PwC on Positioning Your Chief Sustainability Officer for Success
Originally published at strategy-business.com. PwC is a Hall of Fame company.
Companies have been appointing chief sustainability officers (CSOs) at a brisk pace recently, and it’s no wonder. With net-zero deadlines on the horizon, investors increasingly want to understand the impact companies have on our environment — and the related risks. Regulatory oversight is growing. Even consumers and employees are raising their expectations. To take the lead, companies appointed almost as many chief sustainability officers in 2020 and 2021 as they did in the previous eight years. Among 1,640 companies around the world we analyzed for the report by PwC and Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business, roughly eight in ten of them have now designated an executive with at least some responsibility for sustainability.
Empowered CSOs, with a broad remit and organizational stature, can wield fact-based insights across a deep network to influence both strategy and operations with respect to sustainability. They can make ESG risks and opportunities clear, addressing a macro-level concern that many senior managers, including most US board directors, admit to not understanding very well — even if they do increasingly perceive the connection to strategy. They also can accelerate the kind of transformation companies will need to keep pace with investor and consumer expectations, as well as with regulations and the competition.
