Nikol Rakic
Sourcing & Production Director, Peak Performance

Why did you choose to educate and train your colleagues? How does this fit into your sustainability strategy?

Sustainability is not always easily explained, nor does a sustainable mindset come naturally for everyone at Peak Performance. To be able to lift all colleagues to the same level, as well engage as many as possible, we felt it would be a great idea to do this training together – design, product development and sourcing. As the course is very hands on and practical, it was easy to motivate everyone and to clearly feel the engagement afterwards. One important part of our sustainability strategy is capacity building, not only externally but internally as well.

How many colleagues from your company participated, and how did they respond overall to the education and training?

This time, we were just over 15 people doing the training. In earlier sessions we engaged another similar sized group. The overall response was very positive, some participants were confirming previous learnings of sustainability matters whilst others were shocked about the impact we have and the consequences as a result. It was quite clear to everyone that we want to change something and reduce our negative impact, now and going forward! 

What have the benefits of the training been?

The main benefit of taking the course was for everyone to lose the fear of setting tougher targets in order to reach more sustainable goals going forward. Everyone understands the seriousness of the matter and is ready commit. Allowing the teams to set their own action plans to reduce our impact and do things in more sustainable ways will result in a better business case – there is no doubt about that.

How important is leadership when integrating sustainability into your business, and for transforming the industry? What does leadership mean to you?

Leadership will guide the way for all to come on the sustainability journey, so it is crucial. Leadership for me is about setting clear goals, being a role model and fueling passion for the topic into our teams. The teams then need to start creating their own agenda on this journey – if we allow them to do so, it will lead to better choices without limiting our creativity. I have seen it work!

What advice do you have for other companies planning to engage, educate or train their staff on sustainability topics?

Think big – don’t have one team participate but include all of them! I hope that soon many more of our other departments will make their way through the course.

What advice do you have for other companies now planning to get the most of the SFA sustainability fundamentals course and SFA’s services overall?

Try to engage everyone, not only people within product development. HR for example will value the information and be able to naturally add the course to a development catalogue for the whole company as it is important for our business. I also think that sustainability should be a standing point on the agenda of all important meetings – why not touch upon the topic more frequently.

Is there anything else that stands out about your SFA training experience that was helpful and you would like to share?

Our teams were extremely proud to have gone through the training. They agreed it was valuable time spent and they will surely benefit from this education even when they have left our company. Doing the course is a great career enhancement that can help to open new doors and trigger interesting discussions.