In an anonymous survey of 450 sustainability professionals across Europe published today, only 11% said they were on target to meet short and long-term goals amid budget cuts, skills shortages and a lack of support from the C-suite. The majority of respondents, 47%, said they were making progress but there was significant risk in not meeting goals.
The report, published by sustainability platform Leafr, spoke to professionals from a range of industries and sizes of company, with 49% from organisations with more than 1,000 employees, but more than two-thirds of respondents worked in sustainability departments with three or fewer full-time employees. In the past year, 14% had their sustainability workforce reduced, 53% remained the same and 33% grew.
The results showed that small teams are being increasingly stretched. In the past 12 months, 72% have seen their responsibilities expanded and 91% said they’ve been asked to stretch into areas beyond their team’s expertise.
The most common skills missing from sustainability departments were supply chain management (40%), life cycle assessment (38%) and climate risk assessment (35%).
The report includes anonymous quotes from sustainability professionals. One respondent said: “What frustrates me the most is being expected to meet insane targets with insanely little human capital and resources.”
Another responded: “Our net zero targets are impossible to hit in line with growth, but we pretend they are.”
The report includes recommendations for bolstering sustainability functions to meet targets such as:
Writing in knowledge transfer into sustainability consultancy contracts to enhance the skills of full-time staff
- Writing in knowledge transfer into sustainability consultancy contracts to enhance the skills of full-time staff
- Incentivising scope 3 reductions where the biggest impact can be made
- Focus on data fidelity to free up time for sustainability teams
- Hire consultants for specific topics, rather than generalists, to make lean teams effective
Gus Bartholomew, Leafr co-founder, said in a press release: “The data confirms what we hear from our community every day. Sustainability teams cannot deliver net zero on their own. They are under-resourced, pulled in too many directions, and forced into compliance work at the expense of impact. Unless leadership, regulators, and investors align behind a pragmatic model that values environmental outcomes as much as financial ones, targets will remain out of reach.”
