Bridging The Green Skills Gap: A Strategy For Building A Sustainable Workforce
Climate change is the biggest global challenge… and the solution lies with the global workforce. This isn’t just a pressing issue for governments: organizations are rapidly shifting their strategies to make their operations more sustainable, creating “green jobs” – and looking for “green skills” – to help meet environmental goals.
“Green skills will pave the path toward climate goals and economic prosperity. If we don’t invest in producing a global workforce capable of addressing the climate crisis and participating in the green economy, we will fail both our planet and our people.” – LinkedIn Global Green Skills Report 2024
But “green skills” will be integral to far more jobs than those directly related to sustainability. To keep up with regulations, support the transition to net zero, and stay ahead of competitors, organizations are seeking sustainability competencies across a huge range of roles and departments.
And the demand is outstripping supply.
The global green skills gap 🌳
Job postings for green jobs are growing nearly twice as fast as the number of workers with the skills to fill them, according to LinkedIn’s new Global Green Skills report. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, demand for green talent surged by 11.6%, while the supply only increased by 5.6%.
In the UK, PwC analysis reveals a significant green energy skills gap of around 200,000 workers is emerging – a gap that “must be addressed if the UK is to deliver on long term energy security and meet its energy transition targets.”
Key areas impacted by the skills shortage include renewable energy production, electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, waste management, and recycling.
LinkedIn projects that by 2030, one in five jobs will lack the required green expertise – a figure that could double by 2050 if action isn’t taken.
With green talent now seeing a 54.6% higher hiring rate (and 80.3% in the U.S.), the need to address this gap is clear.
So how can you build and maintain a green-skilled workforce?
1. Get Granular With A Skills Framework 🌱
For many organizations, you are now hiring for roles and teams you’ve never hired for before – perhaps in new markets – with skills you might never have had exposure to. It’s hard to know where to start.
But whatever gaps you have or roles you are hiring for, step one is establishing a better, clearer way to “understand” work and people.
Setting up a skills taxonomy – a common language for describing both what people bring to the table, and what constitutes the components of any given job – makes life a lot easier as you recruit, reskill, redeploy and plan for the future.
Working out what various skills “mean” in your industry (and your organization in particular) doesn’t have to be a lengthy, manual process. Technology – AI-powered tools like Beamery – can help pull data together from various sources, normalize the information, and “understand” the skills required for e.g. Project Management at your company, versus another. You could have a clear, usable skills taxonomy in days rather than months.
Learn more about building a skills taxonomy.
2. Conduct A Needs Analysis 💚
So, what green skills do you actually need in order to get the work done? We recommend that you deconstruct jobs – the tasks to be done – into the skills required to do them.
A dynamic, skills-based job architecture not only gives you a more structured way to define work, so you can more easily “match” people to critical roles, it can move with the times. This is crucial when things are changing so quickly. (Consider the fact 15% more people added the skill of “Sustainable Procurement” to their LinkedIn profiles in 2024 than 2023, for example.)
New regulations mean new required skills: supply chain decarbonization, sustainable construction, renewable energy, and ecosystem management all became “red hot” in the wake of new government policies.
AI can work behind the scenes to ensure accuracy, relevancy and timeliness. Your own recruitment data can also feed in, automatically updating the job architecture with the green skills that are actually being considered essential by hiring managers.
From here, you can truly understand your skills needs – the skills needed for critical roles – and use this for comparison with your talent database.
Learn more about creating a dynamic Job Architecture.
3. Build & Understand Your Talent Pool 🗃️
Most large companies have a talent CRM these days – it’s becoming table stakes to have an easy way to view and manage the volume of “potential talent” at your theoretical fingertips.
But does your talent database include alumni, and current employees? Is it a true reflection of your talent “universe”? Can people easily sign up to be part of your talent community, as well as being proactively sourced and added to the system?
And is it organized in a way that really helps you see what someone is capable of, rather than just the previous job titles they’ve held?
With that smart skills taxonomy in place, you can level up your talent intelligence and really understand what’s out there. Yes, there may seem to be a gap in the supply of green skills, but there are people out there – you may just have to look beyond traditional criteria. That’s where the skills-based approach comes in.
By focusing on (and organizing profiles by) skills and specific competencies, rather than by formal education or traditional experience, you can access a wider range of candidates who possess the requisite green skills, including career switchers or freelancers who have developed expertise in sustainability.
AI can help you “infer” the skills someone may have (or could learn) even if they haven’t explicitly listed it on their resume, building out a richer profile for each candidate, and a broader pool of untapped potential.
Discover the power of true talent intelligence.
4. Directly Target Required Green Skills 🔍
Skills-based hiring allows you to specify the exact skills your organization needs for green initiatives (like renewable energy proficiency, carbon footprint analysis, or sustainable sourcing). Rather than relying on traditional job titles, you can find talent with the precise skills needed for your sustainability goals.
Then it’s all about going after the people with the skills you need. Today’s technology allows you to get far more targeted in your recruitment marketing efforts – and better track their effectiveness. See which channels, messages and formats are yielding the best results with your wider talent community, and tweak accordingly.
