E186: Show Notes

Title: Exploring Careers in Sustainability In this episode, hosts Will Richardson and Charlie Luxton explore the booming landscape of sustainability careers, a sector that has witnessed huge growth in the UK job market. With sustainability-focused roles accounting for 1/3 of UK job postings, the industry has become a focal point for professionals looking to make positive environmental impact. To delve into this topic, we are joined by Serrol Osman, Director of Verdant Search, a renowned firm specialising in Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) and sustainability recruitment. Together, they unpack the evolving dynamics of the industry and provide invaluable insights, advice, and strategies for individuals looking to transition into sustainability careers.

1. Market Dynamics and Industry Disruption:

· Serrol reflects on the rapid growth of sustainability careers up to 2022, noting a slowdown due to global economic factors.

· The discussion covers shifts in salary structures, challenges in accommodating rising costs, and talent shortages at mid-level positions.

· Despite uncertainties, Serrol predicts continued growth driven by regulatory changes and corporate sustainability initiatives.

2. Confusion and Evolution in Job Descriptions:

· The podcast addresses confusion in job descriptions amidst the fast-paced evolution of sustainability roles.

· Serrol discusses challenges in finding the right talent, inconsistent salaries, and the need for clear job definitions to streamline recruitment processes.

3. Demand for Purpose-Led Companies:

· Both hosts emphasise candidates' desire to work for purpose-driven companies.

· Serrol underscores the importance of aligning company values with employee aspirations for enhanced retention and growth.

4. Evolution of Recruitment Profiles:

· Serrol predicts that, like digital transformation, specialised sustainability roles will be integrated into traditional business operations.

· The discussion highlights the role of sustainability leadership and reporting structures in driving meaningful organisational change.

5. AI and Future Job Trends:

· Serrol offers insights into AI's potential impact on green jobs, predicting shifts in productivity and new roles in design, research, and policy.

· Serrol stresses the significance of soft skills and emerging opportunities within the sustainability domain.

6. Advice for Aspiring Professionals:

· Serrol advises aspiring professionals to assess their skill sets and explore opportunities in education, voluntary sectors, and current companies.

· The discussion emphasises starting with broad sustainability concepts before specialisation and the value of diverse skill sets, including communication and adaptability.

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A big thank you to our sponsors!

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Charlie: And I'm Charlie Luxton, an architectural designer who focuses on sustainable buildings. In this episode, we're looking at careers in sustainability. Whether you've never worked in any other field or you are looking to make the leap from an entirely different industry, there'll be something for you. Roles focused on sustainability and environmentally friendly activities now make up a third of job postings in the UK, according to social network LinkedIn.

Serrol: Thank you for having me.

Charlie: It's a pleasure. So it's a whole world, isn't it? I mean, it's a massively growing world. And I imagine in the world of sustainability recruitment, it's, it's pretty busy.

Are you seeing any sectors in particularly, uh, that are making more hires in sustainability?

Serrol: Um, yes, before I jump into that, uh, my specialist focus, um, at Verdon is very much around the corporate sustainability and ESG. It is quite a confusing landscape at the moment, so I don't cover the deeper environmental aspects of recruitment.

So that's kind of your environmental impact assessment side or the deeper scientific piece. I have some knowledge and I'll talk about. The areas where I can cover that off, but sector wise and the market as a whole, it was really, I think everyone saw, and you guys would have experienced in quite a lot of detail.

So what's that look like? That's meant CFOs haven't signed off on a lot of projects. We've seen things stop and start. Uh, candidates in the market have found it quite hard to move. Uh, there's been very little movement at the senior end and we've actually seen some consultancies having to restructure.

how they're looking to deliver what they're looking to hire in. And we've actually seen some consultancies having to restructure how they're looking to deliver, um, what they're looking to hire in. Um, sectors wise, I could run into, but I didn't know if you wanted to dig into any of that. Yeah, just

Will: on that.

Charlie: Tumult.

Serrol: Tumult or not tumult.

Will: And so therefore it does that play into it. Also clients aren't willing to pay for what the salaries are trying to get to as well. So you've got this going on at the same time and then you add in your fees into it. It kind of makes it quite hard to use you.

Serrol: So what's, yeah, so there's, there's, there's two parts of the, the market, right? There's the people that have been delivering such as yourselves, sustainability and environmental support and consultancy for a number of years. You've got your thesis and your South poles, right? Uh, and the other consultants have been around and historically the salaries have been what they've.

