HR teams sit closer than almost any other function to the people side of sustainability — hiring, fair labour practice, and the culture that either supports or undermines a company's environmental and social commitments. This training course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy equips HR professionals to lead that agenda rather than simply implement it, building the visionary thinking, ethical judgement and stakeholder engagement that sustainability leadership demands.

Corporate Social Responsibility sits alongside this leadership track as the operational half of the picture: the ongoing management of a company's social, environmental and economic footprint in line with community expectations. Attendees connect the two — leadership mindset and CSR execution — so that sustainable practice becomes something HR drives from within workforce policy, not an initiative handed down from elsewhere.

Why HR Leads This

• Sustainable practice succeeds or fails at the level of hiring, labour policy and day-to-day culture — territory HR already owns.
• Sustainability leadership and CSR are treated together here, not as separate courses, because in practice HR has to run both at once.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the essentials of sustainability and corporate responsibility and their role in organisational development.
• Evaluate successful sustainable business models and identify what makes them transferable.
• Build a framework for stakeholder engagement, strategy initiation and disclosure.
• Manage the trade-offs and limitations involved in shifting toward a sustainable business model.
• Apply standard CSR practice, corporate governance principles and stakeholder management within HR policy.
• Develop strategies that embed sustainability and social responsibility across the organisation.

Target Audience

• Communication and public relations managers engaging stakeholders on the organisation's mission.
• Senior executives responsible for embedding sustainable practice into organisational plans.
• CSR and sustainability specialists designing strategies to reduce social and environmental impact.
• Mid- and senior-level managers leading behavioural change and governance of sustainable initiatives.
• Consultants advising clients on implementing sustainability goals aligned with industry standards.
• Anyone seeking credentials in sustainability and corporate responsibility practice.

Module 1: CSR and Corporate Citizenship in Today's Organisation

• Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its business case
• Corporate citizenship and organisational image
• Cultural differences that shape CSR practice, and the concept of capacity-building

Module 2: Leading and Managing for a Sustainable Future

• Planet Earth — a fact sheet on the scale of the challenge
• The three pillars of sustainability and the business case behind them
• Key competencies of sustainable and transformational leaders
• Understanding the ESG framework

Module 3: Stakeholder Analysis and Management

• Overview of stakeholder engagement and management
• Key tools: stakeholder register, matrix and strategy
• The stakeholder influence process — agreement and trust
• Common stakeholder management mistakes to avoid

Module 4: The Sustainable Development Goals and Corporate Ethics

• The Sustainable Development Goals for 2030
• An introduction to ethics and leadership
• The five ethical paradigms and how they apply in practice

Module 5: Governance and Hard Trade-offs

• Corporate governance fundamentals
• The Trolley Problem as a lens on governance dilemmas

Module 6: Sustainability Best Practice and Employer-Supported Volunteering

• What the world's best organisations are doing
• Employer-supported volunteering (ESV) and treating people fairly
• Building and presenting the case for sustainability in your organisation
• Personal Action Planning (PAP)