What Does a Sustainability Consultant Do?: Understanding the Role

Getting sustainability right has never been more important. From a legal standpoint, a customer perception standpoint, an employee satisfaction standpoint, and also, most importantly, from a maintain a hospitable planet standpoint! (That is why we’re all doing this after all isn’t it?). 

But as it has grown in importance, the sustainability landscape has also grown in complexity. New legislation and frameworks like CSRD, CSDDD, Green Claims and others seem to keep popping up and complicating everything. 

Thankfully, many organizations have discovered that by hiring a sustainability consultant, they can make sense of this complicated web of legislation, frameworks, and best practices. 

A sustainability consultant, put simply, is a professional who specializes in advising organizations on sustainability practices. By utilizing a specific range of knowledge and skills, a quality sustainability consultant can help you achieve your sustainability goals. 

But how exactly do they make this possible? What does a sustainability consultant do, specifically?

What Does a Sustainability Consultant Do?: Key Responsibilities 

One fun fact about sustainability consultants; they come in all shapes and sizes! Their specific responsibilities differ, depending on their main area of focus. 

Generally, a sustainability consultant helps to assess how an organization is performing in key areas of sustainability. From these assessments, they will then devise appropriate strategies the organization can use to improve its performance, and achieve its sustainability goals.  

But as sustainability is such a vast and complex space now, most sustainability consultants have chosen to specialize. If you start your search for a sustainability consultant today, you will find that several different types exist, each focusing on specific aspects of sustainability. 

So, what does a sustainability consultant do, you ask? Overall, they can help you with any sustainability issue you have. Below we detail exactly what each main type of sustainability consultant can bring to the table, so that you can choose the type you really need. 

Corporate Sustainability Consultants

Corporate sustainability consultants focus on your business strategy as a whole. From start to finish, they can holistically assess how you’re doing sustainability-wise, and guide you toward implementing an updated, sustainability-focused business strategy. To achieve this, they take on a number of important roles:

- Assessments: To understand a company’s current sustainability performance, corporate sustainability consultants are adept at conducting extensive assessments. As sustainability regulations become more strict and specific, double materiality assessments are becoming more commonplace.

- Ensuring compliance: Once the consultant has assessed everything, one of the first actions they’re likely to take is to ensure that the company complies with any relevant sustainability regulations.

- Strategy creation: Compliance is only the first step. The real aim of a corporate sustainability consultant is to help companies move beyond compliance, and become sustainability leaders. This involves taking all the valuable insights from the assessments they conducted, and using them to develop a tailored, actionable sustainability strategy. 

- Strategy implementation: Of course, a strategy is only useful when it’s carried out. So the consultant will also be there to assist with its implementation. This might include advice about how particular sustainability initiatives should work, or employee training so the company is better equipped to handle the implementation internally moving forward. 

- Stakeholder communication: For any sustainability strategy to succeed in the long term, it’s crucial that all stakeholders understand it, and commit to it. So facilitating transparent communication and reporting with stakeholders is another important role the corporate sustainability consultant must embrace. 

- Report preparation: Quality sustainability reporting has probably never been higher on the business agenda. Especially with legislation such as the CSRD coming into force recently. Meaning report preparation in accordance with applicable standards is becoming one of the corporate sustainability consultant’s most important responsibilities.

- Monitoring progress: Even after an annual report has been published, the sustainability journey continues. Companies should constantly be looking to make progress. Corporate sustainability consultants help to measure that progress by establishing and monitoring relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). 

- Ongoing guidance: To make continuous progress within the ever-changing sustainability landscape, ongoing guidance is essential. Corporate sustainability consultants play a key role here by staying updated on emerging sustainability trends and best practices. With this up-to-date knowledge, they can offer companies ongoing recommendations, allowing them to stay ahead of the sustainability curve. 

Environmental Consultants

When a company needs help measuring and managing its environmental impacts specifically, an environmental consultant can help in several important ways:

- Environmental impact audits: This kind of consultant might start by collecting and analyzing data related to the company’s environmental impacts. Areas such as waste management, energy consumption, emissions, and resource usage are likely to be assessed as part of an environmental impact audit.

- Ensuring compliance: Again, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations becomes the consultant’s most urgent task once the initial assessment is complete. As environmental consultants know all the latest environmental laws and regulations like the back of their hand, they can usually ensure that this happens quickly, and smoothly.

