By Ann Marie Newton for QHQ
The 2022 LinkedIn report “Global Green Skills” (1) highlights research about jobs and skills in the so called ‘green’ space, that is concerned with our environment. The report reveals the importance of ‘green skills’, which is an important delineation from the promotion of ‘green’ jobs. So, what are ‘green skills’? The authors of the report define as: “those (skills) that enable the environmental sustainability of economic activities”, and ‘green jobs’ as: “those that cannot be performed without extensive knowledge of green skills”. (2)
Fig. 1 Visual from’ Global Green Skills’ report
The report highlights some of the fastest growing job titles, see Fig. 1. Note the size and position of the bubble representing ‘Sustainability Manager’. This is interesting to see and indicates that this role is becoming more important to companies and organisations. Another of the findings is that ‘green skills’ are now being applied in jobs that are not traditionally environmentally focused, such as fashion designer, fleet managers and health workers. To focus in on fashion, the report cites ‘sustainable fashion’ as a green skill.
If we unpack this a little, firstly what is ‘sustainable fashion’? The name suggests fashion, as in fashion clothing; tangible products that are made with consideration for the environment, social and economic factors. However, as fashion design, development and manufacturing and use are such complex systems, so there are many ways to approach doing fashion in better ways, we may not be doing ourselves any favours by labelling fashion as ‘sustainable’ or not. I’ve used this term in the past but am now considering what it really means and how useful it is.
How ‘sustainable fashion’ can be a skill? Again, there are a plethora of ways to tackle improving how fashion clothing is designed, developed, manufactured, and used, so it makes sense that a plethora of skillsets would be involved. All that being said, the report highlights a growth of ‘sustainable fashion’ green skills by 90.6% from 2016-2020, which is incredible. This indicates there has been an increase in ‘sustainability’ activities in fashion jobs during this time by people on the LinkedIn platform (3)
With the importance of ‘green skills’ and the increase in the number of non-traditional roles requiring these, recruitment becomes more important. According to the Global Green Skills report currently demand is outpacing supply of ‘green talent’. The report states:
“While job postings requiring green skills grew at 8% annually over the past 5 years the share of green talent has grown at roughly 6% over the same period.”
So how can employers attract people to their organisations?
To get a picture of current recruitment a survey was conducted of 5 randomly selected jobs posted on LinkedIn with the word ‘sustainability’ in the title. From this the job descriptions were analysed by inputting into a word cloud, see Fig 1. The words that appear most frequently are the largest, and the words that are infrequent the smallest.
Fig. 2 Word Cloud from 5 ‘sustainability’ job listings 2022
In this analysis, the word ‘sustainability’ appeared the most, not surprising given the criteria that the title contains this word. This could, however, be problematic as ‘sustainability’ has different meanings to different people.
The next largest word is business, as most jobs are within businesses this too is not remarkable. Of course, a lot depends how business is conducted, and this can be very positive, however, business can also be associated with expansive economic growth focused on profit generation for a few and so could be at odds with ‘sustainability’. This brings to mind the quote from Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (5) book, when as a ghost, former partner Jacob Marley visits Ebenezer Scrooge and proclaims:
“Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
After ‘business’ is ‘data’, given its importance in our contemporary lives especially in countries like the UK, this does not seem out of place. ‘Working’, ‘work’, ‘team’, ‘stakeholders’ and ‘reporting’ follow which together with the other words already mentioned start to give a picture of what these jobs will be focused on. Overall, they imply regular, standard jobs. However, it is interesting to think about what words are missing. How might we accomplish the massive transformation needed to tackle all our issues such as the climate emergency, if we continue with regular, standard job functions? Additionally, how will these jobs attract the in-demand talent? In my experience, most people, including myself, who want to work in ‘sustainability’ jobs are purpose driven, they have already undergone the sort of personal transformation that Marley’s ghost represents.
Where are words such as purpose, social, natural, wildlife, equity? What could some different approaches to these job functions look like? One other approach is to learn from First Nations people who have been living more in harmony with planet earth for generations, phrases from that job description could read:
• Develop clothing in sync with the earth’s seasons
• Honour each garment that is made, ensure it will have a long and useful life
• Create ways for people to repair and reuse our clothing
• Explore ways we can only make what is needed
What if a job description was written from the viewpoint of one of the natural environment actors that is associated with the company the job sits in? Perhaps some of the phrases used would be:
• Spend time with me (Narmada River)
• Map my ecosystem
• Hang out with my friends: birds, insects, fish life etc that are dependent on me
• Ensure future generations have access to clean water
• Document how much of me is exported through the clothing I help to make and dye
Lastly, imagine if a job description was written by the candidate themselves, if a portion of the job could be left open to the person applying? That would be particularly attractive to purpose driven candidates who would then have an opportunity to make a mark in the way that appeals most to them.
Anyone who might apply to ‘sustainability’ jobs -what would you include in your ideal job description? Which of these approaches appeals most to you? Leave a comment, share with your friends, have your say! Employers: who would be interested in exploring one of these different approaches? Leave a comment or reach out for a chat to discuss!
[1] Access the report here: https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/research/global-green-skills-report
[2] Although focused on the environment, it would be more pertinent to consider the larger scale concept of ‘sustainability’, which also encompasses the critical aspects of social and ethical concerns, and of course economic too. More interestingly is the interconnected nature of social, environmental, and economic which is missing in these definitions. This may be due to the data available, or the tradition of ‘green’ jobs having an environment focus. Regardless, the research gives very interesting indicative results which are applicable to anyone with an interest in ‘sustainability’ activities and shows what is happening in terms of the job market in this space.
[3] LinkedIn used data from 50 countries, and we need to consider those who do not access to LinkedIn or do have access but are not on the platform. Therefore, the data is best interpreted as indicative of the overall fashion sector.
[4] The survey was conducted during March 2022
[5] https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/charles-dickens/christmas-carol/9781840227567