three and serves clients in Luxembourg, Belgium and France.
Kickstarting ideas
Sustainability-focused team-building can take on many forms. For some companies in Luxembourg, these include team runs or hikes, free e-bike rentals or group workout sessions, an ecology-focused team-building day in the forest, or inclusive training on more “taboo” topics, like menopause, for instance.
Workshops can also be organised. Procaci says one of the things she really loves about her work is when she sees employees brainstorming amongst themselves, “and I just watch it—because they know their business better than I do… When they have this click and start coming up with ideas, it feels like a gift.”
With one client, she tailored workshops geared toward reflections on how the organisation could improve its impact, using the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Procaci divided the 17 SDGs into three categories and let participants decide which they’d prefer to focus on. Using the example of SDG 4—quality education—participants discussed how education can make an impact, both on a global and company level. This translated into new ideas for employee training and discussions around employees’ career development.
A Beautiful Green has also organised three-hour workshops around a tool called Climate Fresk, developed in 2018 by engineer, energy transition consultant and lecturer, Cédric Ringenbach. The science-based game involves a moderator and 42 cards. The moderator describes what impact certain human activities have on the planet, and there’s often a surprising response from participants about some of the facts that are revealed.
A Beautiful Green will also soon be offering workshops centred on the “Let’s play equal”, — which users call “the most unfair game in the world”. This board game is designed for team-building and reflection around issues related to diversity, (in)equality, inclusiveness and justice. “Sometimes these are subjects that companies don’t really develop internally, but when you start digging deeper, you see there’s a problem with diversity and inclusion,” Procaci explains.
With “Let’s play equal”each participant plays a different character, each with different characteristics and backgrounds. These could include an LGBTQ+ individual, someone from a different culture, a person with a disability. Workshop participants can then better understand “how it would be in real life, trying to live or work—how difficult it is for these people to succeed or progress in their job”, Procaci says.
“I hear from colleagues, HR especially, that candidates are now asking, ‘How sustainable are you?”
Taking sustainable initiatives can also help a company’s brand. “I hear from colleagues, HR especially, that candidates are now asking, ‘How sustainable are you?’… It is an employer brand image, for sure, in attracting talent… but they have to work hard to get there.”
This articles was published in the 6th edition of Forbes Luxembourg.
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