People on the market to deliver change. So the problem you've had there is the PWCs, the EYs, the Deloittes, the KPMGs of the world, the Accentures have suddenly started to say, Hey, we're going to invest billions of pounds. We're going to build huge teams. So they then gone into the market and decided to hire everyone from the companies that already exist.

They've all been sucked up into the senior roles. So what we've got there is a depth or a lack of depth of hiring potential pool or some people now call it a candle puddle. And then you've got lots of people wanting to come into industry, which is great. There's loads of grads coming through. There's lots of people wanting to pivot, but they don't have that level of experience to fill those roles.

The effect that's had though, on those existing consultancies that have been doing all this great work for so long is that, um, they, uh, have had to change their salary structures. Right. If they're going to attract staff or compete to a certain extent, which has been painful and it's very hard thing to do because you have to change your business model and your pricing and everything else.

So actually for a candidate looking for work, it's very confusing at the moment. For people looking to hire for the first time, it's very confusing. Salaries are all over the shop. There's no consistency anywhere. And, um, yeah, it does mean that companies are confused. Uh, candidates find it really hard to find work.

So that natural kind of, uh, in a more mature evolved market, um, uh, and, and one that's, I mean, sustainability is evolving so fast at the moment and there's new roles coming up almost monthly to a certain extent. Um, and people changing and calling everything, anything. I mean, you were talking obviously to, uh, who's Andrew Griffith I think from the carbon alliance...

Will: Yeah.

You know, there's no terminology. There's no common ground at the moment where this means this to a lot of people. Um, there is in the certain channels, but yeah,

Will: I would say that comes from inexperienced people in leadership positions. Yeah. A lot of that confusion,

Charlie: but equally a very fast evolving market, because I mean the whole, you know, the whole conversation was him.It's basically about regularizing a whole new area.

Serrol: Yeah.

Charlie: You know, almost from nothing. So a, how do you even advertise that job? How does the company even know what that job looks like? And you know that it is very hard to find the right fit.

Serrol: It's really confusing. Yeah. And it's really hard. Yeah. Um, and a lot of the time they're not going to the right people to get the right advice.

Whereas there there's obviously agencies that have been in the market a little bit longer that actually have a better understanding and know where the candidates are and what they look like. So it all gets quite confused on a number of levels. The great thing is there's so many people wanting to make a difference.

Right. Um, there's a lot of people pouring into the sector, but at the moment it's creating a lot of confusion. I've not ever spoken to one career sustainability candidate that's not wanted a job that's impactful. Right. Uh, which I think is very important for anyone looking to hire because you do still speak to some candidates to get horror stories where they've joined somewhere and now you're just here to come up with a strategy and then not do anything type behavior or don't talk to anyone about sustainability.

And so, actually, if you get that right, for your company, then it's a great tool, you know, so, uh, you know, it helps retain your staff, motivate your staff. It helps with candidate attraction. And if you can't keep your staff, you can't grow a company fund.

Charlie: Can I flip back to two things? One, you mentioned this idea that, that ultimately the sort of turbocharging of the whole industry is sort of creating. I mean, if I got this right, almost like a truck and trailer that people that are established are just being sucked up the food chain, if you like. And then everyone coming in is very, very early in their careers. And it's, it's actually quite difficult to bridge those.

Serrol: There's a chasm at the moment in, in the experience level, right?

So hiring anyone in mid middle management's very hard. Yeah. Um, it, you know, it takes longer to find talent with kind of five to eight years experience that are actually going to fit into that level.

Will: We're seeing exactly that at the moment.

Serrol: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's been this way for a little while.

They can't be at loggerheads with each other and to do, and then to actually, what that means is you need people with commercial acumen to deliver it as well as sustainability knowledge. And so you need a lot of the soft skills of the people that are trying to get into the industry. It's just getting them up skilled.

So, you know, you need to have great stakeholder management. You need to work well with others. You need to be able to engage with the other departments, understand the commercial pressures they're under to put a sustainability strategy through a business. Cause it's fundamentally a business change to transformation project.

Right. So you need to work on that internal communication, but if you get it right, you know, you get an engaged employee workforce, um, you get better retention. It helps the staff attraction and, you know, sustainability does equal profitability. It's got some upfront costs, but I think it's, you know, most people.

people. I don't think I've ever really spoken to any sustainability leadership. They don't think a sustainable business will be a more profitable business with regard to circular economy. And there's a lot to go around, but it's definitely the road we're on. It's just going to be a long road.

