Summary

In this episode, Kiran Kapur explores the practical, commercial, and operational realities of the role alongside Cambridge Marketing College tutors Victoria Hartley, Nigel Clark, and Helen Rushton. Bringing together over 75 years of collective industry experience across the corporate, public, and third sectors, the panel demystifies the evolving CRS landscape—from net-zero strategies and carbon accounting to social value procurement models that directly influence commercial contract awards.

 

Key Points

  • Sustainability is broader than environmental issues. It covers environmental, social and governance considerations, while corporate responsibility is more focused on what organisations do to address their impacts.
  • It should be part of business strategy, not a separate initiative. Organisations need to consider both their current impacts and what long-term success looks like for future generations.
  • Social value is becoming commercially significant. Government procurement increasingly requires organisations to demonstrate the additional social value they can create through contracts. This can represent a significant proportion of a tender's scoring.
  • Small steps matter when creating organisational change. Apprentices aren't expected to transform an entire organisation overnight. They learn how to use data, build business cases, understand stakeholders and influence people to progressively move the organisation forward.
  • Marketing and sustainability are more connected than they initially appear. Sustainability affects reputation, stakeholder expectations, communications, reporting and organisational narrative, making it relevant to a marketing-focused institution.
  • The CRSP apprenticeship isn't just for young people. The programme has worked for people starting their careers as well as experienced professionals looking to add sustainability expertise to their existing role. The apprenticeship is relevant across almost every sector and role. The emphasis is on creating real-world impact. The goal isn't simply to make people knowledgeable about sustainability or turn them into "naggers" or advocates. It's to give them the skills to influence decisions, implement changes and create measurable impact within their organisation.

 

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Kiran Kapur (00:02):
Hello and welcome. This week we are in the world of corporate responsibility and sustainability, and I'm absolutely delighted to welcome three tutors from the college who are all experts in this field. Can I ask you all to introduce yourselves? Victoria Hartley, can I start with you?

Victoria Hartley (00:19):
Yeah, of course. Hi, I'm Victoria. I've been a tutor with the college for a few years now. So my background for, well, gosh, number of decades now has been across the board of corporate responsibility. So I have specialisms around community investment, the social side of the corporate responsibility agenda, strategy, stakeholder engagement, et cetera. And then increasingly as environment has risen up the agenda, I have done more in that space as well around the net zero strategy, et cetera. I'm currently working in the field of social value outside of the tutoring. And yeah, I've taken a number of students now through the apprenticeship.

Kiran Kapur (01:12):
It's taken quite a few students through. Thank you very much, Victoria, and I'll come back and ask a bit more about social value a bit later on. Nigel Clark, can I get you to introduce yourself please?

Nigel Clark (01:23):
Yes, I'm Nigel. I have had the pleasure of being a tutor at the college for I think more than 20 years now. I've worked in the environmental, primarily in the environmental, but kind of environmental sustainability, been on the social side for 25 years, which is longer than Greta Thunberg has been alive. So I'm probably the old one of the bunch. And in that time, I've covered pretty much everything across the sustainability spectrum.

Helen Rushton (01:54):
Hello, I'm Helen. I've worked in corporate responsibility and sustainability. I was just counting to that for nearly 30 years now. Right at the beginning where nobody had ever heard what it was, you go to a party, they'd say, "What do you do?" I'd say, "I work in sustainability," and they'd look confused and disappear and talk to somebody else. And now everybody wants to talk about sustainability, which is absolutely wonderful and a great indictment of how awareness and understanding of the climate emergency and social sustainability is inclused enormously. I've worked both in-house and in consultancy. I worked initially for Camelot, who were the operators of the national lottery, which at the time was probably the most high profile company in the UK and certainly had very significant social impacts. Then I worked in consultancy for many years with a particular focus on strategy. So for example, I did the sustainability strategy for the International Olympic Committee for Diageo and for Richmond Global Luxury Conglomerate. And now I've been working with Cambridge Marketing College for two or three years, which I very much enjoy working with the tutees. It's really, really rewarding.

Kiran Kapur (02:58):
Thank you. And I know all three of you have successfully taken apprentices through our corporate responsibility and sustainability apprenticeship. I wanted to start with some sort of fairly simple... Well, I hope it's simple. What do we actually mean by corporate responsibility and sustainability? Nigel, would you like to start us off?

