BrownFlynn is EcoVadis’ first Official Consulting & Training Partner in the United States
As part of BrownFlynn’s leadership in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability field, they have also set precedent in the U.S. with nationwide professional development and executive training programs. In fact, BrownFlynn became the first U.S. training partner with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in 2009. Recently, they took the same designation with EcoVadis.
This combination of expertise was recently brought together at Montclair State University, host of the first combined training of the EcoVadis Official Training and Consulting Partner Program in the US.
“As the world moves to a position of managing and responding to our local and global actions, and sustainability is seen repeatedly affecting corporate bottom lines, standardized comparison of sustainable suppliers is essential. We value the training provided by BrownFlynn on the EcoVadis questionnaires and will be sharing the importance with our students. As a result, today’s graduates will have a better understanding of how to evaluate prospective clients, suppliers, and employers as they enter the workforce,” said Amy Tuininga, Director, PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies, Montclair State University.
On October 5, 2016, BrownFlynn and EcoVadis launched the first training for EcoVadis suppliers, followed by a 2-day GRI G4 Certified Training Course.
“I was thrilled with the level of participation, interaction, and specific questions and answers from the attendees who represented companies from a wide range of sectors, including automotive, warehousing and logistics, food services, and higher education,” said Cora Lee Mooney, Director of Learning at BrownFlynn.
The course material included an overview of the EcoVadis Questionnaire and Assessment, EcoVadis’ main Scoring Principles and Methodology, and how to use the Customer Service resources offered by EcoVadis.
The course objectives focused on the following:
- Engaging the right internal team members to help with key parts of the assessment response (e.g., Legal, HR, CSR, EHS, etc.)
- Providing the right type of supporting documentation for every question
- Understanding the Scorecard ‘Strengths & Improvement Areas
“We continue to enhance our overall sustainability efforts throughout West Liberty Foods and we are noticing a range of positive results. Customers, however, tend to be the stakeholders that bring up the new questions for us. The EcoVadis training, coupled with the GRI training, gave us some excellent tools to help us more efficiently respond to customers,” said Michele Boney, Director of Environmental, Health & Safety, West Liberty Foods.
“The training and consultation provided by BrownFlynn for this inaugural training is a great example of EcoVadis’ strategy to align with best-in-class CSR experts to help our rapidly growing Supplier and Buyer network with their Sustainable Procurement journeys–learning, transparency, understanding of emerging trends and best practices. We took a huge step forward in accomplishing this today!” Jason Probst, Director of Strategic Alliances, EcoVadis.
As organizations continue to develop the maturity of their programs, integrating CSR/sustainability into their reporting processes through GRI reporting, they inevitably recognize the depth of sustainability impact from their supply chains. The training developed by the BrownFlynn-EcoVadis partnership will not only help suppliers respond to their customers– it can help suppliers consider the broader and more strategic opportunities ahead of them around sustainability and CSR.
