Sustainability disclosure used to live close to communications. Under CSRD in Europe and the ISSB standards being adopted elsewhere, it now lives close to the audit committee, with assurance, controls and personal accountability attached. The regulation moved faster than the labour market did.
The result is a particular kind of shortage. There is no lack of people who understand the frameworks. There is a real lack of people who can own the number: build the data architecture behind it, defend the methodology to an auditor, and explain the result to a board that will be judged on it.
Where the capable people come from
In our searches the strongest candidates tend to have a hybrid history: a period in financial reporting or risk, then sustainability, or the other way around. They are comfortable with materiality as an accounting concept, not just a strategic one. They have been through at least one assurance cycle and still want to do another.
Fluency in the framework is table stakes. Ownership of the number is the job.
These people are rarely on the market. They are mid-cycle in demanding roles, and a generic approach does not reach them. A specific one, from someone who understands what they are currently carrying, usually does.
Advice to organisations hiring now
Decide where the role sits before you open the search. Reporting leaders who report into communications will struggle to get the controls built. Give the role a direct line to finance, be realistic about the data infrastructure they will inherit, and plan for the first assurance cycle to be the hardest year.