Environmental sustainability strategy for Pearson

Challenge

Pearson is the world’s largest education company, providing education services for a global audience. Corporate Citizenship (an SLR company) has been working with Pearson for over a decade on sustainability, including our work on environmental data assurance since 2010. We're helping guide Pearson through complex sustainability challenges and are providing the tools needed for Pearson to meet and achieve thei sustainability goals, both short-term and long-term.

As part of our annual assurance activities, we review Pearson’s global environmental data, including energy use (electricity and fossil fuel), business travel, water use and corporate greenhouse gas emissions, in order to provide independent verification for the company’s annual sustainability report. The amount of data available allows us to continue to develop sustainability strategies to meet the immediate goals and needs for specific areas.

In 2015, Pearson approached Corporate Citizenship in order to help the company review its environmental sustainability strategy, relative to peers and competitors. It noticed that competitors were beginning to make larger strides in becoming more sustainable, and Pearson wanted to stay ahead of the competition. They advised us of their needs and requirements, along with their specific sustainability challenges that they faced. This allows us to develop a tailored strategy to help Pearson work towards their goals.

Solution

In order to deliver a comprehensive review, the Corporate Citizenship team undertook the following activities:

• A detailed benchmark of the environmental sustainability strategies of peers and competitors.
• A detailed benchmark of how peers and competitors structure their environment sustainability teams.
• In-depth interviews of internal practitioners within the business to understand current activities undertaken and aspirations for future development.
• A detailed management report was produced as a result of this exercise that allowed the Pearson sustainability team to not only to take stock of where they were in their environmental sustainability journey, but also identify opportunities for future improvement, including responsbile sourcing, based on the recommendations provided by Corporate Citizenship team.

Impact

Our expert review of the company’s competitive landscape and internal priorities provided the client with a strong platform for decision-making and for shaping future environmental strategy. This review highlighted key areas of focus and provided a some clear competitor benchmarks that progress can be measured against.

We were able to provide clear recommendations for strategy development, goal-setting and organisational structures, based on external and internal proof-points, and our knowledge of industry best-practice.

This allowed Pearson to start working towards some sustainability targets and close the gap to some competitors. We also provided recommendations on how to incorporate sustainability considerations into day-to-day workloads for team members.