Companies in Asia Pacific have been cutting back on junior-level sustainability talent as they tap into artificial intelligence (AI) to perform automatable functions such as sustainability reporting, according to a recruitment consultant focused on sustainability sector talent pathway issues.

Speaking at the ReThink conference in Hong Kong last week, Paddy Balfour, Asia Pacific managing director of recruitment firm Acre, said that corporates have been deploying AI to automate some tasks to improve efficiency, which has come at a cost to entry-level job prospects and career progression.

“We have been seeing more senior hires – and fewer junior hires,” said Balfour, whose firm services corporate sustainability departments across the region, regarding recent sustainability sector talent pathway issues. “We are undoubedly seeing that,” he said.

His observation echoes a study by Bloomberg in July, which found that entry-level jobs are being squeezed by AI in many sectors as employers use AI-based tools to automate basic tasks.

This trend has exacerbated “massive talent pathway issues” in the sustainability sector, as junior and mid-level staff are deprived of the experience needed to progress their careers by doing labour-intensive but important jobs such as sustainability reporting, Balfour told Eco-Business on the sidelines of the event.

More needs to be done by industry and academe to incorporate mentorships into companies that would give graduates the requisite experience to progress their careers, he said.

Specialist, Commercial Skills Are in Demand

As the sustainability sector matures, corporates are focusing less on capacity building and more on achieving “focused goals” Balfour said. This has meant a higher demand for specialist roles, such as biodiversity managers, as companies increasingly report their impacts on nature as well as climate.

At the c-suite level, there is now more pressure on chief sustainability officers (CSOs) to prove their commercial value to a business, Balfour said.

“There is a variety of different things CSOs are dealing with now: regulation, carbon markets, reporting – which all require diverse skillsets,” he said. These fast-evolving topics also require nimbleness, he said.

Read the full article about sustainability sector talent pathway issues by Robin Hicks at Eco-Business.