Climate change bubble buoys green jobs market
Demand for environmental expertise continues to soar as the consultancy sector goes from strength to strength and new corporate roles are created for climate change and social responsibility specialists. Liz Trew presents the latest environmental recruitment trends revealed by ENDS’ annual careers and salary survey
The UK environmental services industry was estimated to be worth more than £25 billion in 2005, employing 400,000 people across 17,000 companies, according to the latest government statistics.1 These figures exclude internal corporate environmental teams, NGOs, charities and public sector organisations.
As it stands, the environmental sector is comparable in size to the UK pharmaceutical and aerospace sectors, but with an important difference: it is projected to grow by 42% by 2010 at a time when much of UK manufacturing is moving offshore.
The expansion has been driven by a potent combination of regulatory, policy and socio-economic factors. More recently, the mass media’s unprecedented focus on green issues, headed by climate change, has emerged as a new driving force.
Lester Lockyer of environmental recruitment consultancyAllen & York confirms the impact on job creation has been significant. "The profile of climate change issues has rocketed with all the media coverage – and interestingly it’s not just rhetoric, it is translating to real work and new roles," Mr Lockyer said.
He describes climate change as a "massive growth area" for Allen & York. So much so, the agency now has an established team dedicated to climate change, sustainable energy and renewables.
Rival recruitment firm Acre Resources shares a similar experience. "We’ve been active in the climate change sector since Acre started in 2003, but the whole climate change and carbon agenda has really exploded in the past 12 months and we now have a whole team of people focused on it," says director Tom Leathes.
Jobs range from technical, involving disciplines such as auditing, process engineering and carbon footprinting, to high-level strategic work within firms looking to formulate a long-term response to climate change (see box).
The future for low-carbon careers
Climate change and all things related, such as sustainable energy and carbon management, have undoubtedly become the new environment bubble that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been for the past five years until now.
However, it is questionable whether new corporate in-house roles such as ‘climate change manager’ and ‘carbon footprint manager’ are being created in addition to traditional environmental sustainability and CSR management positions or are simply a diversification of the same roles.
Research by recruitment consultancy Acre Resources supports the view that the growing global climate change agenda has created a new sector of the jobs market set for dramatic growth over the next five years.
Using information gathered through its own candidate placements,Acre estimates a 200% increase in specialist jobs relating to climate change from May 2006 to May 2007. This compares to 28% growth in the number of other specialist environmental jobs during the same period.
A few years ago, most FTSE250 firms were limited to testing the water with climate change, addressing the issue, often quite superficially, within the remit of their environment and CSR teams. But faced with external pressures to integrate climate change risk into their core business strategy, some larger companies conscious of their exposure are beginning to develop long-term policies to understand and mitigate climate impacts. This is especially the case in the retail, extractive, financial, telecoms, transport and travel sectors.
In doing so, they may either seek advice from external consultancies or build up their own in-house capabilities – or a combination of the two.
"Roles such as climate change manager reporting to the board, are becoming increasingly commonplace within major blue chips. With consumers demanding more climate-friendly products, and investors putting pressure on companies to take action, climate change is an issue that’s being pushed up the corporate agenda," Acre director Andy Cartland confirms.
"Judging from the work we’ve been doing with major clients, it won’t be long before entire teams focusing on climate change become the norm," he says.
Acre predicts the climate change jobs sector will multiply by 50 times its current size by 2012.
As with other areas of environmental recruitment, finding high-calibre specialists with the range of requisite abilities – including technical, strategic, political and communications skills – is a major challenge.
"It is a very specific skills set that is not necessarily transferable from the more mature established disciplines," says Lester Lockyer of Allen & York.
Climate change specialists can command salaries from £40,000 to £90,000, reflecting the shortage of candidates with multifaceted skills and their level within the organisation. According to Acre’s research, the average wage for climate change jobs stands at £43,000 in 2007, up 25% from 2005.
"We’re seeing more and more frequently job titles such as ‘climate change manager’ coming from the more forward-thinking firms – which we didn’t see at all two years ago," Mr Leathes says.
"There are also a lot of new business start-ups in the climate change and carbon management field looking to get investment and expand rapidly, whilst virtually all the major consultancies are growing their climate change teams. So there’s a huge range of jobs on offer and anyone with climate change experience is in huge demand, with salaries reflecting that."
Chris Kiernan of Cobalt Recruitment observes: "The recognition that there is money to be made in the carbon market has seen Cobalt working a great deal more with investment houses on project finance schemes and other energy initiatives."