Nigel Clark (03:18):
Well, you threw me the boomerang, did you? The curve ball. It is a sort of terminology soup, this arena, and I'm sure Victoria and Helen would have their own take on this. I think sustainability is a broad term which covers everything across the environmental and social agenda. Corporate responsibility is a more kind of narrow take on the sustainability agenda as it refers directly to businesses and the business responsibility and the actions that businesses can take. So if you think of a broad sustainability agenda, which is everything which has an environmental or social impact on us, on our planet, on communities, on nations, then the corporate responsibility bit is really what action businesses can take and what impact the sustainability agenda has on businesses. So that would be my take on it.

Helen Rushton (04:22):
One of the first things we ask our apprentices to do is to come up with a definition of sustainability and to do some research into what the definitions are. And there's a very famous one by Bruntland which says, and I've paraphrased slightly, "Satisfying the needs of today without compromising the needs of tomorrow and future generations," which I think is a very neat way of saying we need resources, we need people, we need ways of doing business, we need ways of existing now, but we should always be mindful of the impact that has on future generations. And to me, it's very strategic for an organisation. It's absolutely central to how you as an organisation see your role in the world today and your impacts on the world and the impacts of the world on you, but also thinking about what that means in the long term. And all businesses, all organisations want to be successful in the long term. So by thinking about all aspects of their operation and their impacts, then they're going to understand what success now and success in the future means, and that means that they can feed that into their strategy. So really the two shouldn't be two separate things. They should be something that intertwine very, very much.

Victoria Hartley (05:27):
I was just going to add, I think as sort of professionals in it, I think we probably come from quite a similar starting point with it, but I think also what you see is the trends in the language that's used, which then has an impact on what people think, I guess, think what they're doing. So sustainability I think certainly has become quite aligned to the environmental piece at the moment because of the way that it is positioned and how we see it communicated in media, et cetera. So there is that I think, but as Helen was saying, as Nigel was saying, I think we all come at it as being maybe corporate responsibility is the action that is taken in order to address sustainability. So I think we are very much of a common starting point, but you see different terms, whether it's ESG coming in because of the investors, a slant or as different areas come in and out of focus. And obviously with the huge focus that there is on net zero and climate, I think sustainability has at the moment got quite an environmental filter in terms of how people perceive it as a term.

Kiran Kapur (06:36):
So you said earlier on that you work in social value. So where does that fit in as part of sustainability and corporate responsibility?

Victoria Hartley (06:45):
I think we would always come at it as there are a broad range of interconnected considerations and issues that a business needs to think about, starting point of which may be an environmental, a social or a governance, but we see them very much as connected pieces. So sitting under the S, under the social, you see language that was used around community investment and community relations. Social value is a very prescribed in terms of what it actually is, is it is a procurement led process that is being driven by government where there is a social value model. And now as part of the government procurement process, organisations who are tendering for local or central government or anything aligned to government tenders and funding have to include a response around social value and will be asked this one or a number of questions around an additional to contract value that they can create for communities. And actually that has very recently, so with the new leadership that we've seen that there is an announcement around a further revision that's already been revised, but a further revision to that model, which is actually going to narrow it very specifically around skills and the job market. So what we've seen is a growth area for organisations like the one where I'm currently on a contract where there is this kind of sub-sector that is looking specifically at how from a broader framework of corporate responsibility and sustainability, you ensure that you are equipped to respond to this particular procurement process, which currently can be worth 10%, is actually going up for higher value contracts. It's up to 20% of a contract scoring. So it's a very significant consideration for a broad range of organisations. The construction industry is certainly one that's been considering, and I have had a number of apprentices coming through from the construction sector in social value roles. So as they're tendering contracting for new work, this is something that they are needing to think about.

Kiran Kapur (09:11):
Yes, it takes sustainability from being sometimes sustainable a bit fluffy into something that really has a monetary value to it, doesn't it? You mentioned the profile of the learners, and one of the things I wanted to ask all three of you was the sort of learners that you're seeing, because so often in apprenticeships we see fairly similar types of people take an apprenticeship standard, and this is one where you really cannot apply that at all.

