HR’s Role in Driving the Sustainability Agenda

With only five years left to achieve the 2030 environmental targets, organisations across the globe face mounting pressure. The urgency is clear: economic headwinds, shifting political priorities, and increased scrutiny from investors and communities risk pushing sustainability off the corporate agenda. Yet, failure to act will come at a cost — to revenue, reputation, talent retention, and long-term viability.

This is where HR has a central role to play. Just as HR was instrumental in driving the diversity and inclusion agenda over the past two decades, it must now bring the same resolve, resilience, and commercial acumen to environmental and sustainability goals.

Lessons from Diversity & Inclusion

The pathway to real progress on environmental targets bears striking similarities to what we have seen in gender diversity. Change is not achieved through good intentions alone. It requires:

• Education of leaders – building understanding of why the change matters and what role leaders play.
• Clear purpose and messaging – ensuring sustainability is tied to strategy, not a side project.
• Visible, measurable targets – metrics that can be tracked, reported, and owned at every level.
• Executive commitment – genuine buy-in from the top, with leaders modelling the behaviours expected of others.
• Incentives – linking part of executive pay and recognition directly to target achievement.
• Resourcing – dedicating time, money, and people to the sustainability agenda.
• Communications – consistently reinforcing the “why” and the progress being made.

Critically, success requires a burning platform. For D&I, it became clear that failure to improve representation impacted innovation, customer alignment, and employer brand. For environmental goals, the burning platform is financial. Not meeting targets exposes organisations to increased costs, loss of customers, diminished investor confidence, and challenges in attracting talent who want to work for a sustainable business.

HR as Strategy Driver

HR leaders are uniquely placed to embed sustainability into the organisational DNA. That means:

• Educating and upskilling leaders – ensuring executives can speak confidently on environmental goals, and are equipped to lead their teams in contributing to them.
• Building ESG into the skills matrix – treating sustainability capabilities as essential, not optional.
• Embedding into competencies – integrating ESG into executive and leadership competencies, so performance is measured not only on financial and operational outcomes, but also on sustainability impact.
• Linking pay and performance – ensuring achievement of environmental targets is tied directly to incentives, reinforcing that this is not a “nice to have” but a strategic imperative.
• Communications strategy – positioning environmental targets as part of the corporate story, both internally and externally.

Avoiding the Pitfalls

HR must also learn from the mistakes made in D&I. Efforts fail when:

• Targets are symbolic rather than measurable.
• Initiatives are underfunded and under-resourced.
• Leaders see goals as “HR’s problem” rather than a shared business responsibility.
• The organisation treats the agenda as compliance rather than cultural change.

In sustainability, these pitfalls could be even more damaging. Tokenistic initiatives will be exposed quickly, as regulators, investors, and customers demand accountability.

Building the Burning Platform

Ultimately, HR must help translate environmental goals into language that resonates with executives and boards. That means reframing climate action not as a compliance exercise, but as a business imperative:

• Revenue – customers increasingly choose sustainable providers.
• Talent – the next generation of employees expect employers to lead on climate.
• Reputation – failure to act invites scrutiny, activism, and loss of brand equity.
• Capital – investors are demanding ESG performance as a condition of funding.

By positioning sustainability in financial terms, HR can shift the narrative from obligation to opportunity.

The Road Ahead

With five years left until 2030, the window for action is closing. The organisations that will thrive are those that embed environmental goals into their workforce strategy, leadership capabilities, and culture. HR must lead this shift, applying the lessons of D&I to a new frontier: building sustainability into the DNA of business.

This requires courage, commercial acumen, and a willingness to hold leaders accountable. But it also requires HR to be the translator — turning global climate targets into organisational strategy, measurable action, and individual accountability.

Conclusion

The 2030 agenda is not just about the planet. It is about business survival and growth. HR has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to drive this transformation — to align people and purpose with profit, and to ensure organisations not only meet their environmental commitments, but also gain a competitive edge in the process.

The question for HR leaders is no longer should we lead this agenda? but how quickly can we embed it into everything we do?