With more than 20 employees earning EIC’s Sustainable Event Professional Certificate, Diversified is building the shared knowledge and confidence needed to make sustainability part of everyday event delivery.
For Diversified, advancing sustainability across a global events portfolio required more than setting organisational goals. It required giving people throughout the business the knowledge and confidence to act on those goals in real time.
That ambition led Diversified to invest in the Events Industry Council’s Sustainable Event Professional Certificate (SEPC) at an enterprise level. More than 20 employees have now earned the certificate, helping the organisation move sustainability beyond a single department or role and into the day-to-day decisions made by its event teams.
“We wanted it to be scalable, something that gives every event team the tools and resources to feel educated on the topic and make sustainable decisions in real time,” Diversified shared. “The best way to do that was through education.”
Building Sustainability Capability Across the Organisation
Diversified has been developing its global sustainability programme for several years. As that work evolved, the organisation recognised that meaningful progress would depend on equipping employees to understand what sustainability looks like in practice: how to identify opportunities in the field, evaluate trade-offs and ask better questions of vendors and partners.
The SEPC was recommended by several industry colleagues, giving Diversified confidence that the programme could provide a credible and consistent foundation for teams across its business.
Participation has since become an important part of Diversified’s wider sustainability and events strategy. The organisation now has at least one SEPC-certified employee on most of its global event team, a milestone that represents more than professional development.
“It shows we’re building a team of event professionals who operate sustainability across the organisation,” Diversified said. “Sustainability isn’t sitting in one department or one job description anymore; it’s becoming part of how our teams think and operate day to day.”
Turning Shared Knowledge Into Practical Action
Diversified’s sustainability strategy centres on 10 global goals organised under five action areas:
- Managing emissions
- Reducing waste
- Managing resources
- Caring for communities
- Strengthening partnerships
SEPC-certified employees have helped advance work across all five areas.
One visible area of progress is materials use. Several teams have increased their use of digital signage, reducing the need for printed event materials. The organisation has also expanded community-impact initiatives within the markets its events serve.
At Fine Food Australia, Diversified’s partnership with OzHarvest helped collect more than 7,900 kilograms of surplus food. Rather than going to waste, the food was redistributed through local community markets—demonstrating how operational decisions at an event can also generate meaningful social value.
The impact is reinforced through collaboration. Members of Diversified’s Global ESG Committee and its US-based Sustainability Champions, event professionals drawn from portfolios across the business, have completed the SEPC. They meet quarterly to exchange ideas and discuss sustainability initiatives underway within their groups.
This structure allows successful ideas to travel across teams and markets. It also helps employees connect formal learning with the realities of event design and delivery, from replacing printed materials to strengthening local partnerships.
Creating a Foundation for Continued Progress
Diversified plans to continue introducing new SEPC cohorts as employee interest grows. Its goal is to expand the organisation’s base of sustainability expertise so that knowledge is represented wherever it operates and every event team has the tools needed to succeed.
“What means the most to us is seeing that collaboration and knowing the SEPC training gave them the background to want to bring this work to their own events,” Diversified shared.
Diversified’s experience illustrates the multiplier effect of organisation-wide education. Certification creates individual capability, but its broader value emerges when trained professionals work together, influence everyday choices and help build a culture in which sustainability becomes part of how events are conceived and delivered.