First confession: I didn’t invent this powerful question!

It’s something that has been coming through in various research projects on Sustainability and ESG development that we’ve been conducting lately. And the issue is just as prevalent in medium-sized companies as in large corporations.

Let me express a summary of what we’ve been hearing – playing out both sides of the argument in as neutral and objective a fashion possible.

I’ll start with the people who think the role should be stand-alone. Let’s call them the “soloists”.

Their first point is a powerful one… focus.

Quite rightly, they state that the job is a huge one already and is only going to grow. And whoever occupies the role should be able to focus on its multiple challenges.

Those challenges include (I am told):

• Establishing credible measures of sustainability that will be recognised by the financial markets and the investment community.
• Working out, within the parameters of emerging standards, what to report and how to present it to the world (most importantly, customers) in the best light…. but without ‘fudging’ any element of accuracy.
• Managing the underlying data analytics to produce effective sustainability reporting.
• Corralling powerful colleagues to buy into, and implement, continuous improvement processes, so that annual sustainability reporting can show real progress over time (apparently, it’s quite a struggle to get various company departments on board when they are under pressure to meet commercial KPIs).
• Motivating employees to adopt a sustainability mindset.
• Recruiting, or training, a skilled team to develop achievable strategies, create viable plans in collaboration with all parts of the business, and liaise/monitor/report on progress. Because it’s an emerging area, our research respondents have told me it’s hard to find good and qualified people… often having to sift through self-appointed ‘experts’, eliminate ‘pretenders’ and attract real talent/experience. On top of that, there’s a perception that there simply isn’t enough experience to go round!

OK – let’s move on to the people who advocate a combined role for Head of Sustainability – often paired with Company Secretary, Operations Director, Head of Health & Safety, Marketing Director, Head of Information Governance, and others.

This group I am going to call the ‘harmonists’.

Their argument also has its merits.

In summary, they tell us the role should be paired because:

• People with an established skill and role are more likely to have a deep existing insight into the business and not be layering sustainability goals onto the organisation without an understanding of its on-the-ground realities
• The team working for this combined role will be similarly ‘grounded’ in the business. They will also offer known value to the organisation through their non-sustainability duties, making them less of an employment risk.
• Departments within the company will have a recognised dependency on the combined department through its non-sustainability functions and will therefore find it easier to recognise and respect sustainability functions & responsibilities and activities.
• Budget lines are already available for the non-sustainability functions, and therefore sustainability planning and activity can be addressed in an agile fashion – stages or ‘sprints’ of ‘test, review, learn, adapt, proceed’. This is often seen as mitigating investment risk in developing the sustainability function – enabling a calm and evidence-based approach.
• Combined responsibilities may be seen as encouraging a truly objective approach to sustainability – ridding the role of vested interests in delivering ‘successes’ but marking one’s own homework.

I don’t think there is a clear choice for an organisation wondering whether it should create a stand-alone, ‘soloist’ role, or developing/extending an existing position to a combined, more ‘harmonist’ role.

Each has compelling arguments. And the whole thing is a work in progress.

The main danger, in my humblest of opinions, is that the role isn’t taken seriously… is tokenistic with no real power or resources.

As we know, some level of mandatory sustainability reporting for listed companies is now in force in the USA, Europe and China.

It’s mainstream.

So however, the Head of Sustainability role is carved – soloist or harmonist – it must be done properly and given the means to do a good job.

I hope you find these bulletins entertaining. I’m happy to discuss all relevant engagements – from customer community creation, to directorial mentoring, to strategy development, to thought-leadership content development, to full campaign structuring and management, and more.

Do get in touch!