Sustainability consultants are experts companies can hire when they need help achieving their sustainability goals. And who wouldn’t need a little help with that lately?
Incorporating sustainability has never been an easy feat. But in recent years, new regulations like the CSRD, CSDDD, Green Claims Directive and others have made it even more challenging.
Thankfully, sustainability consultants today tend to specialize in particularly challenging aspects of sustainability. If a company needs help with the CSRD specifically for example, they can hire a CSRD consultant to assist with it. And the same goes for the CSDDD, Green Claims Directive, sustainability reporting; any particular area that you need help with really.
This trend towards specialization — and the practice of hiring consultants to help with specific challenges — has made freelance sustainability consultants particularly popular.
Freelance sustainability consultants are experts who work independently, with no connection to a consulting firm. Giving sustainability managers the opportunity to seamlessly hire specialized staff on-demand throughout the year, in line with the seasonalities that sustainability brings.
Basically, freelance sustainability consultants can do everything a consultancy-based consultant can do, but with several added advantages.
One thing about consulting firms is, they usually have very high overhead costs. So if you hire a consultancy-based sustainability consultant, prepare to pay a significant fee.
If you’re looking to get maximum value for your budget, choosing the freelance option is probably your best bet. Freelance sustainability consultants typically have much lower overhead costs, and more flexible pricing structures.
Meaning you can often find one who’s a perfect fit for helping you achieve your goals, and also a perfect fit financially.
Finding the perfect fit requires a certain level of flexibility, and freelance consultants have flexibility in abundance! This is because they’re not restricted by the internal processes and layers of approval common within consultancy firms.
Freelancers have full control over their schedules and workloads. So if you’re in the middle of a project and you discover that the project scope suddenly has to change, or the proposed timeline is insufficient, a freelancer will easily accommodate these evolving needs.
Bypassing this consultancy bureaucracy allows you to negotiate directly with a freelancer, making it possible to onboard them much faster.
So if you need solutions to sustainability-related problems, and you need them yesterday, you should look to hire a freelancer. (To confirm, freelancers are not time travelers. But if you start your search today, you can expect to have a quality freelancer in place within the week!).
Freelance sustainability consultants usually work with fewer clients at a time compared to traditional consultants. They also have the freedom to focus where they want and need to focus. This allows freelancers to provide more personal, tailored attention to their clients.
Hire a quality freelance consultant, and they should take the time to customize their services to your exact needs throughout the collaboration.
Collaboration is a very important word here too. Because generally, when you hire a freelance consultant they will work with you and your team. While a consultancy will typically do the work for you.
So by choosing a freelancer, you can ensure that their knowledge is transferred within your organization, leading to internal capacity building.
Whereas traditional sustainability consultants must operate within the constraints of their firm’s standard practices, freelancers are free to explore any idea or solution they feel could help with a client’s specific situation.
This independence allows for a more creative, innovative, ‘outside the box’ approach to problem-solving.
With Dazzle, you can add that kind of innovative sustainability thinking to your team without creating any stress at all.
The Dazzle platform allows you to find and hire a well-suited freelance sustainability consultant quickly, and easily.
The platform offers access to the world’s best sustainability freelancers on-demand. We have high-quality sustainability and ESG experts available, covering all the important aspects of sustainability.
Whether it’s the CSRD, Green Claims Directive, SBTi, Life Cycle Assessments, whatever it is, we’ve got you covered.
As we carefully pre-screen all of our freelancers, Dazzle consultants also come with a guaranteed track record and reputation. And to make the process as flexible as possible, you can work with our freelancers on a project-based, on-demand, or interim basis.
So if the complex world of sustainability has you feeling overwhelmed, and you’d like some assistance with any aspect of it, please feel free to contact us.
We can find you several freelance sustainability consultants perfectly suited to your unique challenges within hours.
(Feel free to check out our complete sustainability consultant guide to find out everything you need to know!)