ESG Fundamentals Microcredential

Your Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy, metrics, and reporting communicate what you value and determine your organization’s impacts. As Peter Drucker wrote, “What gets measured gets managed,” so how do we choose what to measure?

This ESG Fundamentals microcredential provides participants with an opportunity to investigate environmental, social, and governance impacts and develop a strategy to act on your values. Top talent is choosing careers that enable alignment between personal values and professional aspirations. The ESG Fundamentals Microcredential is designed to grow the community of professionals who:

Understand the ESG impact areas
Can identify the ESG factors that are material to an organization
Can meaningfully engage relevant stakeholders to ensure actions are inclusive and evidence-based
Are equipped to act now to maximize the positive and minimize the negative ESG impacts at organizations of all sizes.

Amidst a global reframing of value and rising expectations of action and progress on justice and climate-related goals, business is a vital ingredient in the transition to a net-zero, healthy, inclusive, and regenerative economy. Join us for the ESG Fundamentals Microcredential to design (or develop the next phase of) your individual and organizational ESG Roadmap to be part of the just transition to a regenerative economy.

What you will learn?

Explore the rise of ESG strategy and discover its connection to CSR, sustainability, social responsibility, and impact movements.
Learn how to apply organizational behaviour and change leadership principles to design and enable an ESG strategy.
Identify the role of materiality assessments in determining high-impact ESG opportunities.
Understand how stakeholder engagement fuels governance, social, and environmental actions and impacts.
Develop an ESG Roadmap that outlines your ESG strategy and drives collaborative action that maximizes positive impacts and minimizes negative impacts.
Learn how to identify the specific tools and frameworks that will be most useful to your core business (e.g. SASB, GRI, ISO, CCAB, TCFD, SDGs, B Corp, sector-specific standards, etc.).

Who will benefit from this program?

Business leaders and individuals looking to act on their commitment to building an inclusive, sustainable, and regenerative economy through mapping an initial ESG strategy
Organizations of all sizes seeking to understand their environmental, social, and governance impacts and begin to map an ESG strategy to maximize positive and minimize negative impacts
Individuals who are ready to chart their course to impact ESG outcomes for their organization and build their skillset so they are qualified for advancement within and beyond their current organization
Business leaders and individuals at any level of an organization who are at the beginning of the ESG journey as well as those looking to advance their knowledge and impact through acquiring new tools and broadening their network

The ESG Fundamentals Microcredential is made up of the following elements:

Five three hour-workshops over five weeks
Feedback from experts on assignments and final ESG Roadmap
Presentations, stories, and hands-on assignments delivered by subject matter experts and practitioners with proven track records
Badges earned for each assignment—Environmental Impacts, Social Impacts, Governance Impacts, and ESG Roadmap—culminating in the ESG Fundamentals microcredential

When we asked our expert speakers what ESG impacts mean to them, here’s what they had to say:

	Brianna Brown, Co-founder, Decade Impact “All businesses have an impact on the communities around them, but without being intentional about what this impact is, these impacts may be positive or negative. A focus on ESG allows companies to be intentional and explicit about the impacts they have on people and planet, to strive towards maximizing positive impacts and using their business to leave the world a better place.”
	Alison Coates, Director, Climate Strategy and Performance “For me, ESG measurement and action is all about reducing negative impacts and increasing positive impacts of doing business. We’re living in a critical moment in history when we need to rethink how we all do business. Necessary to this shift is a rejection of the idea that profit must be maximized at the expense of things that really matter.”
	Tim Coldwell, President, Chandos Construction “ESG impact is how we help address social challenges through our business model. Our core values are a virtuous cycle that starts with inclusivity (getting the right people in the room) and moves to collaboration (active listening) and innovation comes out of that. Then the cycle repeats and it pushes the organization forward.”
	Tobi Oyewole, Sustainability Specialist, Teck “ESG impact is how we innovate to solve our environmental and social challenges. Innovation starts with redefining our strategy, minimizing risks, and leveraging opportunities to improve the relationship with our people, customers, environment and the communities where we do business.”
	Geoff Pegg, Director, Sustainability & Environment, TELUS “I think about how companies such as TELUS can work with citizens, communities, customers, Indigenous Peoples and other stakeholders to make a positive social and environmental impact when executing on its purpose, while managing associated risks with relevant oversight.”
	Valerie Presolly, Director Climate Strategy and Performance, Vancity “ESG impacts can be both negative and positive, and it’s all about bringing these impacts to the fore and elevating them in a manner that addressing them becomes part of your core business, rather than a nice-to-have.”
	James Struthers, Founder and Managing Lawyer, macushlaw “Corporations play a profound role have a profound impact on our societies and environments globally. Corporate sustainability is a moral imperative.”

Microcredentials are short training programs that help you quickly master news skills and gain knowledge essential in Canadian industries. Microcredentials are often made up of badges: smaller components that build into a microcredential. The ESG Fundamentals Microcredential is built and delivered by BCIT Business + Media. This microcredential is made up of four badges:

Governance Impact Badge
Social Impact Badge
Environmental Impact Badge
ESG Roadmap Badge

These four badges are each 0.5 BCIT credits and add up to a 2.0 credit microcredential. Upon successful completion, participants are issued digital badges and a digital microcredential that can be displayed on your LinkedIn profile to showcase your ESG impact knowledge and experience. These digital badges and microcredential signal your commitment to work towards an inclusive, sustainable, and regenerative economy.

Instructors bring real world expertise into the classroom with curriculum developed with industry input.

	Amy Fell, BCIT Faculty Amy Fell (she/her), MA, leads Corporate and Industry Training for the School of Business and Media and is Program Head of the Advanced Diploma in Business Management. Amy believes that the answers to organizational challenges lie in unlocking the aspiration of employees. Her work aims to enable individuals, teams and organizations to connect the ‘why and how’ of organizational pursuits in service of people, productivity, purpose and the planet.
	Tessa Jordan, BCIT Faculty Tessa Jordan (she/her), PhD, is Program Head for the Sustainable Business Leadership and Faculty in the Communication Department at BCIT. Tessa specializes in business communications and values-based business with a focus on how the private sector can create and communicate social and environmental value to support the just transition to a regenerative economy.
	Geoff Pegg, Director, Sustainability and Environment, TELUS After ten years in various customer experience and operations roles with TELUS, both locally and internationally, Geoff has led TELUS’ sustainability strategy for the past decade. Geoff has established TELUS’ long-term climate change and waste diversion goals, targets and action plans, including negotiating four Power Purchase Agreements for renewable energy in Alberta. Geoff also initiated TELUS’ leading practice of linking executive and team member pay to sustainability objectives and led efforts leading to TELUS issuing Canada’s first Sustainability-Linked Bond.

ESG Fundamentals Microcredential

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