There is no such thing as a green job!

There is no such thing as Green Jobs ?

Earlier this year, I attended the Scotsman Green Skills Conference as part of their panel on “What trailblazing initiatives are the energy sector adopting to enable talent and skills within the workforce to contribute to net zero”. Accompanied by Emily Taylor (North Sea Transition Deal), Lauren Braidwood (Energy Transition Zone), Christine Currie (OPITO) and Meliane Hill (ScottishPower), the conversation was lively and engaging, and provided plenty of food for thought.?

During the debate I made the point “there is no such thing as green jobs and green skills”- arguably a bold remark to make at a green skills conference – but this landed well and resulted in a number of people and organisations approaching Fuel Change in agreement and to question what skills do the future workforce need.?

Businesses are faced with challenges on a daily basis, and Net Zero targets will only amplify these challenges. They will also bring new opportunities too. The concern is whether the workforce possess the right skills and competencies to be able to deal with these challenges and opportunities effectively and successfully in the green future.

There is a lot of time and money being spent on defining what new green skills businesses are going to need. While there will be an element of technological advancement as we move to lower carbon products and services which will require a certain level of technical skills, for a certain portion of the workforce, it can be said and has been evidenced by our findings at Fuel Change Live, that the majority of the future workforce just need to have the skills that make them effective contributors to their workplace’s challenges.?

So, what are those skills exactly? Businesses have told us that they need their future employees to be able to solve problems, to be resilient and think critically so that when they’re faced with a challenge, they have the confidence and creativity to tackle it head on, in new and innovative ways and can communicate this effectively across their organisations.

The workforce of the future need to be team players, leaders, and armed with the correct knowledge and understanding of sustainability and its importance to develop solutions within their workplaces to align with the Net Zero targets we face.?

In reality, the green skills that we are seeking are skills we currently call META skills and the great news is that they are generally all skills that we can work on developing within ourselves now. We don’t need to spend resources defining what they are and what they look like. We do perhaps need to pay more attention to them and practice honing them if we want to excel.

However, the reality is, we have seen a regression in the development of META skills in the Next Generation because of Covid. We know as adults that working behind a screen for so long has made us anxious about going back into the workplace, to work with real people again. But for our young people, this has been amplified. Those pivotal years where they would usually build confidence and relationships with others have been impacted by the fact they’ve been shut in for so long. We need to turn our attention to this generation and give them the opportunity to develop these META skills that are necessary for their future.

If there is work to be done to support the Next Generation to have the right skills to progress into the workplace in the future then what do we call it? To date we have been calling this Green Jobs, because Green Jobs is what the Next Generation want, right?

In our view and experience the word ‘green’ it isn’t helpful. ‘Green’ has connotations of activism and climate warriors, and as our evidence proves, in a world where the need to fit in is all consuming, young people don’t want to associate with this narrative.?

When I was at school there was a huge stigma around being involved in anything to do with “sustainability”, “green” or “eco”. In primary school I would’ve picked up a litter picker without a second thought, whereas from the moment I got into high school you wouldn’t have caught me dead with one – and that’s coming from someone who was quite attuned to the need for action around climate change.?

That stigma still exists and it’s huge, both in school and even when you come out of school. We know this shouldn’t be the case, but it is. Before we solve that problem, we need to accept it and play another game. As this stigma still exists, labelling something as ‘green’ only increasingly marginalises those who will want to get involved. Calling it “green skills and green jobs” instantly makes people think “that doesn’t apply to me”.?

There’s also the point around transition. We aren’t going to wake up one day and there suddenly be thousands of green jobs. That then means that for many people, we will start to do “green jobs” alongside our “not-so green job” in our day to day. For us all to accept that this will be a transition, we must be conscious that our word choice doesn’t have a polarising effect - we will be in a shade of gray for a long time before we reach green.?

At Fuel Change, we believe every job is a Green Job, and therefore see no need to pigeonhole them or insinuate that they are only accessible to a certain category of person. We also believe that we can act now to develop the skills we need in our workforce that will effectively see us achieve Net Zero. The technological advancement and greening of our world will happen over time as we transition, however the opportunity to use META skills more effectively and make our businesses better is something we can all do today.

Anna Bell