Staffing is a major challenge facing organisations in such a rapidly growing and evolving industry, particularly for those looking to recruit environmental professionals with a few years’ experience under their belt. Competition for skilled talent is fierce and it is not uncommon for candidates to find themselves choosing between two or more job offers.
ENDS survey
During August-September 2007, ENDS conducted its seventh environmental careers, skills and salary survey2 via an online poll of ENDS Report readers and visitors to the ENDS Directory website.
A total of 747 responses were received: 60% from men and 40% from women. This is the highest female response rate since ENDS began the survey in 2001, proving an indication that more women are coming in to what has been a male-dominated field.
Respondents can be categorised into four broad groups depending on their employer’s main business activity. The largest group – about 30% – work for consultancy firms, while about a quarter work within the public sector for central government and its agencies, regulatory bodies, local authorities and academic institutions. Environmental managers working in the industrial and corporate world constitute a further 22%.
The remaining 22% are employed within a diverse range of other environmental services such as waste management, water and power utilities, as well as laboratories, NGOs, charities and law firms.
Some 58% of our survey sample work for large organisations with more than 500 people, while 18% work for small businesses of less than 50 staff.
In terms of geographical spread, a third of respondents are based in London and the south-east, while 13% work in the Midlands. But these areas rank among the most problematic for recruiters due to the high living costs and desire among many professionals to relocate to rural and coastal regions.
A further 11% are based in north-west England and 9% in the north-east. Scotland and Wales account for 9% and 3% respectively, while 8% of respondents work overseas.
Almost half of the survey sample are aged under 35 years. A substantial 31% are still in their first job in the environmental sector, although only 6% describe themselves as junior or graduate trainees. A further 47% are in their second or third job.
The average number of environmental positions held to date is 2.6, while the average length of service in the industry is 7.5 years. The figures suggest people tend to change jobs once every three years, although most tend to move around more at the start of their careers. Only around one in five has more than 15 years’ professional experience.
With regards to academic and professional qualifications, 96% hold at least a first degree, while 60% are also masters or PhD graduates. More than half of the survey sample have achieved chartered status in their chosen area, including 76 chartered environmentalists and 40 chartered engineers.
About 12% are registered auditors with the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), while 6% have attained the equivalent environmental impact assessment (EIA) practitioner qualification.
Skills in demand
In terms of primary job function, the top four disciplines among this year’s survey sample were: environmental management and auditing (14%), environmental protection and regulation (12%), waste management (10%) and contaminated land and remediation (8%).
Reflecting the underlying growth trend in the industry, most employer organisations are continuing to increase their pool of environmental personnel. On average, 49% reported they are growing environmental teams, with just 12% downsizing.
Interestingly, small and medium-sized enterprises are most likely to be building their environmental skills base, while 18% of organisations with more than 500 employees are rationalising their teams.
Table 1 shows the most sought after environmental skills among employers. Waste management consistently tops the most-wanted list, cited by over 60% of respondents this year. General environmental management comes in second place followed by sustainable development, which has shot up the rankings from sixth place last year. Energy management is a newcomer at number four on the wish list for 45% of employer organisations.
Recruitment consultants and employers tend to agree there is a shortage of qualified environmental staff across all major technical disciplines.
"We face the same challenges as the sector as a whole," a spokesperson for the Environment Agency told ENDS, "in particular across a range of our technical specialisms. Areas that we focus on include hydrology, waste, planning and engineering."
With 12,623 employees as of 1 July 2007 – including 1,106 new starters during the year – the Environment Agency is the largest employer of environmental professionals in the UK.
Monarch Earth Sciences recruitment consultant Stuart Pillans notes: "There is always strong demand for those experienced in contaminated land and geotechnics, and increasingly EIA, ecology, waste, renewable energy and sustainability. However, any chartered professional looking to move will never be short of job offers."
Cobalt Recruitment’s Chris Kiernan paints a similar picture: "We [in the environment team] have seen continued growth in established service sectors such as contaminated land and environmental due diligence with large, long-term projects such as the Olympic development calling for further demand for quality consultants. We have also noted a sharp increase in demand for sustainability experts of various disciplines from both in-house [corporate] and consultancy clients across a number of sectors."
"The shortfall in experienced project runners and team heads continues its squeeze on the consultancy sector," he adds. "Staff shortages in key growth areas are a major concern for many senior heads as the pressure continues to impinge on project work capacity, profit and continuing plans for growth."