Gen Z will make up one-third of the workforce by 2030. Does your EVP resonate with their broader values? Are you being transparent around your sustainability progress, and setting realistic, achievable goals? Greenwashing doesn’t go down well with the workforce of tomorrow – but they are keen to be part of the solution when it comes to sustainability.
Explainable AI can help you in several ways here. First, you can personalize communications more easily, so the right content (company ESG news, plus relevant open roles) is sent to the most relevant people, efficiently.
Second, it can provide recommendations to your recruiters around the ideal shortlist for a given role – showing them which candidates (or employees) have enough of the right skills to fill your needs, along with a transparent explanation of why they would be a good fit.
Learn more about skills-based hiring.
5. Upskill & Reskill Your Workforce 🔋
Skills-based hiring is only one part of the solution when it comes to the green skills gap. Business and governments alike understand that targeted and thoughtful reskilling and upskilling initiatives will be a huge component of building the green workforce of tomorrow.
Once you have the right data foundations – connected talent intelligence, with a clearer understanding of how skills connect to work – you can look for potential amongst your own employees, at scale.
AI tools can help you see quickly who would be prime for a development opportunity, who has the greatest potential to learn, and who has most of the “necessary” skills for a green job, and simply needs upskilling in one or two areas to take it on. This may include transferable skills like data analysis or project management.
As mentioned, matching people to roles or to development opportunities doesn’t have to be manual, or muddied with human bias. Explainable AI ensures that people are assessed equitably, accurately, and recommendations are surfaced at the touch of a button, so that you get the best possible results from retraining or redeployment.
Holding on to the green skills you have should be high on your agenda – mass firing and rehiring is a very costly alternative to building a long-term plan for reskilling your workforce. Offer new career opportunities (new roles or relevant training programs) to employees is an excellent retention method.
Aligning your business needs and sustainability goals with the aspirations of your employees is a win-win, plugging your skills gaps while ensuring their continued growth and job satisfaction. Clear pathways for developing and applying green skills ensure employees see their role directly contributing to meaningful environmental impact, which also boosts engagement.
Read more about how AI is changing L&D practices, and other aspects of talent management.
6. Double Down On DE&I 👩🏽💻
“To secure the significant volume of workers needed to fuel the energy transition, the sector will need to draw from a more diverse pool of people.” – Dr Eduardo Rodriguez Monemayor, PwC
It’s clear that we need a broader talent pool if we are to build out this greener workforce. Indeed, most commentators have noted that the green skills gap can only be addressed by encouraging more women and young people to learn green skills, and establishing more diverse hiring practices.
Gen Z will make up one-third of the workforce by 2030... But at the current rate of progress, only one in 10 Gen Z workers will have green skills by then, according to LinkedIn research.
Using objective skills data as your unit of measurement, plus ethical AI to match people to roles, means significantly reducing human bias in talent processes – and widening the talent pool as a result.
Of course, there are more initiatives that companies could embrace in order to boost diversity and close the green skills gap: targeted L&D efforts, championing specific success stories, or putting forward professionals from underrepresented groups for senior positions. Again, this is a win-win – while companies (and countries) can hit their environmental goals, people from all backgrounds can get greater access to work and development opportunities.
“The green skills gap should not only be seen as a key growth constraint in the green economy, but also as a chance to share new economic opportunity for millions of workers with families and communities locally and globally.” – John Harnoss, BCG
Learn more about how AI is actually the answer to your DE&I challenges.
The Sellafield story 📖
Sellafield, with its mission to create a clean and safe environment for future generations, faced the critical challenge of attracting niche skills to fill numerous specialist, on-site roles in West Cumbria, UK. Recognizing limitations in both the availability and quality of skills data as well as in its HR technology stack, Sellafield adopted a skills-based strategy powered by Beamery’s advanced technology to better identify, engage, and secure top talent.
High-quality skills data now enables Sellafield to efficiently pinpoint and attract candidates with highly specialized skills. By nurturing prospects with personalized experiences, and employing a proactive recruitment marketing approach, Sellafield has substantially reduced time-to-application and time-to-hire.
Their skills-first strategy extends to current employees, where Beamery will help support internal mobility and upskilling, further enhancing talent quality and retention through a culture of continuous skill development.
Read the full case study here.
“We’ve got a hundred year plus mission at Sellafield, and we are going to need skills in the future that probably don’t even exist today. So it’s critical that we maintain relationships with people right through their careers... The Beamery platform will really help us have a clear picture of what skills we have, and what skills we need to be successful both today and tomorrow.” – Martin Stubbs, Talent Acquisition Leader, Sellafield Ltd
Taking a skills-based approach to data management, hiring, mobility and upskilling helps you zero in on green skills, and develop people in the right direction. Comprehensive talent and job data, along with transparent AI, will ensure you have the flexibility to adapt roles (and processes) as green skills evolve, so you can take a swift and effective response to new sustainability goals and regulations.
By investing in the right tools today, and putting people at the center of your sustainability strategy, you’ll be ready to tackle the challenges of tomorrow with confidence.