Since the founding of BCSD Portugal in 2001, the BCSD Portugal Academy has already recorded more than 18,000 participations in training activities, involving more than 600 companies, in a path that now totals more than 1,600 hours of training. The numbers “reflect the growing commitment of BCSD Portugal to empower professionals and companies to respond to the challenges of the sustainable transition, through applied knowledge and tools tailored to the needs of organizations,” the statement said.
According to the same source, created in 2023, the Academy is now entering a new phase of development, consolidating a training offer that combines a structured three-level journey, aimed at the progressive development of professionals’ competencies, with tailor-made trainings designed according to the specific challenges of each organization. This combination allows BCSD Portugal to simultaneously work on individual capacity-building and the transformation of companies, through programs adapted to the realities and needs of each one.
The commitment to personalization and the ability to reach different audiences has allowed the Academy to broaden BCSD Portugal’s training activity through partnerships with other organizations. Among the projects developed is the initiative carried out with the Santander Foundation, which reached around 600 Portuguese SMEs, and the Roadshow developed with AICEP, which brought training to professionals in five municipalities.
This growth consolidates the Academy as a central infrastructure for the training of Portuguese companies, validated by an average satisfaction rate of 93% recorded among trainees since 2023.
“The evolution of the Academy translates into an important change in how we approach training for sustainability. The more than 18 thousand participants and the knowledge production we have been developing show that there is a growing need to equip companies and their professionals with skills that enable them to transform knowledge into action. It is no longer just about transmitting technical knowledge to specialists, but about preparing professionals and organizations to integrate sustainability into their decisions, into their strategy and into how they do business,” says Filipa Pantaleão, Secretary-General of BCSD Portugal.
This evolution also accompanies the transformation of the competencies needed to respond to the sustainable transition. If, in a first phase, sustainability was mainly associated with specialists in environmental and technical areas, the current reality requires more transversal competencies, combining systemic and critical thinking, adaptability, collaboration and problem-solving.
It is a trend also reflected in the evolution of the concept of green skills. These competencies are no longer confined to specific roles and have become related to different professions, sectors and levels of seniority, taking on an increasing role in training, re-skilling, recruitment and planning the future needs of organizations.
For BCSD Portugal, this shift implies an approach to training that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge. The Academy seeks to develop the ability to think, experiment and act, translating technical knowledge into concrete situations and creating conditions for sustainability to be incorporated into business strategy and day-to-day decisions. In this sense, the Academy has sought to establish itself as a training infrastructure capable of delivering greater scale and consistency to BCSD Portugal’s training activity, deepening the impact among professionals and companies.
“The Academy does not transform companies by itself; it creates the conditions for companies to transform themselves with more method and consistency. The Academy came to give BCSD Portugal a pedagogical project whose objective is to give people skills such as critical and holistic thinking, collaborative construction and adaptability. The Academy also comes to transfer technical knowledge, but in a practical way, showing how it can be applied in day-to-day life,” says Tiago Carrilho, Director of Knowledge and Training at BCSD Portugal.
The next generation of competencies should combine sustainability with business, technology, systemic thinking and transformation capacity, in a context where factors such as technological evolution, the economy and geopolitics are increasingly interconnected. Among the competencies that gain relevance are data literacy and AI literacy, strategy, finance, risk management, innovation, leadership, communication and collaboration, and change management.
With the evolution of the Academy, BCSD Portugal thus aims to contribute to ensuring that sustainability ceases to be seen as the exclusive competency of specialists and becomes, in a transversal manner, integrated into the ability of organizations to manage, decide, innovate and transform.