Nigel Clark (09:35):
We've had a really broad range of apprentices from different organisations in different roles. So we've covered most sectors, I would think, and that is maybe not surprising because sustainability or corporate responsibility is something that is relevant to all businesses. It's particularly relevant in particular areas, as Victoria said, for example, in the construction space, but there isn't a business out there that doesn't have a sustainability impact, that isn't aware of environmental issues or social issues that are either impacting the organisation or where they have an impact. So maybe that's not surprising, but what we've also seen is a significant diversity in roles. So we've had a number of people through the programme who are, you might say, are in core sustainability roles, so they're within a central sustainability or corporate responsibility team. But then we've had people that are in operational roles that might be in procurement, it might be in operational excellence, it can be even in a more of a kind of customer facing type role where they have a personal interest in sustainability or their organisation wants them to upskill in sustainability alongside what their core role is. So we've had a diversity there, and then we've had quite a diverse age range. The core of people, yes, the apprentices that are coming through are what the college would typically see, which is people that are in their maybe first or second professional role. But we've had quite a few people who are more mature, more experienced, and then they just want to add this as another string to their bow. So on sectors, on role, on age profile, we've had a lot really.

Helen Rushton (11:37):
And I think it also shows the huge flexibility of the programme. So my youngest tutee is 18 and has done this apprenticeship as an alternative to going to university. My oldest is in their 50s, and the programme works just as well for the 18-year-old as it does for the person in their 50s. Their experiences might be different, but in terms of the way that they use the material and then they work with it and they grow and develop, it works absolutely equally well for you wherever you are on your career journey.

Nigel Clark (12:06):
Yeah, I agree with that entirely, Helen.

Victoria Hartley (12:09):
It sort of makes sense because it's something that larger organisations may have a specific function or a team, but actually I think certainly a good split of the apprentices that I've had or have, they're not sat in a function or in a team. It is about becoming a kind of knowledge specialist, but within a particular role or context that they're in. And I think that's really exciting from apprentices that have been looking at it in the context of supply chain in a fashion space through to organisations that have been invested in it because they want to look at it through an innovation lens, through to the more traditional maybe apprentices that we have, which it's an opening role, but because of the breadth of it and often because you actually are going in and becoming very quickly the person who builds the knowledge and specialisms around this, certainly in the smaller space. And actually we are talking about companies, but we've also got, I know Helen's got an apprentice from a charity and we've had range of sector in that way as well as industry sectors. We've had a number that are coming in order to be able to respond back.

Helen Rushton (13:27):
Yes. We also have had somebody, several people I think on the public sector. Yeah. I mean that sectoral mix is really interesting because again, shows how well designed the course is because it works on the kind of classic commercial organisations, but also works equally well if you're public sector or if you're third sector, so voluntary sector. And I think it's actually a real strength that you are able to do that because an awful lot of things only designed for the commercial sector and aren't designed for that breadth, yet sustainability is an issue, whatever type of organisation you're in.

Kiran Kapur (13:57):
What sort of things are covered in the apprenticeship? This is always one of the things that intrigues me. What sort of areas does a corporate responsibility and sustainability apprenticeship cover?

Helen Rushton (14:06):
Well, one of the things that we do is we use the sustainable development goals, the SDGs, as a building block of that. And sustainable development goals cover 17 of the most important issues for the world, from poverty through to cities, through to how organisations work together. So that's been very helpful in helping new tutees who generally will have quite a narrow view of sustainability to understand how broad it is. So we do some things that are very technical about sustainability. So how do you work out the carbon impact of an organisation? We'll talk about scopes and things like that, which are an important technical part. We also deal with broader sustainability issues, and the great strength is that the three of us have huge practical experience in all of those things. So we can help our tutees to relate something that might seem quite theoretical into how it works in their organisation. And then we also have elements which are about development. So it might be about negotiation skills, it might be about teamworking, it might be about leadership styles, it might be about coaching skills. And those things are really important in terms of taking the technical information and turning it into something that is much more practical in the working environment.

Nigel Clark (15:17):
It's that combination of technical and professional skills that's really important because of sustainability professional, whether they're in a core role or whether they're in an operational role where sustainability is just part of their bag, they need to understand the specific issues that they're involved with, whether that is something like social impact, whether it's something like climate related issues, whether it's something like biodiversity in nature, they're unlikely to deal with all of those issues on their own. They've got to work with others. So that suite of professional skills, whether it's about how do you develop relationships, how do you develop partnerships, how do you manage projects, all of that has to come together. So the technical and the professional has to come together, otherwise you won't have impact, otherwise you won't make a difference. Remember, at the end of the day, what we're trying to help all our apprentices do is not just understand sustainability, but help their organisations be more sustainable, which means they need to be able to take action and have impact. So it's no point just being theoretical or just understanding, as Helen said, what the difference between scope one and scope two in climate negotiations are. You have to be able to translate that into something where you actually can take action or your organisation can take action and have impact. So bringing together the technical stuff and the professional stuff is really important. And I think we play that quite well. I think everybody comes out of the programme understanding the science of sustainability better, but also better skilled to be able to have a meaningful impact on their organisation and its impacts across the environmental social space.