Consultancy
Staffing and recruitment issues constitute a business priority for Jim Gott, commercial director of Conestoga-Rovers & Associates (CRA). The environmental consulting firm was founded in Canada during the 1970s and today employs more than 2,800 throughout the Americas. CRA first began trading in Europe in 1995, but following restructuring of the UK business in 2004 it has almost trebled in terms of staff numbers over a very short space of time.
"We’re now 30 strong in the UK, with in excess of £2 million turnover, but we’re looking to add at least another 50% to this during the coming year," says Mr Gott. "We’re constantly looking to recruit – so whether we’ve got specific openings or not we’ll always give consideration to good CVs. Some roles have been left vacant for a year or more reflecting the difficulty in finding the right people."
He estimates CRA interviews about 5-10% of all speculative CV applicants (including graduates) and gives jobs to about 1%.
Another international consultancy building its British presence through organic growth is Golder Associates, which now employs some 200 staff in the UK, up from 140 in 2004.
Managing director Julian Jones says: "Our recruitment programme is generally on track, but there are a few specific technical disciplines where we have experienced difficulties in finding good candidates. These areas include civil, mining and waste engineers at a senior level."
"It’s holding our business back," he concedes. Golder is actively recruiting in all business segments, but strongly focusing on the power sector, EIA and site characterisation.
Others such as Environ have found it difficult to fill the more numerate specialist roles such as chemical engineering and risk assessment. But Environ European president Ian Bailey cites a shortage of consultants with at least four or five years’ experience across the board.
"Since the management buyout of Environ in 1999 to become privately owned by employees, we have been growing by 20% year on year. We now have around 170 staff in the UK compared to about 100 three years’ ago."
The major challenge, according to Ian Bailey, is to find staff with the right skills in the right places to facilitate geographic expansion – "as the environmental consultancy market exists in lots of small, discrete local and regional pockets in the UK" – as well as to support diversification of its services.
"At Environ, we try to pre-empt market movement and changing client demands by five years," he explains. "For instance, a couple of years ago we took on a senior manager to build our capability in energy services to the built environment, and similarly we are expecting requirements of the REACH [registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals] regime to generate a significant new income stream for us."
Like many larger consultancies, Environ has also focused on expansion in continental Europe. Most recently it set up shop in Spain due to perceived opportunities from new environmental legislation and significant investment. Hence, additional languages will be considered a plus in the attributes of new recruits.
"Technical quality is a given, but we’re also looking for good social and team working skills. Plus anyone looking to progress will need to demonstrate good client interaction and responsiveness," he says.
Consultants in many of the more forward-thinking firms are being given increased responsibility at an early stage of their career to go out and win new business. "This is filtering down the ladder to intermediate level candidates with only a few years’ experience," says Monarch’s Stuart Pillans.
"Our clients are realising that if they give people greater autonomy and the chance to tender for projects that personally interest them, it is a good policy for attracting and retaining staff. Similarly, we have noticed that those looking to recruit consultants with a few years’ solid technical experience are increasingly wanting to see evidence that they are business savvy."
In-house roles
Last year’s ENDS Careers Guide reported on the growing number of corporate in-house environmental and CSR management roles being filled by specialist headhunters and recruitment firms, a trend that has continued during 2007.
Based on his firm’s experience, Allen & York’s Lester Lockyer estimates a 20-30 fold increase in the number of in-house roles being advertised externally over the past five years. As a result, corporate environmental management now constitutes a "significant focus for the business", although consultancy remains the biggest sector.
The drivers for this are manifold, but Mr Lockyer believes it is mainly a reflection of how companies have moved on in terms of embracing environmental issues – from introducing perfunctory environmental management systems to integrating triple bottom line, sustainability and CSR principles throughout the business.
In-house environment and CSR departments have more to do than ever before while many are still "playing catch-up" with the whole agenda, so teams are generally expanding – as supported by the findings of ENDS’ survey.
Certainly more smaller and lower-profile firms are appointing specialist environmental and CSR personnel, mainly as result of supply chain pressure from major retailers, pharmaceutical firms and petrochemical companies.
"The corporate sector has become much more involved and complex in terms of recruitment as CSR is maturing," says Mr Lockyer. "Previously in-house environment and CSR managers were often plucked from existing internal staff – mostly with no background or experience of these issues. But now there is a pool of experienced individuals developing skills through movement between companies."