Will: I know some companies that have actually done a U turn and rather it's such a strange thing to do.Um,

Serrol: really?

Will: And you just go, wow.

Charlie: So what gone from, from embracing sustainability and said, no, we're not going down that road anymore.

Will: Yeah. This is not the right route. We should be doing, we should be. Yeah. I. Anyway, that's, it's a choice.

Right. And you've got the other ones that are going to love film them or what is now Netflix, right? You know, some people just didn't believe the internet was going to happen, right? I think they will get left behind. The people don't believe sustainability is going to happen. There is value in putting it into place.

The longer you leave it behind, the bigger the cost and the risk levels to your business on all kinds of elements of physical transitional, everything.

Will: We have a law firm on our books that if the company that they're going to work for doesn't have a sustainability strategy in place. We'll not work for them.

Serrol: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, any international business isn't going to be able to trade because everyone's all the regulatory pressure that's coming through.

You have to deliver it. Hopefully there's going to be enough substance to the auditing of this rather than people just saying, Hey, we've got a policy.

Charlie: No, it's just, it's just interesting to go back to this, this idea of the kind of the nature of the recruitment business being in this quite unusual situation of, of sort of almost truck and trailer or however you want to phrase it. Is that something you recognize in the digital transformation? So do you have a sense of how this. This recruitment profile is going to shift over time.

Serrol: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, um, so with digital, it came along and never, no one quite knew what to do with it, where to put everybody. You've got all these new skills coming out like PPC and SEO and, you know, different types of front end developers and everything around it.

The problem is with sustainability from a leadership viewpoint is, and I have this on a daily basis, who does sustainability report into in a business? And if you're hiring as a sustainability leader, they often can be very put off if it's reporting into marketing or comms, right? Because that's an uncomfortable relationship.

With regard to marketing, I talked to lots of lots of great marketing people actually wrote a blog about this last year, and, um, they find it uncomfortable because obviously they're there to grow the business. Yeah. So how does that sit with sustainability and, you know, the greenwashing conversation, but sustainability leaders don't want to necessarily go into HR.

Can actually, you know, support you at that level and drive through change within the business. So sometimes that person can be the mark marketing. You know, director or the CMO, it is slightly different. So the other piece around that is that with digital, um, you built these whole teams, but that skillset now has gone back into the more traditional departments.

So SEO and PPC all now sits in marketing. Right. Where it was natural bedfellow, you've seen a lot of that tech roles sit within the it department or the technology department or whatever they wish to call themselves. Right. Um, you know, you've seen a lot of those skill sets move back into the traditional departments.

It's an upskilling of the traditional workflows and utilizing those softer skills. So we will see this evolution, but I think when you're looking to drive change through the business, you need a separate department and there's no doubt there will be sustainability managers. And leadership and the softer skills, the more, uh, of the automated stuff.

Um, again, that leads into AI, but you know, that's a future future piece, uh, that is going to have an impact and a productive one, but does that answer your question, John?

Charlie: Yeah, no, it does. I think it's really interesting. So this idea that to begin with, you need the sustainability group to sit sort of above as an umbrella and eventually that will break up and absorb down into the traditional streams of a business makes sort of sense and one assumes therefore that the people coming up through the company will effectively absorb those roles as well as they grow.

There's still sustainability specialist consultancies there. So providing this support, or, you know, you've got creative digital and marketing agencies that are offering outsourced bespoke solutions into those areas. But I think generally you're going to see an upskilling of a lot of staff. within businesses, um, with regard to their knowledge around sustainability and how that fits into some of the core roles.

Not everyone, absolutely. You're going to need, you know, sustainability leaders and or ESG leaders. Again, we can get into a whole conversation about job titles. Um, but you know, those people divide driving strategy, making sure it fits through into the business. But just like you've seen on board at sea level at the moment, at suites, across all the major boards, they have a lot more technology focused knowledge across the C suite.

Sustainability is going to go the same way. It has to.

Charlie: The other question, um, cause Will, you talked about a couple of companies. backsliding on, you know, that you, you've seen. And I wondered how much of an impact the current government's slightly hazy relationship to the sustainability of agenda, if I'm putting it in the nicest sort of non political terms I possibly can, um, is actually having on, on recruit, you know, is it in big business that they're going, Oh, wait a second. Maybe we don't. don't have to do this or are they, are they, are they ignoring the government effectively and carrying on?

