Career Advice - The Ends Salary Survey

Skills in demand

Continuing a trend identified in last year’s survey (see ENDS Directory 2005, pp 7-14), organisations are generally increasing their environmental personnel base, whether they have large or small teams. On average, 46% of employers are reported to be expanding environmental teams, versus 12% who are downsizing. The remainder are reported to be stable.
In terms of the most highly sought-after skills, waste management is top of their employers’ wish lists, according to around 60% of our survey respondents (see Table 1). This is closely followed by pollution prevention and control (IPPC), general environmental management, contaminated land and EIA/planning skills.

As one of the biggest single employers of environmental professionals with around 11,500 staff in England and Wales, the Environment Agency faces a tough challenge in terms of staffing issues. A spokesperson for the Agency told ENDS: “There are national difficulties in recruiting civil engineers, planners and geoscience technical specialists. Our latest [recruitment] campaign is for flood defence team leaders, technical specialists and team members – we have advertised around 400 positions this year. The next largest volume requirement is for environment [inspection and enforcement] officers – typically, we recruit about 200 per year.”

The Agency believes that the civil service benefits package on offer, including a final salary pension scheme, flexible working and generous holiday entitlement, aids both recruitment and retention of existing staff. But it acknowledges that “skills shortages and the lack of graduates studying certain disciplines means that we need to find innovative ways of attracting and retaining good people.”

A couple of years ago, the Agency was very concerned about the lack of flood engineering specialists graduating from university. It decided to introduce a bursary scheme that sponsored flood risk management students at the University of the West of England on a foundation degree course, which includes a work placement with the Agency and the possible offer of a full-time job. The scheme has been “very successful,” reports the Agency. It plans to develop it further, potentially into other environmental disciplines.

Graduate opportunities?

In general, there are few structured training programmes on offer for environmental graduates. Juniors tend to be brought in to consultancy firms to “plug the gaps” when a need arises.
“Numerate science graduates are realising that it is easier to get jobs in other industries,” says Monarch’s Gully Hassan, “and also that they can realistically achieve bigger salaries quicker by going to banks and management consultancies. So the environmental industry is always going to lose people early on.” He refers to this as “the Achilles heel” of the industry.
Nick Yates of recruitment agency Beresford Blake Thomas (BBT) feels that many graduates fresh out of university lack the essential technical skills sought by consultancies in particular, and they have little idea of what to expect in the workplace.

“I see it as two-fold problem,” he states. “Firstly, there is a dilution of what people are learning at university. Civil engineering and environmental sciences courses seems to have been softened up and are not specific enough for the workplace. But firms want to employ individuals with knowledge of specific areas such as contaminated land and risk assessment. There isn’t enough vocational training, and the second key issue is that firms don’t want to pay for it. This perpetuates the skills shortages as the industry grows.” James Lawson agrees that it is still very difficult for graduates to initially break into the workplace “because our clients still generally want at least a couple of years’ experience.”
“The bottom line is a situation where even higher entry level (MSc) candidates are volunteering to work for nothing just to get that all-important first few months’ experience under their belts. That is really all we can advise them as it is not easy for agencies to place them,” said Mr Lawson.

Environmental Resources Management (ERM), one of the largest  consulting firms operating in the UK and globally, does not offer a structured graduate programme. “We typically recruit those with  a postgrad qualification from a range of disciplines; more than half probably have some experience of working elsewhere prior to ERM. This means that to help them develop the training needs to be flexible,” said managing director John Alexander.

“There are a lot of candidates with excellent academic qualifications, but we  are looking for people who can apply this  in a business context. Successful candidates come across as energetic, enthusiastic and with good communication skills.”

A handful of consultancies have recently established graduate training schemes. Allen & York’s Paul Gosling believes that opportunities are increasing for graduates able to demonstrate key skills. “We placed more graduates during the past 12  months than ever before, which may be because some companies are now looking more long-term at filling their skills requirements,” he says.

