Thousands of businesses will fail to meet pledges to combat climate change unless they start training employees on sustainability, Microsoft Corp’s President Brad Smith told Reuters.

Smith said common instruction on issues like carbon accounting was too piecemeal for the roughly 3,900 companies that have vowed to cut their CO2 emissions. “We have to move very quickly to start to bring our emissions down, and the ultimate bottleneck is the supply of skilled people,” he said.

Microsoft sells software for organizations to track their environmental impact. Still, companies need more than technology to address global warming, said Smith, announcing plans to develop green education materials.

Study, by Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group, found that many corporate environmental leaders - 68% - were internal hires whose team members lacked sustainability-related degrees more often than not.

“That is in part an issue for us because it’s an issue for everybody,” added Smith. “Employers really need to step back and take a broader look at their investment in employee learning and training.”

Companies should bring in instructors, pay for continuing education and convene on carbon-reduction strategies, he said.

The core mission of ECTI, an international training center based in Armenia perfectly fits the stated goals: to cultivate leaders, who are ready to address the growing demands of technology-driven challenges in energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainability and effectiveness of managing the environmental risks.

To enhance lifelong learning and self-development a merit-based scholarship was established in 2020 in memory of Rima Khachatryan, an Honoured Pedagogue of Armenia (2017) and a Veteran of Labor (1984). Every year a total of ten scholarships are awarded by ECTI.

Source: Reuters

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