Why did the H&M Group decide to develop digital education and training focused on sustainability for its global staff?

Our vision is to lead the change to a circular and renewable fashion industry while being a fair and equal company. For this to happen we need everyone in the company to know what we stand for and to understand what we are doing to achieve this vision. We also want H&M employees to feel a sense of ownership of this vision so they can contribute to making it a reality in their daily work. We have more than 150,000 employees in the company worldwide, so this is no small challenge. We needed an effective way to reach, educate and motivate all of them. We wanted an accessible educational format that could be implemented across all brands and all markets. The content and approach had to clearly communicate our company’s vision and values while creating a common language and understanding about our sustainability work. It needed to support both our internal messaging as well as how we communicate our sustainability work with customers. We also wanted it to increase pride for our accomplishments. Additionally the format needed to be adaptable so it could be updated on an annual basis. With this as the starting point, we decided to develop two E-Learnings with SFA. Together we developed a twenty-five minute introductory course called the H&M Fundamentals and a thirty minute follow-up course focusing on our most common materials and their sustainability attributes. SFA used different learning techniques and content elements to maximise interaction, retention and motivation. The e-learning interface was developed for use on a wide range of devices.

Why did you partner with SFA to develop the educational concept and produce the courses?

H&M group has a long standing working relationship with SFA. Because the H&M Group has been using the SFA Fundamentals certificate course for our internal sustainability leadership training program, SFA was a perfect strategic partner to develop our new E-Learnings targeting all H&M Group employees. During the development of the project, the SFA team provided a clear process to define course purpose and learning objectives for our target groups. Their extensive experience in training and their in-depth industry knowledge were also essential for creating an engaging and effective learning tool that builds the foundation for our sustainability transformation. Furthermore SFA provided guidance when curating and producing the content for the E-Learning, as well as advice on how to ensure the format worked with our Learning Management System on the back end. With the SFA Fundamentals Certificate course and the H&M Group E-Learning Library, SFA is an important educational partner for the H&M Group. SFA understands our business and we will continue to collaborate more in the future.