How to Make The Green Transition Work for Every Worker

The green transition is an omnipresent force throughout the corporate world, as businesses focus on sustainability, energy policies and environmental protection. Moving into a climate- and human-positive economy is, of course, our common goal.

Business leaders extoll their credible action plans for decarbonisation, citing production and supply chain adaptation, ethical investment, shifts to low carbon options and more efficient tech. People, though, seem to be an afterthought, referenced only in eco-boosted recruitment and retention targets.

But attracting and retaining talent through a sustainability-focused company culture is only one side of the die. Not only is there a clear business case for making the green transition people-centric, the workers themselves are crying out to be more involved.

THE WORKERS VOICE

Employees are central to achieving the green transition. But according to our Global Workforce of the Future research, many fear they will be left behind. The workforce is worried. More than half of employees (54%) fear the transition to a green economy will make it harder to find jobs in future and 46% reported anxiety about the impact of the green transition on their current jobs.

While the green transition effect on the workforce is pervasive, it isn't uniform. Workers in Australia, for example, are much more concerned about the effect of the green transition on their job compared to Japanese workers – 57% to 17%.There are also varying degrees of concern between generations and industries. The younger generations, for example, tend to suffer more heavily from eco-anxiety which could affect their perspective on work. Its precise impact on jobs and skills remains abstract and difficult to predict.

Those who do express concern do so for good reason. It is estimated that without skills development, the shift towards circularity could cost 71 million jobs. This could have potentially catastrophic economic as well as social consequences. Huge numbers of workers falling out of the labour market because their skillsets have expired could incur high costs for them as individuals but also to society at a national and global scale.

This is no secret and a concern workers seem to share. Six in ten believe the green transition will compel them to learn new skills, according to the Global Workforce report. This skills gap represents a huge opportunity for growth on behalf of employers, but also a call for drastic and urgent action. Skills development is necessary not only to enable business transformation towards a greener economy, but also to mitigate social fallout in times of drastic change.

Our research shows workers who are seeking to move to a new job rate career development and training at number 3 on their wish list – behind salary and flexible working. Whether businesses are up to the task is another matter. Just 30% of workers believe that their companies are investing effectively in developing their skills. According to research by McKinsey only 40% of companies believe they have the knowledge and capabilities to achieve their sustainability targets. There is clearly work to be done.

Following the Leader

Business leaders have a responsibility to direct sustainability – and their people should be at the centre of the mission. Managers have a pivotal role in encouraging new skillsets and enabling professional development – and will need to lead by example. Getting ahead of the curveby mapping the probable future and either reskilling or upskilling staff today will pay huge dividends tomorrow.

The corporate culture needs to be in evidence – from the switch to eco-friendly detergent by the cleaning team to the carbon-efficient AI research system sanctioned by the CEO. It's important to weave green working alongside social considerations, through all facets of a business – and just as important to weave in green transition training as part of employees’ career development, tailored to individual needs and abilities.

Leading the Leaders

Government-led initiatives and policymaking are key to enabling a smoother and more inclusive green transition. For COP27, we analysed the updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the G20 countries and found that human capital-related measures are currently still a sidenote: only 3 countries include Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in their NDCs and more than half of the G20 do not mention skills in their NDCs at all. There are however promising examples as well:

Australia invested into the creation of 10.000 apprenticeships in new energy industries, boosting employment in the sector and fostering better transitions from education into the labour market.

India launched its Skill Council for Green Jobs as a public-private initiative to develop standards for skills certification and training curricula, as well as a dedicated platform for green job matching.

Tackling the need to make lifelong learning more accessible, South Africa launched a Just Transition Framework aiming to extend lifelong and work-based learning opportunities to more people, e.g. enabling more online learning and raising the number of apprenticeships.

These examples offer a glimpse of potential avenues for collaboration between different labour market stakeholders for the benefit of equipping workers with the skills needed to realise a just green transition.

Collaborating for the future today

As daunting as it may seem right now, the future of employment is bright. In the energy sector alone, as 9.5 million unsustainable jobs melt away, 17.4 millions are predicted to replace them. In the near future, there will be exciting new roles and cutting edge ways of working that we cannot even imagine today. But without the right training and development opportunities, these will not be available to everyone. Many who will have contributed to the green transition risk being left redundant in its wake. 

Nurturing our staff through the green transition while balancing opportunities across diversity, gender and age, will take efforts from every stakeholder in the labour market – from business leaders to unions, from governments to regulators, from workers to students. To make a future that works for everyone, we must place everyone at the centre today. 

Learn more – and watch live

We will be exploring these topics in more detail with recognised experts at a side-event we are hosting in collaboration with the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) at COP27, on 15 November at 10:15am CET (11:15am local time).

The panel will be featuring voices from across the labour market spectrum including the International Labour Organization (ILO), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Presidential Climate Commission of South Africa, the C40 Cities (a global network of mayors of world-leading cities taking urgent action to confront the climate crisis), and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). You can watch the livestream here.