Turn employee capability into local social value
Esas Properties
SKD TürkiyeSummary
Employees trained in social sustainability form working groups that design and run community and environmental projects at each site, tracked against corporate targets.
Context
Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)
The company is a retail property owner and operator whose Burda shopping centres sit inside the daily life of seven cities in Türkiye.
Its sustainability approach left room to develop: the strategy was coordinated at head office, while the sites where the company meets communities, employees and local institutions were only loosely connected to it. To raise its effect on the ground, the company set out to involve shopping centre teams directly in producing social value.
Social sustainability was the clearest example. Diversity, equity and inclusion work, community engagement and volunteering existed as intentions but had no route into shopping centre operations, no owner in the field and no measurement, which left them dependent on individual goodwill and vulnerable to being dropped whenever operational pressure rose.
The company launched the initiative in 2025 and continued it in 2026 to build on that: to build social sustainability capability among employees, give them a mandate to develop solutions at their own locations, and connect the results to corporate targets and local partnerships. Programme results are reported in the company's sustainability reporting (1).
Location of the initiative: Burda shopping centres in seven cities across Türkiye, coordinated from the head office
Solution
The initiative is a corporate social impact model that treats employees as the producers of social value rather than as the audience for it. It is led by the chief executive and coordinated by the Sustainability Committee.
The design is described as six repeatable steps: senior management ownership, employee capability development, local needs analysis, solution development through working groups, delivery with local stakeholders, and impact tracking against defined indicators. The steps are deliberately generic so that they can be repeated at a new location without redesign.
Capability comes first. Thirty-five employees were taken through structured development in social sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion, delivered with a strategic partner association that also brought that perspective into the content design and facilitation of the programme itself.
Those employees then formed two named working groups, which analysed the needs around their own locations and designed activity accordingly. The resulting work covers environmental awareness, climate awareness among children and young people, waste management, local community engagement and volunteering, delivered as workshops, film screenings and field activity at the shopping centres.
Delivery is carried out with local partners rather than alone. A national environmental and reforestation association, the state forestry authority, a marine environment protection association, local authorities, local non-governmental organisations and women's cooperatives took part as solution partners in identifying needs, selecting sites, coordinating field work, running awareness activity and reaching communities.
The element that separates this from a volunteering scheme is the governance link. Project-level objectives were written into senior management targets and into employee performance indicators, so social value production is tracked through the company's performance management and sustainability governance rather than left to discretionary effort. Head office holds strategic coordination and target tracking; the shopping centre management teams are the delivery structure and the value creators in the field.
Figure 1: The six-step model behind the programme: leadership ownership, a four-month hybrid learning journey for 35 employees, local needs analysis, working group design, delivery with local institutions and partners, and tracking that feeds the next cycle — run across seven shopping centres by two employee-led working groups.
Figure 2: The seven participating Burda shopping centres across Türkiye and the working group behind each one: Ustaların Karışımı on environmental awareness, clean-ups and community engagement, and Değnekçiler on waste oil awareness and circular collection.
Impact
Sustainability Impact
Climate
The initiative does not reduce the company's own Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions and no greenhouse gas reduction is claimed for it; its climate contribution is an enabling one.
Climate awareness among children and young people is one of the themes the working groups selected, delivered through workshops, film screenings and awareness activity at the shopping centres alongside nature awareness, circularity and environmental responsibility. Over the first cycle, which began in 2025 and continued into 2026, that activity reached 1,861 children and routed 703.5 kg of waste into an appropriate disposal process, so what is reported is reach and material handled over a defined period rather than an abatement figure.
The wider enabling effect is inside the company: field teams that have held sustainability objectives in their own performance indicators since 2025 make different operational and procurement decisions from field teams that treat sustainability as a head office subject.
Nature
703.5 kg of waste was routed into an appropriate disposal process, and a circular collection model was developed for waste oils together with awareness work on their environmental effects, which addresses a waste stream that would otherwise reach drains and water bodies from shopping centre food and beverage operations.
Nature awareness, circularity and environmental responsibility were the themes used to reach 1,861 children through workshops, film screenings and awareness activity.