Acre Resources director Andy Cartland has observed some other significant trends: "In terms of in-house posts, we are increasingly seeing a move away from roles combining environment, health and safety, CSR, etc, as was the trend a few years ago. There now seem to be more separate roles for these issues in large firms, but also in medium-sized firms of 70-100 staff. We’re working with several SMEs who are recognising there is a business opportunity in taking a leadership position which is quite an exciting development."
Similarly, CSR appears to be diversifying into individual specialist disciplines. "We’re finding that in many large corporates it’s no longer one CSR manager with an overarching remit doing everything and that there are more specific, in-depth, issue-based roles being created," explains Acre’s CSR consultant Surinder Deusi. "As such, demand is growing for individual community, supply chain and labour standards specialists."
The splitting of CSR into constituent parts is dependent on the major risks of the company involved. For instance, Acre recently helped one major fashion brand to find a CSR manager with experience in overseas labour issues.
But there is not so much evidence of a skills gap relating to CSR disciplines. One of the main reasons according to Tom Leathes, is that "environmental graduates are now often looking for the softer ‘more sexy’ roles such as CSR and not ‘old-school’ technical roles like contaminated land".
Shortage of candidates is rarely a problem for Acre, with 90% of CSR-related instructions leading to successful appointments. However, cross-sector experience within CSR is in demand, and individuals who have worked in two or more of the public, private, NGO and consultancy sectors are particularly sought after.
Our survey results suggest around a third of the corporate environmental managers group have had previous experience in consultancy, while a quarter have been employed within the public sector at some time in their career – indicating the growing maturity and movement between sectors.
Salary trends
The distribution of salaries and benefits among ENDS survey participants by age, gender, seniority, organisation type, job function and location are shown in figures 1-4 and tables 2-5.
Salaries are continuing to rise above the inflation rate – increasing by an average of 5% for our survey sample during the past year, including those who moved jobs (see figure 3). However, 37% of respondents achieved a rise of more than 5%, while 7% saw a rise of 16% or more (excluding any bonus payments).
Cobalt’s Chris Kiernan is not surprised by this finding. "The small number of professionals available, faced by the growing demand for their services has pushed up salary band widths across all levels of seniority, with strong candidates typically finding themselves with multiple (and sometimes inflated) offers," he says.
"As a knee-jerk reaction many companies have been forced to increase their commitment to counter offering, which has also contributed to salary increases above expected inflationary baselines. We have also seen other incentives including golden handshakes and business worker wealth schemes grow in the past two years, presumably as a measure in juxtaposition to the strategy of counter offer."
Stuart Pillans agrees employers are doing more in terms of counter offers and improved remuneration packages to attract staff and reduce attrition. "This seems to be working," he says, "as a much greater proportion – as many as 10-15% – of candidates are being bought back due to counter offers from their current employers compared to three or four years ago."
According to the survey, the average salary for an environmental consultant is about £37,350, while the average annual pay increase in this group was 6% (compared with 7% last year).
"In recent years, we’ve seen the environmental market starting to adjust more in line with other professional sectors," comments CRA’s Jim Gott. "We awarded baseline salary increases across all CRA UK staff of 8.5% last year and 11.5% this year as want to pay at the top end of the industry."
In consultancy, salaries remain highly dependent on what clients are willing to pay for different services and their perceived strategic importance. Variations between the major disciplines can be significant (see table 2, p 6).
Meanwhile, for environmental managers in industry the average salary is £40,750, rising by 5% in the past 12 months. Our survey this year once again confirms that those working for oil and chemicals firms earn a significant premium over their colleagues in other industry sectors (see table 3, p 6).
Allen & York’s Lester Lockyer confirms that the in-house corporate sector "is perhaps slightly better paid than consultancy for someone with five years’ experience." But at the same time, he feels many businesses still undervalue the role and many jobs are going unfilled until better salaries are laid on the table.
For public sector employees, salaries have risen more in line with inflation at around 3% on average. But professionals in this group tend to have more days of paid holiday, more flexible working arrangements and better employer pension contributions.
Career moves
Working within the environmental sector can be extremely rewarding as individuals may feel they can ‘make a real difference’. Our survey indicates that career satisfaction among the vast majority of green professionals is high, with 36% enjoying their work and a further 38% content in their current position. Only 11% expressed any negativity towards their job.