Mr Gosling identifies consultancy WSP Environmental as “one of the few companies pushing the boundaries in this respect.” From 2006, WSP will offer a graduate recruitment and training scheme for the first time. With a UK staff of around 370 and turnover in excess of £30 million, WSP Environmental is one of the top ten environmental consultancies in the UK.
WSP director Jeff Ingman told ENDS that a few years ago the firm did not have the staff or resources to invest in training graduates. “But we now recognise the need to get more proactive and take the time to invest in our junior staff members. We have been inspired by a couple of stunning graduates that recently joined WSP that really surprised us with their ability.”
The firm will hold graduate recruitment events in February 2006 in Leeds and London. About 60 graduates will attend each event. They will be invited for one-to-one discussions with senior staff. The firm hopes to recruit up to 20 graduates from this ‘milk round’.

WSP has also completed a feasibility study for launching a “global academy” pilot scheme for twelve young environment professionals. It is an idea “borrowed” from some of WSP’s multinational client firms. Candidates will be hand-picked from its offices around the world for a two-year programme that will include work placements in different countries and in different parts of the business. The aim is to “enhance career development and promote the acquisition of skills needed for success in global business.”
“We have come to the realisation that consultancy is all about people,” says Jeff Ingman. “Our entire business is built around our great people and the great clients that follow them. We want to become the best employer in the sector. Initiatives such as the global academy involve large overheads but the potential rewards that could come out of it for WSP are fantastic.”

Career prospects

Our survey suggests that career satisfaction among the environmental workforce is as high as ever, with 40% describing themselves as content in their current position and a further 21% saying that they really enjoy their work. Only 17% expressed any negativity towards their job.

However, respondents were generally more scathing when it came to rating their working conditions and career prospects in their current employment, with more than  60% unhappy with these particular aspects (see Figure 4). Around 60% again felt negative about employment security within their particular sector of the industry. It is the nature of an industry heavily tied to regulation that there is a cyclical nature to the demand for skills and that the skills will require constant updating. Hence, it is important for environmental professionals to attend training courses throughout their careers and also to be prepared to learn new skills accordingly.

When asked about immediate career aspirations, the priority for most individuals (31%) is to gain more experience in their chosen field, while just over a quarter want to move up the management hierarchy. Around 12% want to change jobs, while 7% want to change to a different discipline within the environment sector.

The main obstacle seen to hinder career goals was the non-availability of desired jobs, according to 27% of the sample. However, this seems slightly incongruous with the picture painted by recruitment agencies when they say that they are literally crying out for more candidates to join their books. It may indicate a lack of awareness among individuals within the industry about the value of their skills in the current climate

Outlook

The good news for those working in the environmental industry is that recruitment agencies are expecting more of the same over the next year or two. Specialist skills will continue to be in strong demand, while companies in the sector will need to wise up to what it will take to attract and retain key staff.

Nick Yates states: “The market will remain buoyant with increasing environmental legislation and greater corporate awareness of key issues such as sustainable development and emissions reductions. But there still won’t be enough people to fill the jobs available.”

A number of environmental legislation proposals are due to be agreed and implemented in the EU over the next few years, with the new chemicals regime (REACH) expected to be finalised during 2006. In addition, the management of environmental liabilities and risk has become a fundamental issue in corporate transactions. According to John Alexander, ERM is finding that these issues are no longer the preserve of forward-thinking multinationals, but they are of increasing importance to mid-size companies.

Recruitment agents warn that skills shortages are likely to become even more acute when the London 2012 Olympics development works kick off. EIA practitioners, planners, and contaminated land and geotechnics experts based in the capital should reap the benefits of these projects.

James Lawson maintains that it is difficult to predict which skills will be in demand in future “because the whole area is linked to specific environmental policy developments.” But he reports that Lawson Search Associates is concentrating efforts on growth opportunities in central and eastern Europe. He notes a strong demand for all environmental disciplines in EU pre-accession countries, but especially for oil and gas specialists.

For organisations operating in the environmental sector, the implications of ongoing skills shortages will mean that “companies are going to have to look more innovatively and think more laterally about the skills they’ve already got internally and work on developing those,” according to Paul Gosling.

Similarly, increasing competition for environmental candidates among recruitment agencies means that they too will have to “think outside the box” and re-evaluate the best way of spending budgets to get people onto their books.

James Lawson says that rather than focusing on traditional methods of recruitment, such as classified ads in the trade press, LSA is now finding alternative methods of recruitment more cost-effective. “This may include offering incentives – such as a small cash bonus or meal vouchers – to previous candidates that we have already placed to recommend to us friends and colleagues who might be interested in moving jobs.”

ENDS extends a big thank you to those who took part in our survey