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HSSMI have developed industry leading sustainability assessment tools for use across Europe
Since the “Sustainable Transition to the Agile and Green Enterprise – STAGE” project kicked off in June 2022, HSSMI have been developing bespoke tools to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to transition towards a sustainable future. The STAGE program is a European research and development project that focuses on empowering SMEs to be green leaders of the economy.
The STAGE program offers numerous benefits to SMEs across the UK and Europe, these include free business assessment tools, SME transition planning tools and access to numerous training courses leading towards funding and investment support. HSSMI have had a major role in developing the assessment tools and assisting with transformation frameworks as well as providing training content in the field of circular economy.
The STAGE program’s SME journey begins with two assessments and a carbon footprint study. This is to understand at a high-level SMEs current state of operation, gaps in knowledge, opportunities for improvement and identify a desired future state. The Phase 1 assessment is a simple and quick tool to use, analysing the organisation’s performance across the three pillars of sustainability: Environmental, social and economic along with questions on governance and innovation. The output from this phase will provide the SME with actionable steps to continue their sustainable transition journey and unlock access to relevant STAGE training modules, giving opportunities to understand state of the art technologies, methods, processes and financial tools to become energy and resource efficient.
The second phase of the assessment is a detailed evaluation of the SME to identify gaps within the business. In addition, SMEs also have the opportunity to complete the carbon footprint assessment to calculate their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. This tool has been developed by STAGE consortium partner Global Factor. The results of all assessments will be compiled to develop a bespoke transition plan with the SME for the SME. The transition plan will capture SMEs operating baseline level, the desired future state and define routes to achieve the SME’s ambitious targets. To support the SME’s sustainable journey, selected enterprises are matched with a specialist from a pool of external sustainable advisors across Europe, STAGE internal sustainability advisors are also available to support for those STAGE eligible SMEs.
The STAGE project supports the European green ambition, giving SMEs the opportunity to transform their businesses and become more sustainable whilst supporting EU climate and environmental goals. Importantly, activities on the project will help SMEs to comply with the EU’s recent CSRD “Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive” legislation. Eligible SME’s, who successfully complete the STAGE process, will be given the opportunity to receive financial support, additionally selected SMEs will be given the assistance to gain investor finances to grow their businesses sustainably.
Registration for the STAGE program will be opening soon, for more information please visit the STAGE website here. To try out HSSMI’s tool sets or if you want to know more, please do not hesitate to contact us.
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