Serrol: You happy for me to pick that one up, Will?

Will: Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Serrol: Yeah. I mean, so, um, looking at, um, yes, I mean, there's no doubt that all the political parties backtracking on their policies does not fool anyone with momentum, right?

Well, they cost the economy on that. It's huge, right? It also, it makes it very hard. And I think this is one thing where the government and leadership really don't think is it's investment. You know, are you going to invest into a changeable environment or do you want confidence that this is happening?

This is an investable economy. I can put loads of money into this knowing that they're going to back this and go forward with it. And I think that really affects actual growth. You know, you need money coming in from abroad. We want to look like we've got a really strong green economy. And when, you know, Boris for all his, um, all his woes, you know, he was at least banging that bell, right?

He wanted us to be a leading green economy. Uh, and yes, COVID's led to pressures, but we all know where it's going, right? So, you know, why not just commit to it? And there's a balance to be found, but, um, it's disappointing. Uh, and it definitely has an impact.

I mean, it's still pretty early days, but it's fascinating. How do you see that affecting green jobs going forward and how are you sort of framing that in your future scenarios?

Serrol: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, um, It's hard to know, right? Because it's, I mean, we're talking about things evolving quickly, you know, we might all be, depending if we use it responsibly or not, you know, working for AI soon, but we'll see, but looking at recruitment and jobs, I mean, PwC had an interesting report where they were talking about AI and the future of sustain, the future of sustainable pieces.

And they thought it was going to generate quite a lot of jobs, but it is going to affect certain sectors. There's no doubt, right? The idea is that AI will come in and make sectors more productive. And a more productive economy is a growing economy and a growing economy, economy creates jobs, right? So from that logic, then it should be beneficial.

But you're still going to need architects, right? You're still going to need project managers. You're still going to need designers. And so one thing I was thinking on regard to this when I have time to think with the young family is that what does this look like? What does circular economy look like at the future?

And I think a lot of it's going to come into design. You see a lot of, you know, in the built environment around LCA and a whole life carbon, uh, and pieces like that, you know, there's going to be needs to be a lot of product and design and that kind of creative area, I think it's going to take off. So when you talk about, again, people wanting to pivot into sustainability, there's so many soft skills of people that are already Indian that are working, right?

There's a lot of research roles, particularly around the financial services sector, but those will grow out. There's a lot around policy, obviously consultancy. There's a lot of bits coming through. There's a lot of auditing work that's going to have to be done. Now, will AI be able to replace that? Or will that need a human element?

Who knows how far it's going to go. And actually, like all humans with technology, you know, we get overexcited and then, you know, and when's the last time you had a good experience with a chatbot, right?

Will: The, um, you. You alluded to people coming in to the industry from other sectors. And I would say maybe about 15 years ago, I started to see more of my either professional friends or friends actually asking me advice and saying, look, I'm disillusioned with finance.

There were very passionate sustainability experts, but there was a lack of professionality within the industry. And I think that has massively changed over the years because of the external people coming in. So I see it as a real benefits. What advice would you give to anyone listening that wanted to get into sustainability from another sector?

I fell into working in finance, uh, in, in the city and a few other things. And, you know, I got to a point where actually to see, cause I, you know, just gave up a bit on humanity maybe, but to see the actual focus on, um, real change, you know, actually, we actually, something's really going to start happening on a wider scale.

And I think a lot of people have. Actually followed that through, right? You know, a lot of people suffer from wanting to have an effect, but don't know what to do. So there's dark green and light green jobs they talk about. And so I sat and thought, what can I do? How can I use my current skillset? And so sustainable jobs was actually, wasn't necessarily, I wanted to think I could do something else, but it was the quickest way I felt I could help and I have an impact as minor as it may be.

For people wanting to move over, Look at your current skill set and see what you can use, right? Cause you've got some great skills in there. And as the market evolves, they will be needed and sustainability has to work with commerciality. And those skills are going to be useful in driving the green economy.

So other things to look at. And so there's probably three key areas, your current company. education and voluntary. So when I say to anyone looking through, and I apologize in advance for the, I literally have hundreds of people contact me on a weekly basis wanting this information, and I just can't get back to everyone.

Otherwise I would have a different job. Yeah.

Will: Yeah.

But even if they've just starting on their journey, or if they haven't done anything, or even they're a bit more evolved, volunteer to get involved in it, right? So whether that's helping with understanding what reporting they need to do, getting on an internal committee, a bit of governance, right? It means you can gain actual commercial real life experience, which is very valuable.

