ESG strategy for the education sector

Founded in 1974, Babington provides high-quality training across a growing number of sectors, from accounting to technology. Their mission is, ”to be globally recognised as a valued and trusted partner unlocking potential through a bold passion for learning”.

Private equity owned Babington contacted Rawstone Consulting with a view to future-proofing their business – they wanted an ESG strategy aligned to their current stakeholders (employees, customers and investors), but that would also open the widest pool of investors for future eventualities. Importantly, they also wanted to enhance their website communication on sustainability and to integrate sustainability into the customer training courses.

As an experienced client, Babington were already aware of their sustainability impacts, and therefore only a light-touch, interview based materiality exercise was conducted to re-establish priority ESG issues. Based on this a strategy was developed around the themes of learners & customers, employees, governance, communities, and environment & climate change. Strategy highlights included:

• Recommendations to integrate ESG into the company website – including page-specific advice on narrative and content.

• Development of a Code of Conduct to immediately showcase existing ESG policies, thus enabling investors to quickly verify that Babington meets relevant minimum ESG standards.

• Analysis of existing training course content and grouping into four categories. For each category we outlined high-level sustainability content which would be suitable for that course/audience.

• Development of equality, diversity and inclusion, and wellbeing strategies.

Since completion of the strategy work we have continued to support Babington on the implementation of specific projects, including their PPN 06/21 Carbon Reduction Plan.