As many as 42% do not harbour a desire to move jobs for the foreseeable future. Of those that do, 13% aim to do so within six months, rising to 30% within a year and 46% within two years.
It comes as no surprise that pursuit of a better salary and benefits package is the number-one ‘pull’ factor. However, job prospects and increased responsibility and the range of interesting work also feature highly (see figure 5).
Work location is a major issue for almost a quarter of respondents. Allen & York’s Lester Lockyer points out there is now so much work available across all sectors that there is less of a need for candidates to relocate to find a new position than five or ten years ago.
"When candidates are faced with multiple job offers with similar salaries and benefits, the length of commute can be a big deciding factor."
"Therefore, location is key for any consultancy looking to expand its office network as the skills shortage is more acute in certain areas ‘the wrong side of town’," he adds.
Consultancy business managers should also take note that about four in ten of survey respondents from this sector would ideally like to move into other areas of industry. Secondments – whereby consultants are hired out to work permanently within client organisations for an extended period – may perhaps offer the best of both worlds.
CRA has experienced an increased demand for these type of placements, particularly from the petrochemical sector. Director Jim Gott believes this is a direct result of the growing burden imposed by environmental legislation as well as the difficulty for firms in finding their own specialists.
"It’s always a concern that consultants working in this way will be poached by the client company," he reveals. "But when this has happened in the past, although we have lost a valued member of staff we have invariably gained a good client."
Traditionally, many environmental posts have been filled through internal applicants, personal contacts and by word of mouth. Our survey shows this is still the case for most respondents (38%) when asked how they heard about their current job vacancy (see figure 6).
Recruitment agencies have garnered about 11% of the environment jobs market, although the proportion has remained steady for the past three years.
As a result of the difficulties in recruiting, some companies are becoming more creative in their methods of sourcing new talent. Consultancy Bureau Veritas for instance has focused on "general rather than position-specific advertising in the [environment jobs] sector leader ENDS and in The Guardian Society supplement," according to a company spokesperson.
BV received over 200 responses to the first campaign of this type and successfully recruited two "high-calibre" individuals. "This may seem like a disappointing response level but it was still a more cost-effective solution than agencies," she added.
Golder Associates, meanwhile, has elected to "grease the wheels" of the tried-and-tested internal recommendation method by offering a staff recruitment bonus scheme. MD Julian Jones reports that about a quarter of its new recruits came from internal contacts "so this works well for us" he concludes.
Advice to graduates
The tide is turning with more employers in the environmental sector looking to take on junior trainees fresh out of university. Acre Resources offers some tips on its website for environmental graduates entering the workplace:
Graduates get disheartened due to the apparent lack of opportunities for individuals with less than two years’ experience in the sector. There are opportunities, it is just a case of knowing where to look!
Although graduate jobs are just as common as any others, they are rarely advertised.
This is mainly because there are always plenty of enthusiastic new graduates on the market and advertising tends to be expensive.
For these reasons, the only jobs you will see advertised are for those people who are hard to find – that is those with a few years’ experience.
You will find a similar situation with recruitment agencies. Again, graduates are abundant so companies are sometimes not willing to pay a fee to an agency for someone they could probably find with relative ease.
What’s the solution then? The only real way to ensure you secure environmental work as a fresh graduate is through direct application to companies.
You do have to be proactive and you do have to get your CV out in numerous directions.
If you’re interested in a career in consultancy, a useful source of information for you is the companies’ directory at www.endsdirectory.com.
Have a look through the company listings and decide which are of interest to you – it is best not to limit yourself at this stage though.
The next step is to find out who is best to forward your CV to at the specific company. Phone the company and ask who heads up your area of choice.
For instance, who heads up the EIA department? Who is in charge of waste management? You may be directed to HR but if you are lucky you may be able to speak with the specific director.
Once you are through to the relevant person, you should explain your background and ask if they are recruiting graduates.
If the answer is yes, ask for the best email address to which to forward your CV.
If the answer is no, ask if you can forward your CV in case a position comes up in the coming months. You can also ask if they are happy for you to phone back the next day for feedback.
If you get your CV out to enough companies in this manner you will get interviews and you will get work.
If a more corporate environmental role attracts, find out about the graduate programmes within major corporations – often you’ll be able to specialise in environmental or sustainability activities in due course.
You will find that a number of companies have graduate schemes or specific areas on their websites devoted to graduates. This is also a useful place to start looking.
ENDS would like to thank all those who took part in our survey.