Kiran Kapur (17:15):
That's lovely because it answers one of the questions that I've had before where somebody thinking about doing this said, "So will I become an advocate for this or am I just going to be nagging my company?"

Nigel Clark (17:27):
Oh, I don't think nagging, does nagging ever get you anywhere? I don't think it does, no. And actually, I think you have to go beyond being an advocate as well actually. I mean, you do want to be an advocate for it, but actually what you want to do is you want to affect change. So there's no point sitting there going, "We should do more on this. We should do more on that." Whether you are nagging or whether you're being an advocate, what you actually want to do and what we want our apprentices to do is to have the skills to make a difference. So we're not asking one individual to change a whole organisation. What we really want them to be is somebody that has impact and affects change.

Helen Rushton (18:10):
And I think it's one of the huge strengths of the way the course is structured is that we are often saying, "So what does this mean for your organisation? Or how could you use what you've learned this month in your job?" And that's actively encouraged both by us as tutors, but also within the programme. There are points where it says, "Okay, so here's 20 ideas of things that you could do that are quick. What are the 10 you're going to choose? How are you going to go and talk to your colleagues about it?" And the lovely thing is they get so enthusiastic about what they've learned that our tutors are really keen to go and talk to their teams about it. So they're getting slots at team meetings and saying, "Well, I'd really like to tell you about this thing that I studied." It's wonderful. So I call it evangelising, but the evangelising is as much about them saying, "I learned this really interesting thing and this is how we could use it here." And that is much better than nagging, much more effective.

Kiran Kapur (18:58):
So Victoria, would you say that we turn out change agents? Would that be the right phrase?

Victoria Hartley (19:03):
That's a bold statement, isn't it, to make? I would like to think so, but I think we all know that change in this area is hard and multifaceted. And when you are within an organisation, I think if you take a step towards change, and certainly talking to my apprentices, I think there can be sometimes a sense of, particularly for those that are coming in at a relatively junior level, there are sometimes I think, "Gosh, am I going to be expected to be writing a strategy or creating change at that level?" And I think part of this is really understanding the smaller steps and the value of the smaller steps. And certainly I think the breadth of tools that we equip them with. So being able to understand data and where data fits into building a business case and stakeholders and how you can influence, but you need to understand the role of that stakeholder. And each of these are kind of steps in change. We equip them to move towards change, but I also think it's really important that people see the smaller parts of change and how in an organisation, particularly a bigger organisation, but any, I would say, that actually if you think that you can create change overnight, you miss some of these really valuable, the journey that organisations have to go on a journey, and actually what we're trying to do is equip them with all these pieces that can support that journey. So I hope long-term, yes, but I think also it's the kind of value in the steps towards change as well.

Kiran Kapur (20:50):
So I'm going to ask perhaps the obvious question, I know we do get asked it. Why would you come to a marketing college to learn about sustainability and corporate responsibility? Nigel, shall I start with you on that one because I know you've had that asked before.

Nigel Clark (21:05):
Yes. Well, it's not obvious on the tin that a marketing college would be good at teaching apprentices about sustainability and corporate responsibility, but we've always been a very strong advocate in this area without blowing our own trumpet. I think with Helen and with Victoria, we've built a really, really strong team of tutors in this area. So people might not think that a marketing college would consider this to be important, but we do consider this to be important for the college. And we've invested in building a really strong programme and we've invested in building a really strong tutor team. So I would say to anybody, don't look at the name that is on the tin, look what's behind that. Look at the programme, look at their experience, and look at the breadth of the tutor team that your apprentice is going to be working with, because that's really what makes the difference, not what the name above the front door is.

Helen Rushton (22:13):
I'd put it even more simply. I'd say that Cambridge Marketing College are experts in apprenticeships and that they have the fantastic infrastructure and backroom and understanding about how the whole system works, which makes it very, very easy both for apprentices and for tutors. And in the three of us, you've got three people who are experts in sustainability. So we're not people who have though, oh, we'd like to tutor on this, so let's mug up on sustainability. We have all of us very real, very deep knowledge and practical experience on sustainability, which I would've thought was probably unique. So the combination of the college being experts in apprenticeships and us being experts in sustainability I think is really powerful.

