Green Skills Navigating challenges and opportunities for a low-carbon workforce

To meet ambitious Net-Zero targets, Britain needs a workforce fit for a Green future. However, seven out of eight workers currently lack Net-Zero skills and experience.

On 24 October 2023, Adecco’s Green Skills Roundtable brought together specialists from business, government, and academia to discuss Green talent supply solutions and explore the growth opportunities of a low-carbon economy.

The event followed the publication of Adecco’s Greening the Workforce lite paper and will serve as a springboard for a comprehensive industry report, available in early 2024.

Moderated by Niki Turner-Harding, Senior Vice President at Adecco UK & Ireland, the Green Skills Roundtable welcomed leaders from a range of sectors and featured a panel of highly respected subject matter experts:

Guy Opperman, Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions

Dr Anna Valero, Deputy Director of the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Martin Baxter, Deputy CEO of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA)

The panel pushed for collaboration, practical support, and a clear roadmap for employers navigating the Green transition. Key action points included:

Demystifying Green skills and jobs

Tackling Net-Zero talent demand and supply dependence

Aligning workforce development and sustainability targets

Improving investment incentives and predictability from government policymaking

Solving infrastructure issues to boost resilience and ready the UK for the Green revolution

This article shares the roundtable’s talking points, providing staffing options and insights to help UK businesses meet their low-carbon commitments.

Understanding green skills and jobs

The imbalance between the increasing number of Net-Zero-associated roles and corresponding Green skills poses a major challenge. In that sense, the panel agreed that ambiguity over the context of Green skills can undermine any efforts to explore potential patterns to address this problem.

Questions raised at the table included:

What roles Green jobs encompass

The levels of Green skills required across roles in the Green and low-carbon industries (even those seemingly unrelated to the Green revolution itself)

The part Brown jobs in industries impacted by the Net-Zero transformation will play in the Green transition

A lack of definitive answers to these questions slows the progress towards Net-Zero and makes the future demand and provision of Green skills and jobs difficult to achieve.

Although no singular approach was accepted by economic literature at the time of writing this summary, participants agreed that:

Data evaluation and monitoring in Green skills are integral as the labour market is expected to experience a significant transformation in the future.

Due to the peculiarities and defining characteristics of each industry – and potentially, occupation – a sector-based approach to classifying jobs and skills in the Net-Zero transition must be taken.

Brown jobs concern highly polluting activities (e.g. in mining, manufacturing, and agriculture). These jobs are set to face either a contraction in labour demand (and in some cases, such as coal and lignite mining, even a full phase-out) or significant structural change related to the greening of their associated sectors.

Bridging the gap between Green skills demand and availability

Overall, Net-Zero will be a creator of jobs. This, however, is contingent on getting the right capabilities in place and on the tightness of the labour market outlook. The panel noted that, currently, there is a ‘chicken and egg’ problem within the Green skills and jobs market. This makes it unclear whether the transition is propelled by business demand for a Green workforce or by colleges providing more Green skills training.

Panellists highlighted the critical role of collaboration between businesses and educational institutes:

The UK’s shortfall in digital skills provision (such as computing and AI) could be improved with targeted industry support for schools and the Department for Education.

Participating businesses were encouraged to share data for proposed policies and reforms to the Apprenticeship Levy with the government to demonstrate evidence for instigating change.

Employers were also urged to explore innovative solutions beyond the Apprenticeship Levy, such as tax credits incentivising firms to invest in Green skills. It was highlighted that robust monitoring and evaluation of this data would be essential.

The Net-Zero transition relies on a continuous source of sufficiently trained individuals. The roundtable discussed investing in Green skills training for the prison population to address talent deficits and create positive social outcomes through prisoner rehabilitation.

It will take time to shape the UK’s low-carbon workforce and many new jobs will be created to sustain emerging technologies and sectors. Concurrently, existing roles and functions must become more Green-conscious.

Training risks and solutions

The panel acknowledged companies’ concerns about the negative externalities of Green training programmes, such as candidates leaving their roles after upskilling. They proposed a number of solutions to boost loyalty, including contract stipulations that retain employees for a set period as part of the training offer.

