Is your talent strategy ready for the climate transition?

Some companies are pausing sustainability investment—but the demands haven’t paused. Customers want emissions data, regulators and investors expect action, and managers are being asked to deliver against targets they were never trained for. 

These are structural challenges that require new capabilities. Our analysis shows that 25–50% of roles will need to evolve to meet sustainability priorities—mostly existing jobs within core functions like operations, procurement, and finance. 

While some organisations are retooling, many still underestimate the shift. Smart leaders will use this moment to build scarce expertise and retrain their workforce—before the transition becomes harder and more costly. 

Sustainability is embedded across roles 

Fewer than 1% of job postings mention sustainability, yet many roles directly influence emissions, compliance, resource use, and social or environmental outcomes. While some climate-focused roles are being created, sustainability responsibilities are increasingly built into existing jobs. Our analysis highlights three key insights. 

Sustainability demand spans sectors. At least a quarter of roles across industries contribute to sustainability goals, rising to ~40% in biopharma and industrial goods and 40–50% in construction and energy. These responsibilities are now part of everyday work for roles such as technicians, engineers, risk managers, and R&D staff. 

Overemphasis on specialists creates gaps. Sustainability is often equated with expert roles, yet specialists make up only about 5% of sustainability-related positions. The real strain is in core functions—procurement, operations, tech, and finance—where teams are expected to deliver sustainability outcomes without clear mandates or training. 

Early movers are gaining advantage. Some companies are already building capabilities internally, from ESG reporting tools to life-cycle assessment skills. In a tight labor market, they are developing “green-adjacent” talent from within—securing scarce skills and creating time to scale sustainability efforts. 

 Key actions to stay ahead 

Focused action in a small number of areas can help companies meet rising sustainability demands while building a lasting talent advantage. 

Target role clusters. Across sectors, 50–88% of sustainability requirements sit within a narrow set of functions, making the upskilling challenge far more focused than many leaders assume. Operations and logistics dominate most industries—accounting for more than 40% of sustainability-linked roles in construction—while R&D is central in biopharma and finance, risk, and tech lead in banking. Concentrating on these clusters allows leaders to respond without redesigning the organisation. 

Secure scarce specialists early. Although specialists represent a small share of sustainability roles, they are the hardest to hire as companies compete for the same limited talent. Demand is especially intense for environmental, health and safety, and sustainability experts, as well as key operational roles across construction, energy, and industrials. Misreading this market can delay execution and force costly last-minute upskilling. 

Compete on the employee value proposition. Sustainability talent has strong bargaining power and increasingly chooses employers based on environmental credibility. Early moves—through hiring, reskilling, or role redesign—create breathing room, but success depends on offering a compelling EVP that differentiates beyond pay and title. 

Scale through targeted upskilling. In talent-constrained sectors like energy, reskilling is often the only scalable solution. Many roles require incremental skill upgrades rather than full retraining, enabling faster, lower-cost transitions. This is particularly true of high-demand activities like decarbonising existing operations. The priority is a pragmatic roadmap that identifies where skills can shift quickly and where deeper reskilling is needed to protect critical capabilities. 

Target what matters, then move 

Building sustainability capability requires more than high-level workforce planning. It calls for a role-by-role view of where skill gaps are emerging and a clear plan to close them before they become expensive. Leaders should focus on three actions. 

Anticipate how roles will change. Use function-level heatmaps tied to the sustainability roadmap to identify which roles will be most affected and how. Clear visibility into shifting requirements helps concentrate investment where it delivers the greatest impact. 

Establish a skills baseline. Most companies lack a role-level view of existing capabilities, turning reskilling into guesswork. Building this baseline in priority areas reveals hidden talent, highlights adjacent skills, and enables smarter workforce deployment. 

Prioritise what matters most. Sequence efforts by criticality—focusing first on roles essential to sustainability delivery, hard to hire externally, and well suited to internal mobility. Fast-tracking these roles ensures early moves generate disproportionate value. 

While the climate transition may appear to be slowing, operational pressures—from climate risk to supply chain constraints—are accelerating. Companies that act now to build sustainability talent will do so with less cost, less urgency, and greater competitive advantage than those that wait.