In the current company, and you can start to work out the areas that you might be interested in and get a better picture of it. So I know a lot of people that have gone that channel and it's worked very well. Your company will welcome any help, right? And normally you would have to be voluntary, but again, I've seen people that have taken that through as a company's actually started to value the work that you're doing, realizing the regulatory pressures that coming, even if you're not a big company, you're still going to be in the supply chain of a big company.

Uh, and upscaling. If you are looking to go training, obviously the Cambridge courses, the CISL and Oxford's got one as well. Oxford UCL, they're all starting to come out. The ones I see most are the Cambridge ones. Um, but yes, there are other providers out there.

Will: The only reason why I mentioned the Oxford one is because I've got a few clients that have actually chosen that over the CRS Cambridge one.

I've got friends who teach on actually more the Cambridge one to be honest with you, but the Oxford one's got, it's getting, it's getting traction. It's interesting. Yeah. It's really interesting.

Serrol: Yeah. I mean, I I'm just outside Oxford, so I, you know, which blue to support, but, um, yeah, just on the, on the market.

Um, the one, uh, that I talked to candidates through, they've gone through, they actually find it really useful from a networking viewpoint. That's one of the key things that come out. The other people that meet on the courses, but with anything with regard to education, I would just say, you might see something you think looks really interesting, but please start broad.

And it's not as transferable as skill, if that makes sense. And the other bit is a voluntary, uh, there's a lot of voluntary charity, not for profits, um, that are looking, uh, if you're stuck in the big city, sometimes they're harder with regard to the environmental piece. You have to sometimes go out cause that's where the green fields are.

So to speak, but there is a lot of opportunity there to leverage your skills. I mean, one example is I used to do a lot of work when I used to have a digital marketing comms agency, uh, with a company called Pimp My Cause, uh, What they do is they take, um, specialists. They're very focused around marketing and comms, but there'll be other type providers and they take people that work in the sector and pair them up with charities that need work.

Don't go straight in, just make sure what you want to be doing first. And the best place is talk to your current employer.

Charlie: And where, where are you seeing the majority of the kind of candidates coming from? Because traditionally, a lot of the people I with seem to come out of the energy sectors. And I wondered if that's still, you know, if that's might've broken out as the, as, as the kind of complexity of the ecosystems growing.

Serrol: Yeah. I mean, I would say people are coming from everywhere now, absolutely everywhere. I have calls from people with all kinds of backgrounds wanting to get involved from people that work in fundraising and sales, people that have, uh, got disheartened doing just about any type of. Commercial professional services roles, but that's just the world in which I live in.

I'm hopeful now the inflationary pressures have dropped second half of this year. By the time it's run through the economy, I'm predicting to most people that we'll see things start to pick up and get busier again.

Will: I think it already is listening to my peers and looking at us.

Charlie: Yeah, I've seen signs. Do you find that the people moving into this sector are also looking for slightly different work life balance or, or different ways of engaging with jobs?

You know, more modern jobs, four days a week, flexible time. Oh,

Serrol: that's, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that's, um, anything to do with people moving into the sector. I'd say that is, The economy now in the sector, more specifically focused around that. No, not at all. Not at all. You know, hybrid working is here to stay.

People like flexibility. People like to be treated like adults. There's a caveat to that. You actually have to earn trust. Um, which I would say to some of the, some of the candidates out there, don't go in at day one, demanding everything, you know, put in a hard shift show that, you know, where you can get to, and then, you know, have those conversations.

But most employers at the moment are offering a lot of flexibility. People still like to go in the office, right? Being a hundred percent remote. I have a few employers that do that. do that. Um, it's, it's hard. I think you can be lonely, but also for career development, you want to be around your peers or your seniors.

You learn a lot just from being around people. Um, so sustainability wise, ESG wise, because we're into every single sector, I'm totally agnostic, right? So anyone not offering hybrid working, it will make hiring Difficult.

Charlie: But what about the wider value sets of sort of like mission led professionals, like people expecting time off to do charitable work or pro bono work?

Serrol: No, no, I wouldn't say so. I would say people wanting to do, uh, companies want to be part of delivering sustainability is social impact and social value, right? So that's. Part of actually your sustainability development piece.

