Green Skills Lab: SUEZ

• Uncategorized
• Healthy_Environment
• Just Transition
• Green Skills

SUEZemploys more than 6,000 people in the UK. The organisation pioneers sustainable solutions and innovative technologies to develop a more resource efficient Circular Economy, working with local authority and business customers on reducing their waste and maximizing the value of their discarded materials.  

The issue 

In a changing economy and within a challenging and complex sector, SUEZ has moved beyond being a waste collection and disposal business to being an energy and materials recovery business. New technologies, such as anaerobic digestion, and facilities and processes for circular solutions require renewed skills and a new mindset for emerging innovations that are focused more than ever on material quality and circular solutions to products, packaging and materials. SUEZ’s workforce encompasses a mix of blue and white-collar jobs. Few jobs look the same as they did five years ago, and many won’t be the same five years from now, and communicating the specific green skills relevant to each role (existing, transforming and new) is required, as an organisation at the heart of the environmental services sector and at the heart of the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.   

What the company did 

Diversifying services is an essential component of business transformation in preparation for managing climate action. SUEZ is reaping the benefits from these adjustments, winning new contracts, extending existing contracts, and attracting high caliber new recruits to support its widening portfolio of technologies, services and sites. As such, a high corporate priority is ensuring that their skills supply matches the demand. Operating across departments (including operations, support, innovation and research) has been fundamental in understanding which skills are required and when to expand services and solutions successfully.   

Early on SUEZ’s team had an awareness that they must go backwards in order to go forwards, given the size and reach of the company. In working towards creating a baseline for their workforce’s current skills composition, they are carrying out an extensive assessment of all job descriptions and using existing internal platforms to collect data on skills not stated in job descriptions, but considered equally valuable, such as languages, leadership capabilities and teamworking. 

SUEZ’s internal mobility and skill transferability protocols have been a key focus during the programme, with colleagues sharing learnings from previous site developments to improve scalability and others being empowered to try new roles, with the option to return to their previous jobs after six months. These agile internal systems and ways of working will be furthered in achieving their green workforce demands over the next five years, as the business continues to grow and diversify.  

The significance of transparency in achieving SUEZ’s ambition is underpinned by communication and education across the business. Staff activities are guided by weekly, monthly and quarterly tracked KPIs, based on their triple-bottom-line principles of People, Planet and Profit, making it clear that every positive behaviour that contributes to the 3Ps can and will be rewarded. Ambitions to advance a Just Transition through complementary behaviour change are being set and encouraged by design through this system and there is an active programme of empowerment and development (including mentoring, coaching, training and recruitment) to build equality across the business in terms of gender, ethnicity and other protected characteristics. 

Reflection on Green Skills Lab 

“As the waste and resources sector continues to evolve and new innovations and technologies emerge, SUEZ is on a journey to ensure our workforce is equipped with the skills to keep up with the changing demands of our industry. We found the Green Skills Lab programme valuable as a support tool on this journey, and our skills mapping and baseline assessments have been invaluable in preparing us for the next phase of our green skills agenda and to support our growth as a business. As an organisation which underpins green transitions across a number of sectors, we’re committed to ensuring we have the skills and competencies that the power, energy and resource sectors need to contribute to the decarbonisation of the UK economy,” Dr Adam Read MBE, Chief Sustainability & External Affairs Officer at SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK .

Further reflection

“The workshops highlighted the importance of early cross collaboration with the education sector, in order to deliver the skills, technical competence and knowledge that our industry will require in the near future. They also helped to create a picture of the challenges faced in the transition to green skills and the areas that will be new, obsolete or upskilled. It was great to be able to share our experiences in parallel with other companies and organisations at different starting points and with different needs and opportunities. We were often the most advanced of the companies in our cohort and our experiences and learnings were invaluable to others, but equally reflecting on the other organisational journeys enabled us to revisit some of our previous work and provided a valuable check on our own progress. 

We found the programme valuable as a support tool, but every company will need to adapt the tools and techniques to suit their individual circumstances and take ownership of the process to get the best results. 

We haven’t finished the journey, but our skills mapping and baseline assessments are invaluable in preparing us for the next phase of our green skills agenda, namely targeted training of existing staff and recruitment of key specialist skills and competences to support our growth and transition agendas,” Matthew Farrington, Resourcing Business Partner at SUEZ.    

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