More valuable professionals thanks to green skills.
Circularity and sustainability revolutionize the labour market.
The future is circular and sustainable, and this is how it is beginning to be reflected in a globalized labour market, that is increasingly demanding specialized profiles that master green skills. The World Economic Forum affirms that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is approaching, in which sustainability and technology will take centre stage.
But, is the labour market prepared to fill these new positions?
A study conducted by LinkedIn, specifically the Global Green Skills Report, indicates that there has been an increase in job offers in which candidates are required to master at least one green skill. However, only one in eight workers meet this requirement.
Some of these green skills are linked to science and engineering, but other areas also require them for the proper development of business, such as operations, marketing, legal and business managers. In short, these are competencies that are capable of leading businesses to achieve a society that is increasingly sustainable and efficient in the exploitation of resources. In other words, to combine skills that allow us to reduce our carbon footprint, while at the same time being able to converse directly with our stakeholders in a sincere and direct manner.
The mastery of these green or ecological skills, according to the aforementioned LinkedIn report, greatly increases the probability of finding a job since a lack of specialized training has been detected. That is to say, at a generalized level and after conducting a survey for more than 48 countries, it has been detected that there is a gap in the practical and real training currently received by universities and professional schools.
But this is not all, the International Labor Organization estimates that there will be 24 million new jobs linked to green skills in the world by 2030.
What can we expect in terms of Green Skills?
In the coming years we will witness the consolidation of new corporate roles such as the CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer), in charge of implementing the sustainability strategy in companies, and we will witness the generalization of green skills to the point of becoming a transversal competence. In other words, all employees, regardless of their area of specialization, will have to master one or more green skills. We could say that the employee will need to master them in the same way that one would not understand a lack of mastery of digital competence today.
Therefore, we can affirm that sustainability has gone from being an operational objective to a strategic one and that society must respond by providing more training, better training future workers and requiring the mastery of these skills in key strategic positions, beyond the operational positions in which it has already been taken into account. Now is the time for green skills to be mastered by professionals in charge of planning marketing strategy and leading the general management of companies.
Onlyplast Spain is a company that plays an important role in the circular economy. For years it has been distributing recycled plastics internationally, and its tasks include the dissemination of information about the recycled plastics sector and the circular economy. That is why it periodically contributes to the collection, analysis and dissemination of information and news from other entities, companies and institutions, always linked to the circular economy and plastic recycling, with the ultimate goal of adding more actors to the circular economy from which we all benefit as individuals and society.