Um, and why not get your employees involved in what you're doing again, a more motivated workforce or a happier workforce is a more productive one. Um, and so you're going to do better as a business. Uh, I haven't, I haven't seen any conflicts around that, but I would say, you know, if you want your business to be growing, get your staff involved.

Companies do a lot. Already, not all companies tend to offer voluntary days out, uh, and things, but I think a lot of companies do tend to do some form of impact, um, and, and outreach, uh, to the local community. And, um, if your staff want to get involved in that, that's a wonderful thing to do, it helps build team bonding.

Serrol: it depends what element you use.

I mean, you're obviously at the end where you're doing a lot, right? But

Will: then I'm looking at salaries and going, actually, I want, and I'm asking your. like experience, which like, where do you draw the line? Do you pay people more and give less?

Serrol: Well, the thing is everybody's different, right? And that works across, um, you know, the, the, the workforce.

So different people are going to want different things. Uh, and you will find Candidates for everything. However, too far in one direction, you do start to limit and there's the company cultural value. You know, not everyone's going to want to go and do a voluntary day every month. They might want to be in the office getting top of their work so they can relax at the weekend, right?

Um, and that doesn't reflect on the talent that they have. It reflects more on their personal drivers.

Charlie: So we know talking, talking about talent and the talent pool, we know that From a recent article in the Financial Times, UK is adding green jobs faster than many other countries. So how, how is that working?

I mean, do we have enough of a green skills pool or, you know, how are we expecting to meet this? Well, one assumes increasing demand.

Serrol: Yeah. Um, so I, I, I'm always a little bit wary of this. These statistical things when they come out, right? Um, so I, I don't put too much weight on them, but there is no doubt that we need to have a lot of green skilled jobs and people in the market.

because of improvements in production and productivity processing. Um, when you look at, uh, people coming through, there's so many people want to come into the sector at the moment. I've got no doubt. Actually, I would rather there was more demand for the, for the candidates right now. But, uh, I wouldn't say we need to be looking from abroad for the commercial side.

a tool for sustainability or ESG. I don't think there's a skill gap there at the moment. There will need to be a lot of upskilling as people change and the market evolves and we see new roles coming through. Uh, and the government needs to make sure they're providing for that. Um, but I wouldn't say there's a shortage at the moment.

You can upskill people. You can't change the character. Yeah. So hard people based on passion, right. And who they are and they've got the soft skills. Uh, and those people can be upskilled quite quickly. And you can bring in contractors. It's another aspect I have with the market at the moment. That's not evolved enough.

There's not enough interim or contract work. Um, and people aren't utilizing those channels and upskill your staff, you know, they can put them on courses. There's enough good people out there at the moment to get into the jobs in the market, like it is at the moment. If you're a Canada. The one thing I'm saying to candidates at the moment is because it's so fractured and people are calling things everything.

Uh, and the particular companies that are new coming into hiring, they don't really know what they're looking for. Uh, and so I spend a lot of my time working with people to try and influence them throughout the process. They slowly realize what this means that they're trying to hire with regard to a sustainability manager, right?

It's not someone that's going to just be doing event organizing. That is your sustainability strategy, right? So they need to go on a bit of a journey sometimes, but equally when you're hiring, um, Be open minded to talk to candidates that have great track records, uh, and professional, you know, your normal track record, even if they don't have all the skill sets and for the candidates, be open to talking to companies because you'll find the roles are changing quite a lot throughout the interview process when they realize that the skills and the breadth of knowledge and ability that you can bring to the business, um, and then evolves it through there because it is so changeable.

It is fractured at the moment and it is hard to navigate.

Charlie: So you're almost finding the process of recruitment is a rewriting of brief because they understand the question they're asking.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, you know, I do get a lot of requirements where somebody, uh, has taken on the sustainability mantle internally, but hasn't come from a sustainability background and they might've had another job internally. Yeah. say, I don't know, finance manager, and they've left and they want to hire a finance manager.

That's also sustainability specialist as a like for like replacement, and they don't tend to exist. Right. And it's sustainability. People don't want to be the finance manager. So there is a lot of change. I still talk to companies as large as two fifties that really don't quite know how, what they're doing, which I find surprising sometimes.

Uh, and people, um, that are coming into the market, they have to be careful with regard to how you come to market, especially if you're doing it as a large known brand, because if you go to market incorrectly, it can have a lot of reputational damage. If you go out there naively thinking they want to head a sustainability for 40, 000 pounds, you know, and I had a candidate the other day that got through.

