The role of Australian business in reaching net-zero targets must utilise existing internal expertise in strategic company decisions, writes Darin Fox, chief research officer and principal consultant at Expertunity.
The recent passing of the Federal Government’s climate bill has lit a fire under local companies and their goals to reach net-zero emissions.
Most businesses know they have to take action, but many are struggling to find the internal expertise to create plans and act on them. While the skills shortage is having an impact, many companies are also not properly utilising the experts within their walls already.
Combating climate change requires companies to transform internally to capitalise on the expertise they already have, and to place these experts at the centre of their decision making.
The climate bill, passed by Federal Parliament in early September 2022, enshrines in law Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, and net-zero emissions by 2050.
The legislation also requires the Minister for Climate Change to table an annual climate change statement, and for the Climate Change Authority to advise on the targets which should be included in Australia’s Nationally Determined Contribution at least once every five years.
This has created a new sense of urgency in Australian industry to get onboard with this goal and put the necessary initiatives and mechanisms in place to ensure they are contributing and reaching net zero within the given timeframe.
It is now an inevitable imperative that Australian businesses of all shapes and sizes look towards energy transition and make all operations sustainable on the path to net zero.
According to the Schneider Electric Sustainability Index, climate change is ranked as the number one supply chain risk for Australian companies. The nation’s companies are embracing this crucial mission, but many are struggling to commit to it or access the experts and knowledge needed to do so.
In the Schneider Electric study, 38 per cent of businesses said they lack the expertise to implement sustainable technology needed to reach net zero. According to the survey, more than half of Australian business leaders believe the sustainability skills shortage is restricting their company’s energy transition.
A wide range of technical experts are needed within businesses to make the transition, ranging from IT specialists, engineers and environmental scientists, to procurement and project management experts.
According to Australia’s Skills Priority List 2021, there are skills shortages and strong future demand for IT specialists and engineers, and strong future demand for environmental and procurement experts. The skills shortage should not be understated but reaching net-zero emissions spans a broad range of skills, many of which are already inside most businesses.
For many Australian companies, the issue isn’t finding the right skills and experts, it is in how to fully utilise these existing experts to ensure they are able to reach their full potential. This requires breaking down silos, empowering people to be influential across the whole life of a project and putting them in strategic roles within the business.
This is where the concept of “expertship” comes into it. Expertship is what technical experts or subject matter experts do within a company – the insightful application of expertise leading to optimal outcomes that is guided by the technical experts whose ideas can transform a company.
In the past – and what still happens in many traditionally structured organisations – when it came time to design and implement a new strategy or innovation, managers would approach internal experts in the company and they would serve the role of report givers.
This research and advice would be handed off to the executive team, which would deliberate on it and come to decisions separate from the experts who actually wrote it.
However, the net-zero imperative requires technical experts across a wide range of skills to be embedded from the very beginning, to develop the strategy and provide consistent leadership in real time to the company. They should be the ones experimenting, seeing what is working and what is not, failing quickly and building a strategy from the ground up.
These experts need to partner with a business’s decision makers, and become the decision makers themselves, instead of being service providers. The problem is often not that companies don’t have the necessary talent, but the potential influence of these experts is blocked or overlooked, and they are not placed in leadership roles.
This can often be because they are perceived to not have the enterprise skills – often referred to as soft skills – needed to provide value. However, Expertunity data suggests otherwise, and these experts should be handed further responsibility.
Because these technical experts often don’t have anyone reporting directly to them, they are usually not considered for leadership roles. But it is time for the outdated view that “management equals leadership” to change.
If these experts are placed inside a traditional organisational structure where focus is on making things easiest for managers, this will create a significant roadblock on the path towards a sustainable future.
Reaching net zero is also not an issue where companies should rely on external consultants. While such consultants have a worthy role to play, the long-term challenge of achieving net zero needs to lean on internal expertise, and this is impossible to build up if relying on contractors.
Internal experts need to see there are career growth opportunities at the company, and that if they excel they can be promoted even if they are not managing people directly. These people must be seen as integral parts of the organisation, not merely advice and report givers. They must be shifted from being service providers to being strategic partners within a company, and becoming part of the solution to the biggest problem facing humanity today.