Addressing the green talent shortage

NATIONS around the world have made pledges towards ambitious climate targets within the next decade. In Singapore, efforts have been accelerated to achieve targets in the Singapore Green Plan 2030. As a result, various government bodies and private companies have also made commitments towards the green transition. For instance, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has launched a Finance for Net Zero (FiNZ) Action Plan to mobilise financing to catalyse Asia’s net-zero transition and decarbonisation activities. All these activities are geared towards the “green economy”, one of the key growth engines driving a host of changes to existing jobs and skills today.

As businesses integrate sustainability into their operations to leverage the opportunities brought on by the “green transition”, they will require “green skills” to successfully implement these strategies. In addition, new jobs will emerge and existing jobs will be redesigned to lead sustainable practices with targets for compliance and reporting regardless of industry or role. According to the Ministry of Sustainability and Environment, more than 55,000 jobs are projected to be created or redesigned in Singapore over the next 10 years.

However, the demand for talent far outpaces supply. Insights from LinkedIn noted an 8 per cent growth in job postings requiring green skills over the past five years, but only a 6 per cent growth in green talent in the same period globally. The demand for future green skills will continue to grow significantly. The International Labour Organization forecast 14 million green jobs will be created in Asia-Pacific by 2030. At the same time, various inequalities – in terms of gender, education and income levels, to name a few – make the green transition harder, especially among developing nations in Asia-Pacific.

Different sectors are leading the green transition, including energy, mining, manufacturing, automotives, agriculture and design, where the need for green talent has grown significantly. But akin to the digital transformation revolution, the requirements for increased environmental, social and governance (ESG) awareness are industry- and role-agnostic. While Gen Z may appear to gain the most, with a high proportion of green jobs looking for new-graduate hires, Aon’s 2022 corporate governance and ESG survey found that 76 per cent of companies that were hiring were seeking middle managers to fill their ESG roles, representing career headroom for young talent.

According to Aon’s Future Skills Framework, transferrable skillsets such as digital business acumen, data analytics, an agile mindset and risk management would serve as the foundation for problem solving, analysing and reporting on the impact of multifaceted sustainability issues. Specific domain knowledge such as environmental engineering, climate impact analysis, finance and compliance-related green skills are also critical to equip employees to perform their jobs competently. These diverse future skills are fast-evolving and need to be supported by change management to create a compelling case to shift mindsets and develop approaches to transform technologies, processes and culture to facilitate the climate transition.

To address the shortage of green talent, companies must take several steps towards redesigning jobs, identifying skills gaps, and reskilling or upskilling their employees. This includes assessing employees’ skills proficiency to determine the capability gap using a structured list of skills relevant to the organisation (that is, skill taxonomy) which will help identify job adjacencies and explore career pathways to aid transition into new or redesigned green jobs.

For instance, recognising the importance of sustainable practices for clients and investors, a prominent bank in Singapore organised specialised workshops for its employees to equip them with the requisite skills to support their clients in their decarbonisation efforts. The bank has opted, with its reskilling programme, to develop internally the needed future skills that would be hard to find in the short term in the talent market. Their existing employees are therefore armed with both institutional knowledge and transferable skills that make them ideal candidates for open positions within the company.

Apart from reskilling and upskilling, businesses must build a robust talent network that drives internal mobility and makes it easier for employees to move within the organisation, develop clear career tracks for each role and determine the appropriate, competitive level of compensation in view of a limited supply of candidates. Defined career tracks should provide insight into options for growth within the company and remain flexible enough that employees can customise their own paths in collaboration with their managers. Hence one important aspect in addressing the green skills shortage through upskilling and reskilling talent is training managers as career coaches. Managers must be educated on reskilling programmes to help identify the future skills and competencies needed and to match them with their team members’ aptitudes.

Other opportunities to identify green talent within companies is establishing and promoting green intrapreneurship to foster new ideas and innovations internally and in new businesses. Rewarding innovation and encouraging green behaviours within the company sets a strong tone for the direction in which the company is headed. It is also important to understand the impact of these transitions within the company through an impact analysis, to identify opportunities for job creation or job redesign aligning to the sustainability strategy.

As more job seekers are looking to a company’s ESG credentials when applying for roles, internally aligning and externally communicating ESG positions can enhance the company’s employee value proposition and build better brand equity. Companies that fail to do so risk not only losing out on attracting top talent but also on the execution of ESG priorities.