Though investing in employees’ Green skills provides long-term business benefits, companies will experience short-term trade-offs between growth and sustainability. This is due to a time lag between the initial investment and the realisation of Green jobs and associated profits.

Greening the workforce also presents problematic accessibility issues. Data has revealed that, generally, workers with the most limited education have the lowest level of training. Green jobs are also more likely to be held by older, white, male workers. Employers therefore face a multifaceted challenge to create space for these jobs, while making them accessible to all groups. This change begins at training level.

Incentives for businesses to invest

Investment is driving the Green agenda, and there is a visible push to recruit staff into these roles. However, pressure is increasing for firms to set targets without having the necessary support to achieve them – or the predictability to confidently invest.

The panel acknowledged that private firm investment in Green innovation is highly individualised and therefore lacks holistic thinking. They pinpointed this as an area where government guidance and leadership would be beneficial and, on a broader scale, supported the prospect of a Private and Public Partnership approach. They suggested that:

Firms can be motivated to invest in ‘going green’ by contract requirements. For example, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs has considered IT service providers based on their carbon emission outputs.

This shift shows that ‘Green’ services are becoming critical factors in supplier selection, driving businesses to improve their eco-credentials to continue winning contracts.

While there will be short-term costs linked to the Green skills transition, this expenditure should deliver long-term gains – and credible investment incentives for the private sector.

Predictability in government policymaking will encourage employer investment and build the necessary confidence and stability for businesses to decisively champion the Green transformation as part of their long-range strategy.

Regional disparities in the Green transition

Recognising regional variations and demand-led funding in upskilling and reskilling is critical when shaping targeted solutions for areas in need of urgent action. The roundtable agreed on the importance of considering health, housing, and education within Green strategies to create place-based action plans that support both the Green transition and levelling up missions.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and successful outputs will be the product of regionalised and centralised drives to overcome the Green transition’s various challenges. While all areas of the UK will need to retrofit their homes, there will be zones where the Green service concentration is lower, meaning the Green transition won’t happen everywhere in the same way, all at once. It is therefore essential to deliver for regions, while ensuring efforts are effectively linked under a cohesive national strategy.

Attractiveness of Green jobs

It is important that people are helped to understand the Green roles they are applying for. Without clear job descriptions and development plans, workers will struggle to visualise possible career pathways – and their level of security and stability. This uncertainty may impact the attractiveness of Green jobs and prevent quality candidates from applying.

Targeted information and marketing could drive awareness and appeal of Green careers. The panel explored several approaches to increase candidate engagement:

Increased flexibility can make Green roles more competitive, especially for young people who are already more motivated to engage with the Green jobs market than their older counterparts. Providing work-from-home options can improve employee retention, reducing hiring and training costs in the long term.

Businesses can fuel behavioural shifts by better ‘selling’ the prospect of entering Green industries. For example, promoting the benefits of self-employment in Green retrofitting could stimulate interest from candidates with transferable skills.

‘Rebranding’ STEM subjects could make them more compelling to current and future jobseekers. The panel encouraged organisations to advertise STEM opportunities as more than just learning and ‘solving the problems of the future’ to ensure they attract more candidate interest.

The panel discussed the example of a Nesta trial examining how Green training courses are framed and positioned. The UK-based innovation foundation found that emphasising a training course’s financial support (rather than a job’s positive impacts) delivered the highest levels of applicant interest. The results provide valuable insights into what companies should focus on when advertising Green jobs.

Supporting your business through the Green
transition

The 2020s present a ‘decisive decade’ for increasing private sector investment in Green industries. Both government and businesses have a responsibility to invest to ensure Britain achieves its green and Net-Zero targets.

If utilised effectively, Green jobs present a growth opportunity for businesses – but progress requires collaboration on all sides. Adecco is committed to providing the skills, resources, and critical stakeholder connections to help employers capitalise on the low-carbon economy. We look forward to sharing outputs from further Green Skills Roundtables in the near future.

For now, read our Greening the Workforce report for practical action plans to nurture Net-Zero talent through upskilling and reskilling programmes, education, and apprenticeships.