The Green Futures student consultancy programme has been designed by the University as a way to enable postgraduate students to gain work experience by applying knowledge and skills they have acquired on their courses to deliver real-time outputs for a business. The intention is to tackle a sustainability challenge the organisation faces and recommend workable strategies to navigate that. Each team member was required to put in 20 hours of work during the period of the consultancy. 

Team-based work  

The programme is a good opportunity to work within diverse teams, something most of us will experience in our work lives after university. The 2024 student consultancy programme selected a cohort of 35 students, grouped into seven teams of five members each. Where possible, the groups matched the profile of the students with the demands of that particular client, taking into account diversity considerations. 

Continuous engagement 

The programme was over the month of June, and a number of engagement opportunities were created, both with the University team and the client organisation. This enabled a better understanding of the ask and expectations, while giving an opportunity for discussion and course-correction, if required.  

Skill enhancement sessions on giving effective business presentations and leadership were also arranged by the University, which helped to build practical soft skills that would be useful in the workplace.  

Lastly, three rounds of practice presentations were arranged by the University for each group, in which detailed feedback was provided to hone the final presentation to the business. 

The assignment 

For our group, the client was a UK-based, development and training consultancy firm that needed to create a practical sustainability strategy for implementation within the organisation. The proposed strategy would need to be mindful of the context the organisation, which was small in size and offered an intangible service, but with a client footprint spread across several geographies. Being small, it could not bear excessive expenses.  

The solution

Devising a practical solution started from understanding the root cause of the client’s sustainability challenges. The data showed the largest contributors to the companies greenhouse gas emission footprint was airline business travel by its consultants to visits clients around the world, and due to high levels of email traffic (few people consider that each email sent through the servers and data-centres involves a small but significant use of energy and emissions). Being a small-sized firm with a hybrid work policy, their office space itself was less significant from our sustainability perspective.  

Our solution involved migrating from a project manager-driven delivery model to a local-based engagement manager model. Currently, a single project manager was handling a project end-to-end, necessitating travel from the UK to the client region repeatedly. If a cohort of engagement managers based in the local regions was used, then those engagement managers could handle the front-end activities across all the clients in a specific region, and the back-end delivery of solutions could be handled by the UK-based team. Thus, it would shift from a project-based approach to a region-based approach, thereby reducing the need for continuous air travel and resultant emission footprint 

Our strategy also recommended that before every email was sent, the sender should think of all the possible queries that could arise from their message and try to answer those potential questions upfront in a comprehensive initial email. This may reduce the number of email exchanges going to-and-fro to resolve queries, thereby reducing emissions footprint from email traffic.  

Final presentation  

The objective was to make a crisp and succinct presentation of around 15 minutes to the senior members of the client organisation, with each team-member getting a chance to speak. Following the presentation, an open question-answer round was conducted that lasted close to an hour, in most cases. The Q&A round was an opportunity for the organisation to resolve queries it may have had on the presentation contents, and further understand the logic and rationale for the recommended strategy. While an hour-long discussion may sound onerous, it is a good sign because it indicates the presentation has evoked thoughts on how it could be implemented and the organisation’s members were seriously considering the recommendations. 

Is it worth it? 

As well as being a paid opportunity, the assignment carries several learning outcomes for participating students that will be useful once they enter the workplace. It is also important to keep in mind that businesses are often done on the basis of relationships and trust, and this is a good opportunity for the students to build what may turn out to be long-lasting and productive relationships with those organisations in the long term. 

Check your University emails and keep an eye on CareerHub and @SussexUniCareers on instagram to discover similar opportunities. Undergraduate students should also check out the University’s Career Lab. 

Sourajit studies Sustainable Finance as his passion lies in climate change. He loves sunny days, sunny moods and sunny strolls, but is also game for a serious talk when needed.