Making Better Decisions on Addressing Green Talent Shortage

 

Building a resilient workforce

Written by Na Boon Chong, Lavanya Venugopal and Ke Le Chua, this article first appeared in The Business Times on 1 November 2023.

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 (MAS) 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 bound to contribute towards the ‘Green Economy,’ which is one of the key growth engines driving a host of changes to existing jobs and skills in the current economy.

As businesses integrate sustainability into their strategy 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, it is expected that more than 50,000 jobs are to be created or redesigned in Singapore over the next 10 years.

Demand outpacing supply
However, the demand for talent far outpaces supply according to insights from LinkedIn that noted an 8 percent growth in job postings requiring green skills, but only a 6 percent growth in green talent in the same time period globally. The demand for future green skills will continue to grow significantly. The international Labour Organisation forecast 14 million green jobs will be created in APAC by 2030. There are inequalities that make the green transition harder – income, gender and education levels to name a few - 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 graduate hires, Aon’s 2022 Corporate Governance and ESG Survey found that 76 percent of companies hiring were looking for 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 and analytics, an agile mindset and risk management would serve as the foundation for problem solving and 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 a climate transition.

Addressing the shortage
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 for existing proficiency of an employee’s skills to determine the capability gap. A skill taxonomy will be used to help identify job adjacencies and explore agile career pathways to facilitate transition into new or redesigned green jobs. For instance, recognising the importance of sustainable practices by clients and investors, a prominent bank in Singapore organised specialised workshops for its employees to equip them with sustainability skills to support their clients in their decarbonation efforts. With their reskilling program, the bank is focused on developing future skills internally that would be hard to find in the talent market. Their existing employees already have institutional knowledge and transferable skills that make them ideal candidates for open positions within the company.

Apart from reskilling and upskilling, businesses must also lay the groundwork for internal mobility that make 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 adequate flexibility that employees can customise their own paths in collaboration with their managers. Therefore, an 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 within the company 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, internal alignment and external communication on ESG positions can enhance the company’s employee value proposition and build better brand equity. Companies who fail to do so are risking not only losing out on attracting top talent but also on the execution of ESG priorities.