Put Talent at the Top of the Sustainability Agenda

Talent Requirements at a Glance

Focus: Responding to stakeholder needs, complying with regulations, seizing ad hoc business opportunities, and shaping the company’s sustainability goals and strategy

Talent Challenge: Acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to accomplish critical sustainability work and chart a course for the whole organization

Talent Needed:Primarily people from inside the organization who know the business and the organization well and have the capacity to move up the sustainability learning curve quickly

What’s Working So Far: Identifying and activating the general athletes, relying on external learning providers and solutions for rapid skilling, hiring niche talent to complement existing staff, outsourcing work where needed before bringing it in house to a ready team

In the first phase of building sustainability talent, companies will assemble their sustainability evangelists, who will not only make progress on sustainability but also show a wider population of employees how to embed sustainability into their roles, helping gain the buy-in of leaders and their teams from across the company and acting as agents of change for sustainability.

Mobilization phase team members deeply understand the company and its sustainability pledges. They have a sustainability mindset. They are quick learners and good communicators. In the words of one director of sustainability, members of the core mobilizing team have “the superpower of being able to interact and connect with people.”

That transformation skill is critical on a sustainability journey: For many companies, becoming more sustainable means fundamentally reinventing business models and operations—shifting from the ways value has historically been created and captured to something that may be materially different. That is no small change management feat, even when a company has the best of intentions to become sustainable.

Beyond those transformation superpowers, all sustainability-focused professionals, of course, need sustainability skills. They also require data and digital skills, for two reasons: Because they’ll need this language to communicate with organizational stakeholders about sustainability goals, and because they’ll spend a great deal of time measuring and demonstrating progress against those goals. And core sustainability-focused talent needs to operate from a functional understanding of how the organization works and how it creates and captures value.

What we found surprising is just how critical it is to have a balanced mix of sustainability, transformation, and data and digital skills, on top of the functional ones.

Our research showed that people with the particular combination of required skills are hard to find. There aren’t enough of them on the market, even though more and more people are graduating with degrees in sustainability-related fields. Those “green degree” holders will be valuable additions to the team, but they don’t necessarily bring the other skills to the table—at least not right away. Indeed, it’s the rare “sustainability expert” who can join a company and quickly expand their skill set with the necessary capabilities—chiefly, the functional understanding of the business as well as the trust of colleagues that will inspire transformation.

As a result, our research showed, front-runner companies are meeting the multidisciplinary skill set challenge by developing talent internally. They select employees with the necessary functional, transformation, and data and digital expertise to become members of the mobilization phase team and then help them rapidly gain sustainability expertise. (The reverse is harder to engineer. As Microsoft’s general manager for energy and renewables explained, “The challenge in finding really impactful people in this space is to find someone who’s focused very deeply on a particular aspect of the business before becoming a sustainability professional.”)

A snapshot of the backgrounds of the sustainability leaders and teams participating in our research shows how companies are assembling their sustainability talent, largely from inside the organization and primarily with a view toward developing sustainability skills on top of other attributes.
As these insiders step into their roles, they face a steep learning curve to upskill in sustainability—without enough of the proper solutions and resources at hand to do it. We asked members of sustainability teams to describe the upskilling challenges they have encountered. That the nascency of skills is far and away the prevailing challenge comes as no surprise, given how fast moving and dynamic the sustainability space is today.

So how, we asked, are insiders gaining those nascent skills?

Because the required skills are so new, traditional means of acquiring them are insufficient at this point. In the meantime, on-the-job learning is critical—not only because other options aren’t yet mature and widely available but also because it is, by definition, designed to precisely meet a company’s unique needs. Rather than learning about sustainability in a classroom and then coming back to the workplace to figure out how to apply the knowledge, people can learn by doing, piece by piece—augmenting their knowledge as they go. At one industrial manufacturer, for example, upskilling tends to happen through scrappy methods. “We read books, we go to conferences, we stay on top of everything we can, however we can,” the company’s director of sustainability explained. Our research shows that short-term solutions like this, though not ideal, are helping companies progress on their sustainability journey.

Here are some tried and true approaches that companies at Phase I can use.

