McGill University
EN-9: Staff Professional Development and Training

Organizational Development schedules workshops offered by McGill Office of Sustainability staff. These workshops are "Sustainable Events Training," "Envisioning Sustainability at McGill," "Embedding Sustainability in the Workplace," "Waste: What Goes Where?," "Climate Action on Campus and Beyond (Parts 1 and 2)," and "Getting Started with Sustainable Workplace Certification."

Other OD workshops are sustainability-inclusive, mostly focused on employee well-being, such as "Mindfulness in the Workplace," "Mental Health Matters," "Mental Health First Aid," and "Managing Stress," among others.

The Equity Team (under the Associate Provost, Equity and Academic Policies) also regularly offers staff training. Some examples of workshops include "Accessibility, COVID-19 and Returning to Campus"; "Accommodating Employees with Disabilities"; "Equitable Hiring and Promotion"; "Gender Diversity and Inclusive Language"; "Engaging with EDI Skepticism and Resistance"; and "Inclusive Facilitation."

Moreover, all of McGill’s Procurement Services staff have received 6 hours of training in Sustainable Procurement. They can now pass on this knowledge to other staff within the faculties and units to help them navigate towards better, more sustainable, choices. Procurement Services also offers the “Sustainable Purchasing 101” course that is open to all McGill staff members.

McGill Office of Sustainability (MOOS) staff attend sustainability-related conferences, webinars, and other training throughout the year, such as the AASHE conference (2022, 2023), the AASHE STARS Cohort (2023), the International Sustainability Camps Network Conference (2021), and the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) (2022).

McGill University, in general, encourages professional development opportunities for all of its staff, including sustainability training. For example all regular administrative, support, and trades staff, and all tenure-track academics and campus-based contract academic staff have access to LinkedIn Learning, an online educational platform that helps employees discover and develop business, technology-related, and creative skills through expert-led course videos. The platform offers hundreds of courses featuring sustainability content.

https://www.mcgill.ca/od/linkedin-learning

McGill's staff performance reviews are called "performance dialogues," which are annual meetings between an employee and their supervisors to ensure clarity around an employee's tasks, potential challenges encountered, developmental needs, recognition, and a sense of contribution. McGill offers a set of guidelines for supervisors wishing to incorporate sustainability into the performance dialogue process. Examples of incorporating sustainability within the dialogue include encouraging a staff member to plan sustainability certification for an event; to lead the employee's team to sustainable workplace certification; to reduce business travel and encourage telecommuting, etc.

The performance dialogue process also includes an assessment of the employee's professional development needs; if a staff member shows an interest in developing their understanding of sustainability, this may be included in their professional development plan.

https://www.mcgill.ca/od/performance-management/performance-dialogue

In the 2021 Sustainability Survey, the McGill Office of Sustainability asked staff and faculty, "Have you been involved with an event, workshop, or training session on sustainability on campus?" 21% of faculty and staff respondents said that they had been involved in one of these.

The survey also asked, "Did you incorporate a sustainability-related objective into your performance dialogue?" Of those who reported completing a performance dialogue (a representative sample), 26% said that they had incorporated sustainability into their objectives.