- Environmental management systems (EMS): To manage impacts moving forward, and promote continuous improvement in environmental performance, a comprehensive EMS is crucial. This is essentially a structured framework that helps an organization plan, implement, monitor, and improve its environmental impacts effectively. By helping to develop and implement an EMS, environmental consultants set companies up for long-term environmental success.

- Staff training: Even with an EMS in place, long-term success is unlikely if key staff members don’t know how to use it! So environmental consultants should also take the time to deliver relevant training programs to staff. 

- Documentation: Environmental permits, regulatory documents, all that serious stuff. This side of things can often get overwhelming for companies. Thankfully, environmental consultants are there to take care of it. They can practically prepare and submit all the relevant documentation with their eyes closed. 

Energy Efficiency Consultants

Energy efficiency consultants take on a similar role to environmental consultants, only their focus is solely to do with energy usage. Here’s how they help companies become as energy-efficient as possible:

- Energy audits: By conducting an energy audit, an energy efficiency consultant can asses a company’s energy usage, and identify inefficiencies.

- Ensuring compliance: They can also identify any immediate actions the company must take to ensure compliance with energy regulations and standards.

- Energy-saving strategies: As always, the consultant wants more than mere compliance. To optimize energy efficiency, they will use insights from the energy audit to develop and implement energy-saving strategies. Such strategies are likely to include the utilization of renewable energy, as well as other energy-efficient technologies and practices.

- Staff training: To keep all these new practices and technologies operational in the long term, energy efficiency consultants will provide whatever training is needed. This will enable the company to continually monitor and optimize its energy performance, even without direct input from the consultant.

- Documentation: You’ve probably noticed a glorious pattern happening here and it’s true; one of the best things about all kinds of sustainability consultants is that, they can take care of the documentation! Energy management reports, permits, whatever it is, they’ve got you covered. 

Social Responsibility Consultants 

To make sure they’re having a positive impact on people and communities, companies can hire a social responsibility consultant. These consultants work to ensure that companies are socially responsible through various essential actions:

- Social impact assessment: A social responsibility consultant will come in and conduct assessments to evaluate a company’s social impact and performance. It’s likely that this evaluation will include a specific audit of ethics in the company’s supply chain.

- Social compliance: As well as adhering to environmental regulations, companies must also comply with various social responsibility regulations and standards. Hiring a social responsibility consultant is one of the most effective ways a company can do this.

- Comprehensive social performance strategy: Social responsibility consultants also strive to help companies perform beyond expectations in the social sphere. A dedicated consultant will help to create and implement a comprehensive social strategy, aimed at integrating social performance throughout a company’s business activities. This is likely to include initiatives related to ethical business practices, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), partnerships with non-profits, and community relations.

- Communication: On top of implementing this comprehensive strategy, social responsibility consultants will also help to communicate it internally and externally. They will work to engage all relevant stakeholders, and will also put together any necessary reports.

- Staff training: To help guarantee a socially responsible future for all involved, appropriate training programs will also be delivered to employees. After that, the company has no excuse but to keep up all the good and essential work! 

Sustainability Communications Consultants

In many cases, companies find that they already have all the right sustainability strategies in place, and they’re doing all the right things, but they don’t know how to tell anybody about it. In this situation, a call to the best sustainability communications consultant in town is in order. They can help a company shout all its good deeds from the rooftops in multiple ways: 

- Tailored communication strategy: Every company’s situation is different. They all have a different story to tell, and a different audience to tell it to. Sustainability communications consultants are well aware of this, and so, will develop a tailored communication strategy for every company they work with. One that enables each company to tell its sustainability story in the most effective way possible.

- Compelling content creation: Any sustainability communications consultant worth their salt will also be able to implement that strategy by creating the necessary content. Whether it be blog articles, press releases, email newsletters; whatever the strategy involves. A quality consultant should be able to ensure consistent and transparent messaging across all content forms, creating a compelling overall story that highlights a company's sustainability efforts and achievements.

- Green Claims Directive: Recently introduced legislation such as the Green Claims Directive is aimed at regulating the kinds of sustainability claims companies can make. By hiring a sustainability communications consultant, companies can guarantee that the messages they create fall within these emerging regulations.

- Standout sustainability reports: As sustainability communications consultants specialize in communications, they are more likely to write a captivating sustainability report, compared to other consultants. Sustainability communications consultants should have all the necessary knowledge to do so, as well as more polished writing skills.

