In accordance with govt search companies and their company shoppers, there may be an “insatiable demand” for chief sustainability officers. (Registration required.)

A current PwC research concluded corporations appointed almost as many CSOs in 2020-2021 (394) as they did within the earlier eight years mixed (414). The overwhelming majority of those hires had been exterior candidates (93 %), says Russell Reynolds Associates, a number one govt recruiter.

What explains this surge in hiring? How has the CSO function been outlined and its objective modified over time? What impacts have CSOs had upon their very own organizations and in assembly exterior challenges? How is the function prone to evolve sooner or later?

On this column, I’ll sort out a few of these questions.

What’s behind the hiring momentum?

For my part, a number of imperatives are driving the increasing recruitment of CSOs. They embrace:

• Attaining inner training and alignment in response to expanded expectations from workers and out of doors stakeholders for improved efficiency on environmental, well being and questions of safety, local weather commitments, vitality effectivity and social duty.
• Designating a high-level exterior face and phone level for the corporate on sustainability points with key stakeholders.
• Offering strategic perception and constructing a company-wide sustainability technique and integrating it with particular enterprise objectives and processes to advance worth creation.
• Responding to ESG, monetary threat administration and different reporting points that interact different departments.

These and different components differ in scope and precedence relying upon the corporate and its enterprise sector. In consequence, the portfolio and reporting relationships of particular person CSOs can differ extensively throughout corporations.

What are the constructive impacts of CSOs?

The CSO place got here into mainstream existence early within the 2000s. Earlier appointees with senior environmental administration obligations had deep technical and operational expertise, whereas their newer successors usually tend to symbolize experience that features public coverage/authorities relations, branding and advertising, authorized affairs or analysis and improvement.

The principal impacts of CSOs over the previous 10 to fifteen years differ by firm however embrace the next:

• Constructing upon environmental, well being and security (EH&S) compliance to advance efficiency management and footprint discount throughout key markets and thru product impacts.
• Embedding environmental sustainability inside an organization’s core enterprise methods.
• Fostering cross-company relationships with the chief monetary officer, analysis and improvement, and innovation groups to create alternatives for enterprise technique improvement, threat administration and buyer collaborations targeted on product enhancements.
• Strengthening company governance by rising the participation of the CSO in C-suite and board deliberations that embrace briefings and coverage choices on new public commitments, expanded transparency, environmental sustainability efficiency opinions and new exterior collaborations.
• Establishing and sustaining core experience throughout the company to successfully handle altering sustainability challenges each world and native.

What are the constraints of the CSO place?

These constructive impacts are offset by limitations within the function and obligations of CSOs. For my part, some main limitations embrace:

• An absence of clear and constant definition of the CSO place and obligations. Firms construction the CSO portfolio in some ways. Some CSOs possess direct possession of the EH&S operate, whereas others don’t. Reporting relationships additionally differ as some CSOs report back to the CEO or different C-suite govt, and others are subordinate to the authorized division, communications or operations. A small variety of CSOs have possessed solely exterior obligations to deal with stakeholder engagement and status administration. One main consequence of this inconsistent focus and objective is the absence of a standardized, outlined portfolio and core talent specs for the CSO place. CSOs should all too incessantly develop their particular person methods on how finest to succeed. Whereas the broad exterior CSO community is mostly accessible and supportive, it typically doesn’t translate very on to the tradition, wants and expectations that particular person CSOs should navigate.
• The rising complexity of points, language and broadening of the sustainability agenda. Whereas a dedication to higher transparency does assist drive habits, the challenges of managing all that’s required — and figuring out how particular points comparable to range or political advocacy, marketing campaign contributions or broader ESG issues are co-managed — have gotten baseline expectations. Few CSOs enter the place with information and expertise throughout many of those points.
• Fewer sticks than carrots. Exterior stakeholders count on CSOs to have a serious voice in bettering the efficiency and habits of their corporations. This requires a CSO portfolio that mixes an array of sticks and carrots. Efficiency and status are by no means the results of incentives and encouragement alone. As firms close to deadlines for interim net-zero commitments, water effectivity objectives, waste discount targets and different extremely seen guarantees, the necessity for inner sticks turns into extra compelling. And it turns into much more needed for the CSO to own higher authority to drive company accountability. Presently, the CSO place shouldn’t be designed to attain this end result in numerous corporations.

The extremely dynamic inner and exterior forces shaping the trendy company make it inevitable that CSOs’ roles and obligations will expertise additional growth.

How will the CSO place proceed to evolve?

The extremely dynamic inner and exterior forces shaping the trendy company make it inevitable that CSOs’ roles and obligations will expertise additional growth. A number of components will form the longer term CSO, together with:

• Sustainability technique and administration are more and more data-driven. The ESG reporting expertise alone has revealed how newer information units organized across the monetization of monetary threat from local weather change has modified company information assortment, evaluation and transparency, and expanded the oversight from exterior stakeholders (particularly the investor group). As corporations make main investments to include information digitalization into their operations, monumental new quantities of knowledge will emerge that corporations should handle and report. This consists of: environmental, well being and security efficiency in actual time in traditionally underserved communities that skilled disproportionately larger distribution of air pollution dangers; vitality use charges and efficiencies; water consumption by crops and communities in water-stressed areas; and sensible tags inserted in product packaging to facilitate waste characterization and assortment. The information administration obligations of the CSO’s workplace will assume an elevated function for different facets of Massive Knowledge evaluation and reporting.
• Provide chain efficiency is turning into paramount. A higher sense of foreboding has descended throughout world corporations regarding how little they know in regards to the sustainability efficiency throughout their very own provide chains. As firms make longer-term commitments with interim deadlines for carbon, water, vitality, waste and different metrics, they won’t achieve success with out accounting for the footprints of upstream enterprise companions, three way partnership collaborations, logistics and distribution, and different enterprise features. Thus far, corporations have maintained a reticent method in addressing provider/enterprise companion efficiency by issuing tips, holding consultations and creating expectations for higher outcomes. Now we have entered the period of expanded provider compliance, reporting and governance by which corporations might want to take extra draconian choices with lesser-performing companies with which they do enterprise. Their very own efficiency and reputations will rely upon it.
• Expanded sustainability features necessitate a reexamination of the CSO job description by firms and govt search companies. On the whole, it will require a folding of many separate features (ES&H, rising oversight over enterprise unit efficiency, company reporting) into the CSO’s workplace with a dotted line extra formally connecting the CSO with the CFO, human assets and investor relations. Future CSO appointees might be advantaged if their profession path possesses each deeper operational information of how enterprise features mixed with relationships and expertise in working with exterior stakeholders whose expertise and credibility drive the company and public coverage agendas.

As a result of sustainability tendencies symbolize such a serious change driver — each dangers and alternatives — for the twenty first century company, the CSO place will develop into a extra highly effective voice, with extra sticks and carrots, in deliberations of enterprise technique and broader company governance. It ought to be formally designated as a C-suite place.