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LSE: Sustainability Communication Strategies

Develop practical tools and approaches to help navigate the complexities, challenges, and opportunities involved in communicating about sustainability.

Develop practical tools and approaches to help navigate the complexities, challenges, and opportunities involved in communicating about sustainability.

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Sustainability Communication Strategies
3 weeks
4–6 hours per week
Starts Jun 10, 2024
Enroll by Jun 16, 2024
Instructor-paced
Instructor-led on a course schedule
Sustainability Communication Strategies

Enroll nowEnroll now

Starts Jun 10, 2024
3 weeks
4–6 hours per week
Starts Jun 10, 2024
Enroll by Jun 16, 2024
Instructor-paced
Instructor-led on a course schedule

About this Course

Duration : 3 weeks

As we face growing environmental and social challenges, companies around the world are seeking better and more sustainable ways of operating. But to drive meaningful change, they also need to rethink the way they communicate about their sustainability mission to employees, stakeholders, consumers, and the public. Today, professionals are tasked with developing open and honest communication strategies that reflect their organisation's efforts and speak to their audiences' attitudes, values, and beliefs about sustainability, while still delivering on business objectives.

The Sustainability Communication Strategies three-week online course from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) will provide you with the tools to navigate the complexities and opportunities involved in impactful sustainability communication. Exploring both theory and practice, you’ll engage with current research, expert insights, and real-world case studies. You’ll learn how to develop an effective sustainability communications strategy that engages your audience as a conversation partner, balances ethics, organisational reputation, and stakeholder interests, and links communication with action.

This course is for professionals and mid-level managers who work in communications-related roles, seeking practical tools and techniques for developing internal and external messaging about sustainability initiatives and challenges. This includes those who are responsible for shareholder and stakeholder relations, community engagement, or public relations, as well as marketing communication professionals such as social media and brand managers. It would also benefit any manager who is in a public-facing function and needs to respond to consumer queries and concerns.

Course curriculum

Skip Course curriculum

Gain insights into developing impactful sustainability communications strategies as you work through the weekly modules of this online course.

Module 1

Sustainability communication in an uncertain world****

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Explore the fundamental aspects of sustainability communications and the complex factors that affect organisations’ dialogue around sustainability.

  • Discuss and define sustainability communications in relation to the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) sustainability model
  • Articulate the role of an organisation’s context and audience in effective sustainability communications
  • Analyse the challenges and opportunities involved in creating dialogue around organisational sustainability efforts
  • Critique your organisation’s activity through a sustainability communications lens

**Module 2

Engaging audiences, generating action

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Learn how to engage audiences and meet their organisational expectations by understanding their attitudes, values, and beliefs towards sustainability.

  • Describe the importance of engaging audiences as conversation partners
  • Articulate the challenges that can arise from ineffective audience mapping
  • Investigate what an audience’s attitudes, values, and beliefs are towards sustainability and determine their expectations of the organisation’s sustainability strategy and communications
  • Evaluate the four dimensions of the TADD model as a way of informing your sustainability communications approach

**Module 3

Communicating sustainability in practice

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Explore the importance of analysing an organisation’s context and audience to effectively balance key considerations and frame a sustainability message.

  • Discuss the importance of balancing ethical considerations, organisational reputation, and stakeholder interests when communicating about sustainability
  • Apply the four dimensions of the TADD model of communication to support a sustainability communications strategy
  • Analyse the potential barriers and solutions to applying the TADD model in your organisational context
  • Evaluate the strategies that can be used to effectively frame a sustainability message for an audience
  • Formulate a message for your audience about a sustainability effort through effective framing

Some facts about the subject

Nearly 1 in 2

The proportion of UK consumers who feel that they can’t trust organisations on issues of sustainability.

Deloitte (2022).

53%

The percentage of Americans who doubt businesses' claims that they are environmentally friendly.

Businesswire (Mar, 2021).

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