One recommended way to get the core team up and running, as mentioned, is to identify and activate the general athletes among the current workforce who can be upskilled to meet sustainability needs.

When leaders at one company were building their core team, for example, they struggled to find the necessary communication and people skills among external candidates. Looking internally, though, the company’s director of sustainability realized there were “gems sitting there in the organization” who also possessed valuable, hard-to-teach knowledge and an eagerness to learn and upskill.

AT&T is another company that has recognized the value of internal talent in filling sustainability roles. The people in the company’s business units “understand how all the aspects of sustainability can interact with the business operations, understand the business objectives, and know how to get things done in a complicated organization,” said the company’s chief sustainability officer.

Upskilling the internal team in these early days is easier when companies can rely on external learning providers. But it isn’t easy to find the needed external courses and certification programs. For instance, when we asked sustainability talent which upskilling methods they found most useful, only 26% included external certifications—the lowest among all methods cited. The 55 survey respondents who reported using external certification programs relied on 46 different certifications to gain the knowledge required in their roles, indicating the need to streamline and consolidate available resources. “There are so many good courses out there, it was actually quite hard to navigate,” said a BCG employee who rotated through the company’s sustainability team. He added that the course he ultimately found was useful.

Likewise, other training resources can be upgraded. Our research showed that companies are eager for external resources they can use to gain sustainability expertise.

Take HSBC. External training is common there—in fact, employees often turn to a single, university-offered course on sustainable finance, citing its specificity and applicability—but it’s also common knowledge that navigating available offerings is a maze. Organizations like HSBC recognize the value of partnering with external providers to improve training options.

While the merits of hiring internally are clear, companies also have the opportunity to augment their talent strategy with a plan to expand the core team through external hires, particularly when specialized or technical sustainability expertise is required. Companies report doing this early in the sustainability process for new requirements. Microsoft, for example, has hired externally to meet the need for carbon accountants. “We look for people who have managed carbon accounting at another company because it’s not always obvious how to do it if you haven’t already,” the company’s general manager of energy and resources explained.

Finally, outsourcing work as needed is a good way to get the journey started, with the ultimate goal of bringing the skills in house. Outsourcing helps transfer technical knowledge and build future capabilities to the internal team.

In the course of assessing its carbon footprint, BCG decided to augment its work by seeking an independent scientific opinion from an external partner. As the global sustainability lead at BCG explained, “Partnering with an external company brings assurance and comfort that you’re moving in the right direction.” This is a confidence that is essential as a company is building its own organizational muscle.

Talent Requirements at a Glance

Focus: Optimizing and reimagining business models and processes to meet evolving corporate-wide sustainability goals

Talent Challenge: Scaling skill sets so that business units can independently carry out sustainability initiatives, guided by the central sustainability team (the general athletes and experts) convened at the mobilize phase

Talent Needed: Starts with select functional experts who are responsible for implementing sustainability initiatives and then scales to workers across the organization who must adapt to the new processes and ways of working

What’s Working So Far: Cascading learning and development to build sustainability fluency, incubating capabilities in a center-of-excellence model before disseminating them, being open to niche solutions for targeted needs

In Phase II, the company’s core mobilization team of general athletes amplifies its efforts, turning strategy into reality by extending the blend of sustainability and functional skills, in particular, and embedding them into the daily work of the rest of the workforce. For the workforce at large, transformation and data and digital skills are not as imperative as they were for the general athletes who spearheaded the mobilize stage; rather, jobs will incorporate the four skills to varying degrees.

But driving embeddedness across the organization is no less a challenge than building the multidisciplinary team at the outset: Ultimately, almost every person in the organization will need to gain general sustainability fluency and merge their existing functional skills with the requisite new sustainability skills for their role. Exactly what that looks like will vary by job function—which explains why embeddedness is such a big challenge.

This marriage of sustainability and functional expertise proceeds according to company requirements: Where is it needed most urgently? The answer to that question will dictate which functions will be the first priority. Because food distribution company Sysco has determined that much of its scope 1 and 2 emissions come from its vehicles, for example, the company is prioritizing a switch to electric vehicles.

