hub.brussels x Tapio Coaching Formula: How to make your organisation “Climate-Fit” again

 

As part of its decarbonisation coaching program, hub.brussels decided to join forces with Tapio to offer this service to companies that are willing to be part of the change. The objective of this coaching formula : empowering companies with the necessary tools to make well-informed and well-founded decisions and make them initiate change at their level.

 

 

Starting Point

 

As part of its decarbonisation coaching program, hub.brussels decided to join forces with Tapio to offer this service to companies that are willing to be part of the change. The number of motivated businesses that applied for the selection was both encouraging for the climate and diverse in industry. Startups made up the vast majority of interested parties, followed by agricultural firms that were also eager to reduce their carbon footprint. 

hub.brussels and Tapio then proceeded to select the participating companies. Two criteria were used: motivation to implement a sustainability strategy, and the relevance of the outcome of Tapio’s tool to be applied to their activities. This resulted in a panel of the six companies listed below. With the exception of Manufacture Belge de Chocolat, a large company with more than 2020 employees, the vast majority of the panel was start-ups. 

• The Crowd Cooks specialised in home delivery of meals
• Urbike offers a bicycle logistics service
• Kaly Ora sells swimwear and sportswear made from recycled plastic waste
• Wosh offers a sustainable on-demand local laundry and dry cleaning service for both households and businesses, including home delivery
• Fruit Collect harvests uneaten fruit from home gardens to produce juice
• Manufacture Belge de Chocolat makes high quality Belgian Chocolates, for branded product manufacturers and for private labels

 

 

The coaching process

 

The organisation of this coaching was overseen by June Van Veer, sustainable business model advisor at hub.brussels. She was responsible for setting up the project, being the link between the Tapio experts and managing the progress towards a sustainable action plan for each of the selected companies.

Each company had its own designated  company representative in charge of the sustainability strategy to attend each workshop. These representatives were accompanied by June and three Tapio experts (Colin, Mathéo and Zoé) who were present at each workshop to assist the participants as best they could in this new formula.

The coaching consisted of three workshops with all companies and a two-hour individual meeting between the company, a Tapio representative and June. 

• Workshop 1 (1.5 hours): Introduction to Tapio, presentation of the methodology and information needed and relevant for data collection.
• Workshop 2 (3h): Carbon footprint analysis under Tapio’s supervision, providing participants with support in encoding their data, developing their assumptions, and choosing which data to include or exclude. At the same time, Tapio worked on finalising all the companies’ footprints for the next workshop. This involved reviewing the choice of emission factors and checking all the data, ensuring that companies had taken into account all the important elements. 

• Workshop 3 (1.5 hours): Brainstorm on reduction targets and scenarios with Tapio support for each client. Between these two meetings, Tapio also prepared the reduction targets, scenarios and solutions for each client.

• Individual meeting: Presentation of the carbon report, reduction targets & scenarios, and low-carbon solutions proposed by Tapio.

Once the coaching was over, some companies did not hesitate to continue the adventure by contacting Tapio directly and continued to work on the execution of their action plan with June.

 

“Don’t aim for perfection, but rather for small impactful actions”

 

Having already worked with other players, hub.brussels highly values diversity and wanted to create the opportunity for Tapio to work with motivated Brussels companies. For June van Veer, business model advisor at hub.brussels, Tapio has distinguished itself by its ability to provide collective and personalised support rather than “classic” individual meetings. 

According to her, the real strength of the platform lies in its ability to define scenarios and action plans to guide companies. This capacity translates into a quantified assessment, which is a considerable advantage compared to a less quantifiable traditional CSR strategy.

 

“Acting on transition does not mean aiming for perfection by tackling all actions at once, but rather targeting the most impactful but feasible actions first while ensuring economic value.”

June Van Veer – Sustainable Business Model Advisor at hub.brussels

 

Companies may feel pressure from both their employees and from the outside (climate legislation, investors, consumers). However, as the advisor points out, “acting on transition does not mean aiming for perfection by tackling all actions at once, but rather targeting the most impactful but feasible actions first while ensuring economic value.” A quantified carbon report makes this possible and is, according to June Van Veer, a great compass  for the development of any action plan. Why? Because visualising the most impactful actions allows the company to know precisely where to concentrate its efforts to reduce its emissions. 

But the platform does not stop there: it also provides actions and solutions that the company has not previously thought of. Last but not least, this prioritisation of actions by platform has another advantage: it allows the company to save money by avoiding investing in actions that may cost more money and are not necessarily the most impactful. 

With the multiplication of awareness campaigns and an ever-increasing climate legislation, this tool will be indispensable in the future. It remains to be seen not if, but when companies will decide to take action. 

 

 

Becoming a “champion” takes time

 

hub.brussels and Tapio’s collaboration and decarbonization coaching prove one thing : Customised coaching in group settings works. Not only because of synergies in efficiency, but also because sharing solutions provides shared motivation and inspiration. As argued before, climate transition is not a race, but rather a journey that your organisation should begin step by step. Our goal is not to turn your company into a “climate champion” overnight, but rather to give you the tools to make well-informed and well-founded decisions so that you can initiate change at your level. 

As argued in this article, visualisation is the first step forward. You can already have an estimate of your carbon footprint or directly get an estimate of the price that fits your profile and your needs.