Um, but yeah, it's, um, yeah, I would advise anyone looking to hire like a SME coming to the market. Initially, there's a lot of knowledge now, uh, and increasingly around C suite and non exec directors, but talk to people that, you know, to try and work out, but the other bit, and I was touched upon this earlier with contractors are, well, firstly, actually anyone in sustainability wants to be impactful.

You could bring in a consultant at a high level for two days, right. And they can look at your business and just give you the guidance because it's very confusing. to even when you're in it. So looking at it from the outset, all these regulations and the, you know, the framework acronym soup, you know, uh, the, of, you know, what does it all mean?

What do I have to do? They bring someone in, they can talk you through everything quite quickly. I would say, or give you the right kind of levers and directions to pull rather than immediately going and paying some very famous consultancy, a lot of money that you don't necessarily need to, you can bring in.

Contractors or consultancy just to put in your strategy and your framework and then hire someone into mid level management to deliver on that, right? You don't necessarily have to have a really high paid sustainability director forever. You can bring someone on a contract basis, or you're going to find more people in fractional.

You have to tailor them to your own individual company's needs and where you are. Absolutely. Um, but that's why I'm pretty confident most sustainability leaders, they don't have to work in your sector, right? Uh, they can come in, uh, and give you quite good advice very quickly. Um, yes, you know, there would be depth of things like materiality assessments and everything else to go through.

Right. But for the top level, I think it's that initial, you know, those first few steps, and then you kind of know which directions you need to be going in and it just gets you on that path. And I think that would be that that's my advice to most companies. They can talk to specialists. Please talk to specialists in the area rather than generalists that do everything because they will give you the, the agencies, uh, the consultancy.

Um, you know, where they know when they have to go, the big globals have been pushing on, but that's because they've got more regulatory pressure, obviously, because they have to abide to things. But they also can commit to things once they've got going, you know, they know where the market's going, they can keep investing into, you know, pushing their sustainability journey along.

Um, but yeah, so I went off on one. No,

Will: all really, really useful. And thank you. You said something about contractors and the industry not using them enough. One of the things that's has actually always been around. There's a lot of one person bands, um, associates. And though there are quite a lot of consultancies that use an associate model, it was a model that I decided not to use for various reasons.

Um, but I know some very good people who are, and they're basically contractors.

Yeah. There are lots of them.

Will: No, there are lots. There are lots and lots and lots around. We, we, I know that because we partner with huge amount of them through the business and it going on to that and something else you said, which, um, I want to almost, I want Shout about a bit more is this industry has always been really good at collaboration early days.

I've had companies in advertising companies that have talked to their direct competitors about what it is that they're doing because they want to share. And I think that's I mean, I've never worked in an industry that isn't like that because I've always worked in this industry. So I think I would find it quite hard to go and work in finance because not everyone's really nice, but everyone's really nice in this industry.

Yeah.

And look, you know, if they are a one man band or a contractor and you need help in the future, you know, why not go back to them? Right. And pay them in the, in the future. But so it can be good for building business, but there's just so many people wanting to help each other. There's a lot of groups out there.

Uh, there's a lot of, um, sector specific groups, there's things on LinkedIn, you know, there's a lot of knowledge out there. It can be really confusing, but I promise you if you're not sure, reach out and a lot of people will come back and help you. And that's the great thing about the space at the moment.

It's very positive for me.

Charlie: Do we find that there's a sort of a, a link to that, that there's greater satisfaction for people working in the sector from your, I mean, that might just be from what you've observed or, you know, is there any stats?

Serrol: Yeah, I don't know if there's any stats around it. I haven't seen any.

So, you know, decouple us from an economy built on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions and everything else, right. It is going to be a journey. There's going to be a lot of change, but it's very important steps. You know, you've got to look your kids in the eyes, haven't you? And, um, tell them what you do.

Uh, at some point they're going to be asking, uh, and they're only going to learn more about it. And there's. There's so much negative news. Obviously, there's a lot of worrying things that come out, but like the temperatures last year, there's a lot of companies out there that are unseen that are doing a lot of great things.

Uh, and there is a lot of momentum. Um, and even if the politicians aren't going to take a hold of it, I think. You know, we all know what we need to do. So we'll just get on without them and that the companies are pushing ahead. We need regulatory change and pressure to drive everybody. Absolutely. And it needs to be better audited and it needs to be driven through.

Charlie: No, it is really interesting. I'd say it's one thing I've observed working in the sustainability architecture built environment sectors is the levels.

