Trellis (formerly The GreenBiz Group) published their eighth biennial report “State of the Sustainability Profession” which looks at the role of sustainability leaders in today’s business world and how it has evolved. The survey, conducted November 2023 and December 2023, consists of 1,185 responses – 75% of whom were employed by large organizations with revenue greater than $1 billion. Eighty-four percent of those live and work in the United States. In addition, the salary analysis “focused only on managers, directors and vice presidents working in the United States.”
Among the key findings:
- The number of corporate sustainability workers, both full-time and freelance, has rapidly increased.
- Salaries for sustainability professionals grew more than in any time since we [Trellis/GreenBiz] started publishing this report 14 years ago.
- Sustainability executives are rising in seniority within their organizations.
- More sustainability teams report to general counsels. “The increase in pending regulations has caused several companies to shift their reporting structures to the general counsel’s office. As recently as two years ago, just 7 percent of survey respondents reported to the legal department. That has since doubled and this trend will likely continue.”
- Thirty-one percent of respondents brief their board of directors annually about sustainability risks and achievements. Thirty percent do so quarterly.
- The need for consultants setting strategy for ESG disclosure decreased as more full-time employees are hired to gather data in an auditable way and implement systems for reporting ESG data.
- Forty-nine percent of sustainability leaders report to an executive who reports to the CEO, while only 4 percent of respondents have several layers between them and the CEO.
While this is encouraging at an individual employee level, there are important indications of concern at the company and executive level:
- “Motivation is diminishing for sustainability ‘first movers’ to set ambitious public goals such as Science-Based Targets (SBTs) or participate in voluntary indexes and disclosures such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices or the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).”
- “Sustainability leaders are likely rolling back their stated ambitions for fear of being held legally accountable for their outsized ambitions, or to avoid the legal ramifications of not meeting them.”
- “CEO engagement is significantly lower than in 2022, falling nine percentage points for those CEOs who were reported to be ‘very engaged.'”
- “Only 57 percent [of respondents] saw their budgets increase while 9 percent were scaled back.”
- “It’s going to come down to how seriously individual companies are committed to true sustainability [innovation, incubation, and horizon scanning] versus sustainability as simply a form of corporate reporting.”
Certainly, the data is strongly biased towards large US companies with substantial resources, so the findings may not apply to smaller companies (i.e., less than $1B revenue). Generally, however, the report seems to tell the story that as long as sustainability is closely and directly aligned with the company’s business goals (including risk and cost management, disclosure and compliance) rather than trying to push “outsized ambitions,” then sustainability staff should have a future with their employers.
Members can learn more about the business value of ESG/sustainability here.
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