Victoria Hartley (22:55):
Yeah, I think I would just add a piece about the kind of link to it being marketing. So the fact that there is marketing so central is that it is so intrinsically linked to reputation now. So it's maybe not why an organisation starts off thinking about it, but the consideration of the way in which you behave and the impacts and how you are approaching them has a huge and very well understood impact onto reputation. And marketing is obviously quite aligned to that, but you are always thinking about what matters to our stakeholders. How are we going to tell our story? Are we telling our story? And that's become a really prominent part of the sustainability suite really is about how you appropriately tell your story, but also how that piece is coming into an organisation. There are requirements to report on everything. So whilst that's not quite marketing, this notion of narrative and reporting and messaging is very central to the sustainability piece.

Kiran Kapur (24:04):
If I was to ask you all to say one thing to somebody that was perhaps considering, perhaps an employer considering, do I want to take on an apprentice in this area, what would that one thing be? I might let you have two things if two things come to mind. Victoria, let's start with you.

Victoria Hartley (24:21):
I think it's a really good combination of, as we were saying and when we were talking about what is covered, understanding the topics and the issues and really getting to grips with those as they move. So something like biodiversity that maybe wasn't so much of a core issue, you have somebody who is across that and understands the issues, but you also are developing the skills to take this forward, so move towards change within an organisation. So I think it's very flexible in an area that is very relevant now. And I think we are all agreeing that it will continue to be. It's not going anywhere. It's only going to become more intrinsic to a business. So whether you are a small organisation that perhaps doesn't need somebody or a team of people doing this, somebody is coming in and giving a kind of good breadth, or you do have a team of people, but you have somebody who is coming in and sort of reviews, it's a freshness to what's going on and we're kind of revisiting things continually within what we're teaching and how we're teaching it.

Helen Rushton (25:32):
I think if we're still allowed to have two things, I think one is I'd absolutely echo what Victoria said about the breadths. There are an awful lot of people who work in sustainability who know an awful lot about the particular part of sustainability that they work in, but don't understand the breadth of it. And nothing in sustainability, as in nothing with any organisation, works in isolation. So your focus might be on supply chain and you might think, well, it's just all about that. But no, you need to understand about the environmental impacts, about the social impacts, about the impacts. I don't know if you're buying electricity on the scope one and two, the carbon emissions. So understanding the whole is really helpful. And most people who start know a little or quite a lot about a narrow part, and what they really enjoy and get so much from is that that broadens out and they understand the totality of what sustainability is all about and the interactions between them. So I think that's the first thing. I think the second thing is it is not something that's done in a silo in isolation from their role. All the time when we are doing the tutorials, we're talking about how it applies to their roles or they might say, "Well, I'm faced with this Situation at work or I've been asked to do this report. Could we have a chat about it as part of our tutorial and we will relate it to something that they've done in the last four weeks of study." So the growth that they get from the fact that they are learning about the theory, but also they're applying it to their role is wonderful. I mean, the way that we see people coming at the beginning, sometimes they might be 18, sometimes they might be 50, but with an interest in this and perhaps some knowledge and the way they blossom over that time into really knowledgeable corporate responsibility to sustainability professionals who are able to apply it to the job that they're in now as well as their roles in the future, I think is wonderful. It's why I love doing it so much.

Nigel Clark (27:19):
I think at a time when businesses are feeling a bit squeezed and they may feel that either there's another topic which is further up the agenda, like how we all deal with or manage or take on board the impact of AI, they might be feeling under pressure from a cost perspective because of energy prices. They might have some uncertainty around the economic political outlook, but you still want to progress in terms of your corporate responsibility or sustainability agenda. I think this is a great time to bring in an apprentice either focused on this role or you could bring it in where you are bringing it into somebody else's role and expanding their perspective and taking sustainability into supply chain or taking sustainability into purchasing or taking sustainability into finance and reporting or into legal. And by bringing in an apprentice or giving an apprenticeship to an existing member of staff, you are actually getting the team of people that you see here, Victoria, Helen and me, to help that person get up the agenda really, really quickly. So I think if it's something that's in the back of your mind and it's nagging you and sort of thinking, we really should be doing something more on this, then actually bringing in an apprentice is a fantastic way because you're not just getting a new enthusiastic person on this agenda, be they a new employee or somebody that's already in your team, but you're getting all of our expertise and experience along with it.

Kiran Kapur (29:06):
Fantastic. Nigel Clark, Victoria Hartley and Helen Rushin, thank you so much for that insight into the corporate responsibility and sustainability apprenticeship. Thank you so much indeed.