To which people will talk to each other. And it's one of the bits of advice I give everyone is that what I don't want to do is just like phone up people in this sector near you and talk to them and they will help you. I'll almost guarantee they'll help you to begin with for nothing. And then, you know, that might grow into, into, into work, but it's nice to see that that's how it works across, across the wider sector.

You talked earlier about this idea of if you want to Trans, you know, move from one sector into sustainability sector is not to try and focus in too sharp to sort of start in a wider circle and, and spiral in what advice would you give to people wanting to enter the sector of your 18, 19 thinking about university?

What do you see the best routes into this, this industry?

Absolutely. But I would kind of go with my broad to narrow again, right? So don't go into a degree unless you really know you want to do something really specific. and too narrow. Uh, go into something, uh, at a bachelor level, that's reasonably broad across sustainability or, you know, environmental sciences or something along those lines.

So, you know, those softer skills are important as well, though.

Will: I've always seen, A lot of, um, degrees in geography and if I'm honest, I didn't really understand it for the first 10 years because I, cause I didn't do geography.

Charlie: It's about maps. Will, it's about maps!

Will: But now I've got experience and this is it. This is

Will: exactly it. So now I've got experience in this industry to a degree that I now look at geography and go, actually, it's a very good degree because it has the maths. It has the glaciers, has everything this industry has. And I, I could totally understand why geographers end up in this field because of the, what they've been taught.

Work then, and that's the end of last century. Right. So we were getting trained on GIS and doing mapping and, you know, looking at pieces like that. And yeah, I mean, there's some great broad areas there and that then will focus you down maybe on areas of interest. You know, you can do work experience, you can do voluntary internships, uh, and then, you know, you can start to even pick up some of those eight week type courses or, or a masters.

Uh, if you kind of know where you want to go or, uh, again, do something that's complimentary and bring all that knowledge to your next role

Charlie: earlier on, you, you were brave enough to make a prediction about what you thought the jobs market would do later this year. I mean, do you have a sense of what you think it's going to do over the next three or four years of this is something that people are thinking about moving into over that sort of timeframe.

As a CFO of a business, if you're under financial pressure last year, it was easier to kick the sustainability can down the road and not start delivering on your strategy. Right. So, you know, with the negative hat on, you could say we were just using your standard strategy to wave to shareholders and say, you're great, but companies need to make profit because, uh, and, and there's going to be a lot of pressures, you know, if we look at climate change and, and what that can impact, that's going to have broadly.

And even on a micro level for individual companies, it's going to be impactful, but the only way we're going to you know, deal with that is actually by making progress. So people aren't going to start pushing on and going those areas. When we start getting better examples around circular economy, you know, it's a big change, isn't it?

It's hard, right? Um, you know, you know, is Russia going to invade somewhere else? China going to go somewhere else? You know, it's Donald Trump going to get into power. You know, you saw you saw Texas. Just yesterday was it 8. 5 billion pounds. I pulled out a black rock cause they don't believe in ESG. So, you know, it's, um, it's going to be turbulent.

Uh, I think we know that, but we also know where we need to go. And I think that pressure is going to drive hiring. Um, and, uh, yeah, there will be, uh, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be up and down, but it's going to be growing.

Serrol: Um, I think big business, which is going to drive everything else is looking further ahead. I think the regulations are coming through, right? So politicians are kind of short term. And short term in their thinking, but there is an underlying weight of regulation coming through. Have you seen that with the EU this year?

Yes. Some of it's been slightly diluted, but it's starting to come through. If a company wants to sell into Europe, they have to meet these regulations, right? Uh, how stringently they're going to be audited and how. Detailed. This is going to be, you know, is it just, you have to write something on an RFI about, Oh, we're great at this.

So there's, there's a lot of, Weight of movement, uh, and it's not going to get, it's going to be too, you know, they, they might be lots of headlines, which are going to impact smaller businesses, but I think the bigger, bigger businesses, the bigger weights starting to move, and that's going to have to pull everyone with it.

Charlie: And that's going to mean more jobs and good quality jobs. Brilliant. Serrol. Thank you very much. That's a fascinating insight into a really fast moving dynamic and critically very important area. So thanks for that. As that was very interesting. Well that's it for this episode of Sustainability Solved.

Will: And for questions and more information on sponsorship opportunities Email us at [email protected]. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please do leave us a review in your podcast app. It would be really, really appreciated.