Delivery partners included a national environmental and reforestation association, the state forestry authority and a marine environment protection association, which connected the site-level activity to established conservation programmes rather than creating parallel ones.
Social
The 35 employees who completed the development gained capability in social sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion, and then moved from participant to designer: the two working groups they formed developed the environmental awareness, waste management, community engagement and volunteering activity delivered at the sites.
Activity across seven cities reached approximately 4,800 people, positioning the shopping centres as places that strengthen local community interaction rather than only as retail space.
1,861 children were reached with nature awareness, circularity and environmental responsibility themes through workshops, film screenings and awareness activity.
Local communities, children, young people, volunteers, non-governmental organisations, women's cooperatives and public stakeholders became part of the value creation rather than recipients of it, and stakeholder experience and feedback shaped decision-making alongside internal assessment.
The initiative began in 2025 and continued into 2026, which is the evidence that it has become part of the culture, employee objectives, field operations and stakeholder relationships rather than a single campaign.
Business Impact
Benefits
The main benefit is capability that stays in the business. The 35 employees who completed the development hold competence in social sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion that is applied in their day-to-day management of the sites, which is a different asset from a completed donation or sponsorship.
Sustainability management moved out of the central team and into field performance objectives, daily operations and local stakeholder relationships, which removes the bottleneck of a small head office function and produces a systemic effect on employee behaviour and internal decision-making.
The shopping centres gain local relevance. Community interaction, local institutional relationships and the presence of local non-governmental organisations, cooperatives and authorities at the sites support the role of these assets in the life of their cities, which is directly connected to their commercial function.
Because objectives sit in senior management targets and employee performance indicators, results are visible, comparable between locations and auditable, which is what allows the activity to be defended in a budget cycle.
Costs
The model is deliberately low in capital intensity: scaling it requires senior management ownership, clear indicators, local stakeholder mapping, employee training and the empowerment of field teams rather than infrastructure investment.
The real costs are the capability development programme delivered with the strategic partner association, including content design and facilitation, the working time of 35 employees taken out of shopping centre operations for training and project work, the coordination capacity needed at head office, and the direct costs of the field activity such as workshops, film screenings, materials and waste collection logistics.
There is also a dependency cost. Delivery relies on partner organisations for expertise, site access and community reach, which means the calendar and the quality of the work are partly outside the company's control.
Costs are held down by repeating the same six-step structure at each location instead of designing new schemes, and by using existing partner programmes rather than building parallel ones.
Impact Beyond Sustainability And Business
Co-benefits
Partnerships built for this work outlast the individual activity: relationships with an environmental and reforestation association, the state forestry authority, a marine environment protection association, local authorities, local non-governmental organisations and women's cooperatives create routes for later work at the same sites.
Women's cooperatives gain access to shopping centre footfall and visibility, which links the social programme to local economic activity rather than only to awareness.
The capability developed in diversity, equity and inclusion applies inside the company as well as outside it, affecting how field teams manage their own staff and tenant relationships.
Potential side-effects
Placing social objectives in employee performance indicators is what makes the work durable, but it also risks turning social value into an indicator to be satisfied. Keeping the local needs analysis step ahead of project design is the control that prevents activity being selected for ease of measurement.
Field teams carry the work in addition to shopping centre operations, so the load has to be planned against the operating calendar or it competes with trading peaks.
Dependence on chief executive sponsorship is a genuine exposure: a model that runs through senior management targets is also vulnerable to a change in those targets.
Social outcomes are harder to measure than environmental ones. Participant numbers and waste quantities are countable, but the change in awareness they are meant to represent is not, so reported figures describe reach rather than effect.
Implementation
Typical Business Profile
The model suits multi-site companies whose locations are physically embedded in local communities, including retail property owners, shopping centre and mixed-use operators, and organisations in other sectors that maintain continuous contact with the public at site level.
It is most relevant where a sustainability strategy already exists at corporate level but has no delivery mechanism in the field, and where site management teams have enough autonomy to design and run local activity.
Because the requirement is governance and capability rather than capital, it is accessible to mid-sized organisations, and it does not depend on a large central sustainability function.
