The role of the corporate sustainability manager is changing

For a long time, the role of many managers responsible for sustainability policies did not yet have a clear definition. This, however, is rapidly changing with the coming of CSRD, observes Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute for Sustainability Development Christina Bidmon. “Today’s sustainability manager has to be a change agent,” she states.

Since the European Green Deal in 2019, corporate sustainability is serious. The responsible manager works at the core of the company and deals with integrating environment, society and good governance into the strategy. “For a long time, the role was not clearly defined. In the past, these companies often focused on feel-good sustainability issues. Those days are over.”

The CSRD affects many companies. Under the current non-financial reporting directive, approximately 12,000 European companies have to report. With the initiation of the CSRD , there will be 50,000. This puts enormous pressure on the midsize companies in particular, says Christina Bidmon. “How are they going to complete all the requirements within the time frame? It takes a lot of resources to collect all the data. Those resources are often not available. So I can imagine that many midsize companies are feeling overwhelmed.”

To be able to meet the requirements, different positions within a company are going to have to work together: finance, operations, supply chain, human resources, etc. Bidmon: “This is a big challenge, especially for the managers who have to drive this. The role of the CSR manager is really changing. This person has to know how to turn sustainability into hard numbers, manage colleagues and implement measures. It is also about making change happen: about convincing and motivating and managing conflicts and resistance to change. This is not a comfortable role. It is easy to get employees behind the overall goal of sustainability. But when the question arises: I need one of your employees full-time to collect this data and I want you to change certain procedures you have been following for the past 20 years, it becomes different. That means the CSR manager anno 2025 will need a very different set of competences.”

In their sustainability policy, a company will have to make trade-offs between economic, social and environmental components of sustainability, for example in the supply chain. Choices have to be made about, for example, how you use materials and treat them as waste, how you deal with suppliers and how you source products. Bidmon: “We need CSR managers who can inform boards of directors about these trade-offs so that decisions can be made. A supply chain that is best for the environment is not necessarily best for the social side of sustainability. Imposing certain standards may mean laying off or retraining people. The environmental and social sides are sometimes at odds. It is always easy to think of the economic side and see sustainability as the antithesis. But I think you have to consider trade-offs within the economic, environmental and social triangle. You then position yourself as a company.”

“I have worked in multiple European countries and I think that in terms of sustainability and research into it, the Netherlands is the place to be. Companies and society are very attuned to implementing sustainability. Dutch universities are also at the forefront of researching sustainability transitions, and how to shift entire societal systems to greater sustainability. We can be quite proud of that.”