Growing a community of sustainability changemakers

Equipping our teams to embrace sustainability challenges to transform our business and the industry

At URW, we create sustainable places that Reinvent Being Together. We aim to be a facilitator of sustainable change, working with cities and our business partners to develop and enable their low-carbon futures, and drive growth for the communities where we are present.
To realise this ambition, we need to ensure all our team understand the complex challenges the planet faces from climate change, and how our activities can have a positive impact. Not only this, but the concrete actions we can take – as individuals and as a Group.
Therefore, we have embarked on a sustainability learning journey that embraces in-person training, workshops, digital courses and gamification to ensure our colleagues are equipped with the skills they need to be changemakers for our sustainable future.

Partnering for progress
URW has teamed up with Climate Fresk, a French non-profit that aims to raise public awareness about climate change, to grow a group of Climate Fresk internal trainers and hold Climate Fresk workshops in all URW countries. So far, led by a community of around 95 internal trainers, more than 1,750 employees from all our markets, including all top managers, have taken part in Climate Fresk training sessions. Thanks to these efforts, URW was the first CAC 40 company and the first commercial real estate group in France to receive the “Certifié Entreprise Fresque du Climat” label from our training partner.

To augment our impact, URW is also working with AXA Climate School. Starting in March 2023, we provided every employee with access to a series of online expert learning modules. AXA’s sustainability learning curriculum comprises dozens of short video modules that can be taken by trainees at their own pace. All employees are encouraged to undertake the AXA Climate School curriculum during work hours. To date, more than 450 employees are engaged with this learning curriculum.

Training through gaming
At URW, we are always ready to explore new training approaches that deliver strong results. We have recently designed a gamification approach to sustainability training with the creation and roll-out of our Sustainable Development Game. The game was created by two URW managers with the aim of reframing real estate development from a sustainability standpoint. To play the game, teams work together on an imaginary real estate development, making choices about its location, construction, transportation links and other factors. Players must balance budgets and create desirable, successful destinations – but always with an eye to sustainability. At the end of the game, the carbon footprint of each team’s development is revealed, and all players get to understand the environmental impact of the choices they’ve made.
Both educational and impactful, the game is becoming a must in our training catalogue, and has already been offered to more than 200 employees in 2023.

Sustainability training is essential for all URW employees because it is essential for our mission and everything we do. At present, we are proud to say that 99% of our workforce has already received training in sustainability, whether through Climate Fresk sessions, sustainable e-learnings, Climate School courses, sustainable gaming sessions and workshops centred around URW’s own sustainability strategy, Better Places 2030.