Delivery engages the chief executive, the sustainability committee, head office coordination, shopping centre management teams and human resources, working with external partners for content and community reach.
Approach
Secure ownership at the top and write it into targets: Place the initiative under chief executive leadership and sustainability committee coordination, and connect project-level objectives to senior management targets and employee performance indicators so that social value production is tracked as performance rather than as goodwill.
Choose a capability partner rather than a content vendor: Engage an association with expertise in social sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion to co-design the content and facilitate the sessions, so that the perspective is built into the design of the programme instead of being delivered as a course.
Develop a defined group of employees: Take a specific cohort — 35 people in this case — through structured development, drawn from the site teams that will later run the work, rather than offering optional awareness training across the whole workforce.
Analyse local needs before designing anything: Require each location to assess the needs, institutions and gaps around it, so that projects answer a local question rather than replicating a corporate theme in seven places.
Convert trained employees into working groups with a mandate: Form named teams that design their own projects and field applications, and give them the authority to commit the site to delivery, which is what turns participants into active stakeholders.
Map and recruit local partners: Bring environmental, forestry, marine conservation, local authority, non-governmental and cooperative partners into needs identification, site selection, field coordination and community outreach as solution partners rather than as sponsors or recipients.
Deliver at the sites and count what happens: Run workshops, film screenings, awareness activity and collection schemes at the shopping centres, and record participants, children reached and material quantities as the programme's indicator base.
Close the feedback loop into the next cycle: Collect shopping centre management field assessments, project team post-delivery outputs, stakeholder interviews and participant observations, and use them as the input to the following period's activity design, then carry the results into corporate sustainability reporting.
Stakeholders Involved
Project leads: The chief executive leads the initiative and the Sustainability Committee coordinates it. Ownership was not limited to sponsorship: project-level objectives were integrated into senior management targets and employee performance indicators, which moved the work into the company's performance management and sustainability governance. Head office holds strategic coordination and target tracking, while the shopping centre management teams are the delivery structure in the field.
Company functions: Shopping centre management teams design and deliver the activity at their own locations and provide the field assessments that feed the next cycle. The sustainability function coordinates indicators and reporting, and human resources supports the capability development of the 35 participating employees and the integration of objectives into performance indicators. The two working groups formed by trained employees cut across these functions rather than sitting inside one of them.
Main providers: A strategic partner association specialising in gender equality and social inclusion took a direct role in content design, facilitation and the integration of the social sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion perspective into the programme, which positioned employees as designers of field applications rather than as trainees.
Other: A national environmental and reforestation association, the state forestry authority, a marine environment protection association, local authorities, local non-governmental organisations and women's cooperatives took part as solution partners in identifying needs, selecting delivery areas, coordinating field work, running awareness activity and reaching communities. Local communities, children, young people, volunteers, public stakeholders and suppliers are engaged through the activity itself, and their experience and feedback shaped decision-making alongside internal assessment.
Key Parameters To Consider
The initiative started in 2025 and continued in 2026, so the reported results describe a first full cycle rather than a mature programme.
Scaling requirements are governance rather than capital: senior management ownership, explicit indicators, local stakeholder mapping, employee training and the empowerment of field teams.
Feedback is collected through shopping centre management field assessments, project team outputs after delivery, stakeholder interviews and participant observations, and feeds the design of the following period's activity.
The six-step structure is what makes the model portable: it can be applied to multi-site companies, commercial property assets and other sectors in contact with local communities without redesigning the approach for each context.
Implementation And Operations Tips
Put the objectives in the target system before the first project. The experience of the first year was that social sustainability becomes a scalable and durable mechanism only when it is integrated with corporate objective systems; without that, the same activity reverts to discretionary volunteering.
Train a defined cohort rather than the whole workforce. A group of 35 with a mandate produced designed projects; general awareness training produces attendance.
Let locations choose their own subjects. The needs analysis step is what prevents a corporate theme being repeated in seven cities regardless of what each city needs.
Use existing partner programmes. Environmental, forestry, marine and cooperative partners already have delivery capacity and community trust, which is faster and cheaper than building either.
Separate reach from effect in reporting. Participant counts and waste quantities are honest measures of reach; describing them as behaviour change is not.