At this phase, the goal is to move from sustainability as a theoretical and strategic concept to “applied sustainability,” which requires that sustainability be embedded in nearly every job and reflected in nearly every job action. How do you tackle such a diverse, at-scale upskilling ambition?

Companies at Phase II can rely on several proven approaches. First, they can find ways to cascade learning and development throughout the organization and thereby build sustainability fluency.

HSBC provides one example. Its Sustainability Academy is a self-service training center that gives employees opportunities to learn about general sustainability topics as well as tailored content (by industry, for instance) and personalized educational pathways. HSBC trained several thousand client-facing employees on sustainability content in 2022 alone. Another example comes from JSW Steel, an Indian steel manufacturer. The company has focused on providing training opportunities (both classroom instruction and online modules) on fundamental sustainability topics. The concentration on sustainability training at JSW Steel has enabled the company to prioritize internal talent for sustainability roles, upskilling individuals on sustainability and leveraging existing functional expertise.

Another approach is to establish a center of excellence (CoE), where new sustainable business processes can be incubated until they are handed off to functions or business units. Further, the people working on those processes in the CoE can build the critical skills required to institutionalize them. As Owens Corning’s chief sustainability officer described the approach, “Solutions are so complex that we put an end-to-end team in the CoE. We won’t integrate until it becomes institutionalized, then we’ll move it into the business units.”

Owens Corning’s Ecodesign Strategy Wheel was developed this way. The Wheel is a business process that integrates sustainability objectives into the product design function. Designers must think up front about their products’ sustainability implications at each stage of the life cycle. Every new and modified product goes through a stewardship review process, which includes evaluation on sustainability criteria. The result: sustainability priorities were institutionalized in an important business process. It was, in the words of the company’s chief sustainability officer, “a massive shift.”

Sustainability pioneers will continue to encounter new skill needs—and must devise new skilling solutions. With that in mind, we urge companies to remain open to niche solutions for particular, targeted needs.

For instance, Sysco turned to an external industry association to help with one of its key sustainability initiatives: transitioning its fleet of trucks from diesel to electric. ACT Fleet Forum, an association of companies that are pursuing similar clean transportation solutions for fleets and that support one another by sharing best practices, helped in this effort. The association role has been critical, given the nascency of the field. The strategy has helped Sysco become a leader in this field. The company plans to expand its electric vehicle pilot in 2023, with a goal of converting 35% of its fleet to electric by 2030.

Talent Requirements at a Glance

Focus: Integrating sustainability across all aspects of the business to make it intrinsic to the culture, ways of working, and approach to value creation

Talent Challenge: Institutionalizing attractive roles, development opportunities, and career paths to retain in-demand sustainability-focused talent; supporting and equipping the broader workforce to navigate continuing changes to the business and their daily jobs as sustainability takes root—and to help them capitalize on the opportunities those changes present for growth and purpose-driven work

Talent Needed: Everyone

What Can Work: Planning proactively for career paths, investing in continuous education, and focusing deliberately on building a company culture around sustainability

In Phase III, companies must switch their operating focus to supporting and enabling their sustainability-capable workforce to turn sustainability into a competitive advantage. They must codify their new processes and approaches and thoughtfully and compassionately engage the workforce to maintain and excel in the new normal. Firms should also focus on retaining the sustainability expertise they’ve developed—and attracting more. As one company leader bluntly put it, “Everyone will want them.” It’s true. The age-old dilemma related to upskilling and reskilling applies here: What if I invest all this time and money in my people, and they leave, taking their newfound expertise to my competitors?

Prepare for today’s hiring frenzy to intensify. Organizations must protect their assets.

To help secure their experts, companies should continue to develop and educate those individuals, give them the opportunity to drive change, and offer them access to senior leadership. Inspire them. At the same time, be aware of impediments. As Microsoft’s senior program manager for Windows and devices sustainability put it, “A real challenge is that there is no sustainability career path. At some point, they’re going to want to grow in their function.”

