Working from home
As staff return to the offices in droves, summoned by large corporations. Sustainability head-hunters and recruiters are in a good position to comment on those in sustainable finance, and sustainability and what the outlook is for working from home policies.
When we work on sustainability searches with clients, candidates always ask what the policy is for working from home. Three years ago, the power was in the hand of the candidate because there were more jobs than people looking. We steadily moved to people being able to work from home if that suited them or even work from abroad.
With rising interest rates and inflationary pressure, firms are in cost-cutting mode, and they are not recruiting into their sustainability teams. Instead, they are letting people go, and we are seeing the ‘juniorisation’ of the ESG and sustainability workforces. This is leading to companies feeling emboldened to cut back on DEI, wellbeing, and other differentiated initiatives that they had rolled out when the candidate market was tight. They also have expensive offices and want their junior staff to learn by osmosis from the more senior people, thus needing them to come back in.
Meanwhile, the trains are as bad as ever leading to an epic outbreak of the loud, frustrated, commuter exhale, which lets everyone know we’re in for a long day.
What does the future look like?
We are arguably at the beginning of a slow recovery, so in theory companies should grow, or plan to grow in 2026. When they do, the people who feel badly treated will move jobs, and will need to be replaced. This will create a surplus of jobs, and a dearth of candidates meaning that salaries will rise inverse to inflation, and people will say no to jobs if they are being asked to work from the office five days per week.
Everything was concertinaed after COVID, and lots of trends were heightened and exaggerated. We will see similar things this time, but the curves will be flatter.
Sustainability recruitment companies see these trends first, and we are always happy to share our views if they add value to the industry.