- Content sharing: There’s no point in creating lots of incredible content if you don’t share it in all the right places. Sustainability communications consultants can help with that too, by managing content across platforms both internally and externally.

- Monitoring success: Throughout the implementation of the communication strategy, consultants will also monitor and analyze its effectiveness. They will then make adjustments where necessary to ensure maximum success. 

- Communications training: It may not be practical for sustainability communications consultants to train employees to actually write content. But they can provide training on sustainability communication best practices. This can help companies to utilize existing content to its full potential moving forward. 

Regulatory Compliance Consultants 

All of the sustainability consultant types we’ve mentioned so far can help companies comply with regulations, within their particular focus area. But if a company solely requires assistance with compliance, across the board, they can choose to hire a regulatory compliance consultant. This kind of consultant will guarantee a company’s compliance with all relevant regulations by doing the following: 

- Compliance audits: First off, they are likely to conduct an extensive compliance audit to identify any potential risks, or areas where the company is falling short of compliance standards.

- Compliance programs: They will then further investigate any compliance breaches, and put steps in place to resolve them. This usually involves the development and implementation of tailored compliance programs and policies. These programs are designed to ensure that a company adheres to all relevant laws, regulations, and standards. Regulatory compliance consultants will also provide general guidance on regulatory requirements and best practices to further ensure compliance.

- Monitor changes: To guarantee ongoing compliance, consultants will also regularly monitor any regulatory changes and updates that take place. They will then make sure that the company incorporates these updates into relevant compliance programs.

- Staff training: To enhance a company’s internal ability to navigate the compliance landscape, regulatory compliance consultants also help to train staff on compliance-related issues and procedures.

- Documentation: Typically, the world of compliance tends to be very document-heavy. Regulatory compliance consultants help to significantly lighten the load by preparing and submit necessary regulatory filings and documentation. They should also help to maintain accurate records and documentation of compliance activities and reports.

- Act as liaison: When required, regulatory compliance consultants will liaise with regulatory bodies and agencies on a company’s behalf. This ensures that all the right questions are asked, and all the right things are said. 

The sustainability consultant types we have included above could be considered the main types that exist today. But as we all know very well, things don’t stay the same in sustainability for long.

Just as sustainability frameworks and regulations keep changing, so does the world of sustainability consulting.

Future Trends in Sustainability Consulting

When we say ‘future trends’ here what we probably mean is ‘very near future trends’ or ‘already starting to happen now trends’. For sustainability consultants, life moves fast!

Nevertheless, below are two key sustainability consulting trends you can expect to hear much more about very soon. 

More Specialized Consultants

The CSRD has already started to affect thousands of organizations within and outside the EU. To guarantee that they are complying with the new rules on every level, many organizations are choosing to hire specialized CSRD consultants. As the CSRD will gradually affect more and more companies moving forward, it’s likely that consultants specializing in the CSRD will become more common. This is also likely to be the case with consultants specializing in CSDDD, EU Taxonomy, the Green Claims Directive, and other emerging areas of sustainability.

AI and Data Analytics

Just as it’s affecting practically every field and industry we have, artificial intelligence is making its mark on sustainability consulting. Increasingly, consultants are learning how to utilize AI and big data analytics. Used in the right way, these technologies can enhance a consultant’s ability to analyze large datasets, identify patterns, and provide more accurate insights. This could offer a strong example of these technologies being used for good; helping organizations around the world to optimize their sustainability performance efficiently.

Clearly, it seems that the future of sustainability consulting will be an active and exciting one. If you feel drawn to hiring any kind of sustainability consultant in the future, or even here in the present, you’re already in the right place. 

Hire a Sustainability Consultant Through Dazzle  

No matter what kind of sustainability consultant you’re interested in hiring, Dazzle has got you covered.

Dazzle is a platform that offers the world’s best sustainability freelancers on-demand. For each type of sustainability consultant mentioned in this article, we have multiple freelance consultants for you to choose from. 

Also, every consultant on our platform comes with a guaranteed track record, as we carefully pre-screen all of our freelance sustainability and ESG experts. It’s very flexible too; you can choose to work with our freelancers on a project-based, on-demand, or interim basis.

If you feel you could really benefit from working with a sustainability consultant, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. 

We can set you up with a perfect match in no time. 

(Feel free to check out our complete sustainability consultant guide to find out everything you need to know!)