Environmental Employment
Confronting challenges in emerging environmental employment By Jim Gllchrist B.E.S., Career Advancement Employment Services Inc.(CAES)
Competition is a fact of every
day business life - so is change. Members of the envi ronmental industry will be confronting a number of competitive challenges in coming years as a result of both industry and societal change. Despite an ongoing supply of entrylevel employees, companies should expect much greater competition in the attraction and retention of the fewer
available experienced environmental practitioners. And, with growing demand for quality environmental products and services placing increased pressure on this segment of the labour force, how these organiza tions respond to this challenge will very much shape their future success. Growth in environmental demand
In 2000, the Canadian Government estimated the number of Canadian
environmental companies as being close to 6,000, employing 220,000 workers and contributing 2.2% to Canada's Gross Domestic Product. It also estimated that the number of envi
ronmental companies was growing at a rate of 20% per year. Despite some current industry con solidation, increasing demand for goods and services relating to water resources, air quality, industrial envi ronmental management, clean energy and biotechnology (to name a few) should further translate into increases in both the number of environmental
organizations as well as internal staffing numbers. Fueled by increasing environmental compliance require ments, demand for environmental
services and products will go farther than simply increased activity or units sold. The bar has been raised on the
quality of these goods and services. For those organizations that truly embrace quality in whatever they pro vide to their clientele, the future should look very bright.
Changing demographic The increasing dilemma that these
organizations are facing, however, is the ever tightening availability of suit able environmental talent to properly address not only the increased demand for environmental products and servic es, but also to ensure the higher levels of quality that their clients will require. Many of us are aware of the book Boom Bust & Echo written by David Foot, in which he discusses the possi ble impacts as the baby boomer popu lation retires from the workforce. Of
great concern regarding this exodus is the potential labour shortage across all industries, with particular concern for the loss of experienced, talented persormel. And, while Foot states that the major crunch will occur around 2012, when the first of this group reach age 65, we are actually witnessing some impact now, as those who can afford retirement are increasingly opting out and internal successors are found to be
lacking. This accelerated retirement process will continue to gain momen tum up to 2012, and then of course show even more notable impact in the following years until the boomer pop ulation is exhausted.
The environmental industry is not exempt from this phenomenon, and many organizations are beginning to identify and contend with succession issues now. As Foot stated, "... the management of a business that fails to pay attention to demographics for five years may wake up to find itself in a different business than it thought that it was in - or not in business at all". New recruitment and
retention strategies So how should environmental com
panies respond to these challenges? The most strategic organizations will counter these issues by having the most talented managers and employees on staff; their reputation, distinctiveness, marketability and profitability, all will depend on it. Therefore, the competition to attract and retain these individuals - at all levels - will be
increasingly fierce. The successful competitors will embrace comprehensive human resource management strategies, which involve planning for, creating
36 Environmental Science & Engineering,September 2003
and maintaining an attractive employ ment environment. They will define an appropriate culture, provide challeng ing work, increase staff development opportunities and present competitive remuneration packages. They will rec ognize the need for a balanced labour force, with an appropriate distribution of senior, intermediate and junior per sonnel and they will create internal mobility and succession opportunities to foster long-term employee commit ment. Thus, they will build organiza tions that talented people will be inter ested in joining and staying in. However, ifyou build it - they might come. Competition for talent will necessitate a re-evaluation of current
recruitment and selection techniques to ensure that the best are attracted to
these leading companies. Traditional methods of attraction (newspaper advertisements, web postings, word of mouth, etc.), will become even less effective and reliable in this contract
ing talent market. Rather than rely on luck or settling for the best of the bunch of the active
job seekers, leading companies will shift to a more "passive candidate" focused strategic recruitment process at least to fill senior and intermediate
positions. This process must begin with a clear and realistic definition of
the talent desired, and then be support ed by a more proactive research based recruitment approach, utilizing corpo rate intelligence to identify the best suited candidates. While the active job seekers will not be totally neglected, these companies will ensure the identi fication of "the best" by casting the widest net possible, thereby including the more elusive, and often rewarding, passive candidate who would be over looked by the traditional attraction techniques. The upcoming years will provide some interesting challenges to mem bers of the environmental community; the strategically pro-active organiza tions will be well suited to meet them head on.
For more information, contact e-mail: info@careeradvancement.on.ca.