Accordingly, companies at Phase III should plan proactively for career paths for sustainability-focused talent. They should create future roles and mobility opportunities for these individuals whenever possible. This not only helps to keep talent happy and growing, it also allows the company to purposefully design career mobility that strengthens its sustainability fabric. As people move within the organization, they cross-pollinate ideas and approaches. To help carve out career paths and growth opportunities, companies can look for candidates internally before searching externally, and managers can help employees find new internal roles. For example, HSBC offers a talent marketplace that lists openings so that employees can find new opportunities, including sustainability-focused ones.

Similarly, companies should continue to invest in continuing education. Sustainability won’t stand still. New technologies, regulations, and opportunities will emerge, and talent will need to keep gaining skills and capabilities. Accordingly, L&D functions must be nimble in designing and launching learning solutions. Continued upskilling will be valuable to the organization and serve as an employee benefit and an avenue to growth.

For example, BCG has augmented its internally focused Climate and Sustainability Academy with partnerships that offer employees the opportunity to enroll in intensive courses at Cambridge Judge Business School and Columbia Climate School. Similar efforts will be particularly useful at Phase III.

Companies should also focus on culture change. To make sustainability an intrinsic part of everyday work and the company’s focus, culture must be transformed to emphasize the new sustainable businesses and ways of working.

Owens Corning’s handprint/footprint approach to building sustainability into its business processes is an example of the kind of culture change companies should pursue at Phase III. “Footprint” is a familiar term—it reflects the negative impact of a product’s manufacturing process on water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The “handprint,” though, refers to the positive impact a product can have throughout the value chain, including content that can be recycled, end-of-life solutions, circularity, transparency on raw materials sourcing, and the reduction of supplier emissions. These principles represent core objectives, and the company has integrated them into its business processes.

The handprint/footprint approach has a further benefit: creating an inspiring company culture that emphasizes sustainability. People across Owens Corning, no matter their role, are able to celebrate their ability not just to mitigate the negative footprint but also to enact positive outcomes in the form of a positive handprint impact—and leave a real mark they can feel proud of. That’s what embedding a successful sustainability mindset looks like. “As we developed our priorities, we started looking at sustainability through a holistic lens,” the company’s chief sustainability officer explained. “It’s about improving people’s quality of life.”

Unilever, the consumer goods giant, offers another example. The company, which has so far achieved a 64% reduction in its scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2015, began its sustainability transformation in 2010 with its Sustainable Living Plan, which ran for a decade. Now the company is taking a different approach by embedding sustainability into its business strategy and company culture through its Compass goals program.

“The Compass goals are embedded into the heart of what we do,” said the company’s director of technology, innovation, and sustainability. “I wouldn’t see it as training. It’s more of a culture thing. This is our North Star of where we’re going.” In fact, some of the company’s most experienced experts don’t think of themselves as “sustainability talent,” and their titles and job descriptions don’t mention sustainability. Nonetheless, they apply that lens to the teams they’re on and drive progress in the company’s sustainability objectives.

Microsoft, too, has seen success in integrating sustainability with business processes, through its approach to internal carbon pricing. In January 2020, when it decided to include scope 3 emissions in its internal carbon tax, a much broader segment of the company suddenly became concerned about emissions and sustainability. Previously, the internal carbon tax had been in place for years but applied only to scope 1 and 2 emissions and thus affected a relatively small portion of the company. Once the scope 3 inclusion was made, “a lot more people had to start thinking about emissions,” the company’s head of renewable energy for cloud explained.

This policy change resulted in the creation of many more sustainability teams throughout the organization, illustrating the potential for internal initiatives to spark wider sustainability objectives.

One industrial manufacturer’s sustainability transformation involved a strategic shift, from a focus on products to a focus on customers—more specifically, on helping customers make their production systems sustainable. Such a sweeping change in strategy required a shift in mindset and companywide buy-in. “Here’s what we need to do” or “here’s where we’re headed” were not messages that would galvanize the transformation. Rather, the company inspired its employees and customers by addressing the importance of their work.

The launch of the new campaign generated excitement among the workforce. “Inspirational vision. Revolutionary journey—excited to be a part of this,” commented one person. Said another: “Proud and excited to be part of this journey!”