Meeting the country’s climate goals will require an increase of both dedicated professionals whose roles are solely focused on sustainability efforts and a significant upskilling of the broader work force.Getty Images
Demand for sustainability skills is far outpacing supply in Canada, with the greatest areas of need often falling outside of what would traditionally be labelled the “green sector.”
Meeting the country’s climate goals will require an increase of both dedicated professionals whose roles are solely focused on sustainability efforts and a significant upskilling of the broader work force.
Studies suggest, however, that most employers are failing to adequately invest in those skills.
According to a recent study conducted by Salesforce, 75 per cent of Canadian workers believe an inability to find skilled talent is preventing companies from reaching their sustainability goals, and 88 per cent worry there’s too little investment in sustainability training.
Furthermore, 42 per cent of Canadian knowledge workers doubt that Canadian businesses will reach their sustainability targets and nearly a quarter remain skeptical of their own employers’ ability to do so.
“Almost half are eager to incorporate sustainability into their current role, and that’s where we see a lot of opportunity, because we believe sustainability has to be cross functional, and operationalized throughout the business,” said Emma Grande, the director of ESG strategy and engagements at Salesforce. “The good news is that there’s a lot of interest from the employee base. There’s a lot of passion there, so I think Canadian employers will want to tap into that.”
Ms. Grande says that sustainability initiatives might have a designated leader or manager, but such efforts can no longer be contained to a single individual or department. Instead, she says meeting sustainability targets should be an “all-hands on deck” effort.
Some of the strategies she recommends for building those skills internally include developing employee resource groups, education reimbursement programs and online training.
“We have a free online training platform called Trailhead with over 30 public sustainability trails, and we’ve seen a lot of growth with employees upskilling on sustainability,” she said.
Ms. Grande adds that many organizations target carbon neutrality – often referred to as “net zero” – by a certain date. “There is a huge demand [for skills] around net zero, because it’s so data intensive” she said. “In particular carbon accounting is a skill set that’s highly in demand, and it includes things like forecasting, scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, dealing with huge data sets.”
Experts agree that reaching such a lofty goal requires a wholesale, companywide effort.
“The activities associated with net zero need to be embedded within the operations,” says EY Canada’s climate change and sustainability services leader, Don Linsdell. He explains that until recently demand for sustainability skills were largely concentrated among carbon intensive employers, such as supply chain and logistics providers, or the energy and mining sector.
“Now there will be a broader application across all companies, not just companies in certain industries that were more carbon intensive than others, so the demand for people that actually have the skills in these areas is very high,” he says.
Linsdell adds that changing government regulations coupled with heightened pressure from customers, investors, board members and employees is driving demand for sustainability commitments, and with it, internal skills that can achieve those targets.
He suggests that the current pool of sustainability talent in Canada is unable to meet the heightened demand but remains hopeful that educational institutions have gotten the message and adapted accordingly.
“Every university is adding sustainability programs; in fact, every faculty within every university is adding sustainability programs,” he said. “You see a lot of different programs and degrees [related to sustainability] coming up, whether it’s in engineering or finance or business.”
For example, he says that accounting programs often offer courses on carbon accounting, law schools are providing more training on federal and international emissions standards, and engineering programs are emphasizing sustainable materials and practices.
Research suggests these additions to traditional academic offerings across a range of disciplines are in alignment with talent market realities. According to a forthcoming study by ECO Canada, 33 per cent of senior managers in the finance and insurance sectors have significant environmental components to their jobs.
“Even though your job might not be an environmental job, environmental competencies are required in more and more roles,” said Kevin Nilsen, president and CEO of ECO Canada. “Even customer service representatives or sales managers will have to have more green literacy skills in order to perform their jobs.”
Nilsen explains that as individuals and organizations begin to ask more questions about the sustainability of the products and services they utilize, those in sales and customer service need the skills and language to offer satisfactory answers.
To overcome the growing talent gap Nilsen encourages businesses to add a sustainability lens to their hiring efforts and re-evaluate training programs to ensure they’re keeping up with evolving sustainability practices and standards.
Training budgets often don’t match the real needs, Nielsen says. Organizations should reflect on this and strategize to spend their development funds more wisely.
“Clearly map out the type of people you need in order to move your business forward – is it policy folks? is it scientists? Is it engineers? Once they figure that out, they can more clearly incorporate that [sustainability lens] into more concrete job descriptions.”