Five priorities to avoid burnout as a Chief Sustainability Officer

Faced with public scrutiny and a lack of internal support, Chief Sustainability Officers are increasingly vulnerable to burnout – but building a strong support system can help mitigate this risk.

There are many reasons why Chief Sustainability Officers may be more prone to burnout than other C-suite functions, from never-ending ESG reporting obligations and a lack of board support to the need to balance multiple (and often conflicting) stakeholder expectations – and being the ideal scapegoat when these are not met.

Talking about the pressures of this emerging role is the first step in identifying the problem. But beyond that, there are things CSOs can do to protect their mental health as they take on the monumental task of transforming their companies’ business models – and the economy.

Step 1: Define priorities (and stick to them)

Because Chief Sustainability Officers are often tasked with a myriad of different responsibilities, and because sustainability itself is such a vast domain, prioritising is absolutely crucial. 

This is what John Ostergren, Smiths Group’s former CSO, called finding a ‘North Star’ at a recent CSO Futures event on Scope 3 emissions: “When you take that first step, second step, third step, it just gets more and more complex. And having that clarity of vision of where you're going and why is something that can help clarify at critical moments: it's all about prioritisation,” he explained.

For Anastasia Kuskova, Co-Founder and CEO of AI-backed sustainability software Sirius and author of several viral Linkedin posts on CSO burnout, “you need to be extremely smart in prioritising and very efficient on your priorities, because you will just not be able to grow your team at the speed of growth of the requirements”.

That starts with conducting a thorough materiality assessment – something Anna Krotova lays out in detail in her book How to Be a Chief Sustainability Officer. Speaking to CSO Futures last month, she warned that materiality assessments require more than understanding the guidelines of standard-setting organisations like GRI, EFRAG or IFRS.

“There are considerations you should keep in mind, such as where you really have control over something versus where you only have influence. So if you have certain issues that pop up in the outcomes of your materiality assessment, and they still feel like too many, how do you pick your top three or five to action? You should really base that on, where you have the most control,” she added.

Step 2: Learn to speak the right language (money)

Another crucial step in building support for the Chief Sustainability Officer is to learn to speak a language boards and CEOs understand: the language of money. 

“One of the most important things is connecting sustainability as much as possible to money,” explains Kuskova. “It's not always connected. Unfortunately, it's a dream, thinking that there is always a business case, but trying to create this business case as much as possible is very important.”

She tells CSO Futures that understanding customer expectations is a key aspect of creating this business case, allowing companies to align their sustainability work with customer needs – along with their willingness to pay for sustainability. 

“Then you will be seen as a value-creating function within the company, instead of a cost centre,” she adds.

Beyond the financial premium customers might be willing to pay for a sustainable product, CSOs can also get better at demonstrating the positive financial impact of their work – and tools have emerged to support them.

For example, the NYU Stern Centre for Sustainable Business has developed a Return on Sustainability Investment methodology called ROSI, which can be used to look retroactively at the value created by sustainability strategies, track financial performance in real time, and assess the potential return on investment of future sustainability initiatives.

This can help CSOs translate their work into the language spoken by the Chief Financial Officer and the board and garner more top-level support than they currently get.

Step 3: Leverage (the right) technological tools

Technology can help alleviate the burden of sustainability reporting – freeing up the CSO’s time to focus on more impactful work. But selecting the right tools can be taxing, particularly as many people in this role “could have never gone through an end-to-end software procurement process”, according to Krotova.

It’s easy for a CSO to get lost among the hundreds of data management platform pitches they receive every month or to start using too many platforms – and that’s not even considering the potential risks from relying on these technologies.

For example, Humanscale Chief Sustainability Officer Jane Abernethy has warned other CSOs about the risks of trusting AI to deliver robust sustainability data. “One of the things that I would not want to see would be taking the [AI] analysis as though it is reality,” she said at the CSO Futures Scope 3 event. “They might have a model that says an average injection moulding plant in China has this amount of emissions, but maybe the actual plant we're working with has done things very differently, be it worse or better. I'd love to see [AI] freeing up time for people figuring out where we need to focus our efforts, but I wouldn't necessarily want to make claims to say an improvement has been made until I see that in reality, it's actually happened.”

Kuskova recommends being very selective to make sure CSOs are getting the most value out of technology.

Step 4: Find culture carriers

The last two steps in this guide to avoiding burnout as a CSO are really the most important ones, as they relate to community – a proven contributor to mental health.

One of the communities CSOs should build as soon as they enter the role is internal. Beyond other C-suite leaders with whom to build allyships, How to Be a Chief Sustainability Officer author Krotova notes that there are many people in any organisation that care about sustainability – she calls them “culture carriers”.

“When you come in, start having these conversations with your staff, to identify these people. It’s likely you would have already had some sort of sustainability group or community in the company, so have a meeting with that group and try to weed out those people. You can also do an employee survey with questions related to sustainability topics, look at what people are saying and reach out to these people,” she recommends.

“Don't discount the fact that there's a bigger organisation behind you, who is there to support the sustainability transformation of the business. So find people inside who are keen to support you, but also build relationships with investors who are more proactive on this topic: they will be your tailwinds to help you move forward at a really strategic level,” she adds.

Step 5: Build an external support network

Last but not least, it is crucial for Chief Sustainability Officers to find other like-minded professionals who understand the pressures they face. 

“You're not alone. Don't put that blame on you. Don't internalise this. Creating those groups of professionals who can actually share that problem can help prevent burnout,” notes Kuskova, adding that CSOs should reach out to human resources, management  and potentially a therapist as soon as they feel the first signs of burning out.

Building this external support network is so high on the list of CSO priorities that it was one of the main notes Krotova received from her expert panel of Chief Sustainability Officers on her book’s early draft. “Several of them came back saying, Anna, you forgot the most important thing, which is building a peer network. So there's a whole chapter that I wrote based on that feedback,” she says.

Her advice is to join sustainability groups and reach out to people in those groups as often as needed. As a sustainability director herself, Krotova says she often poses questions in some of the groups she’s a part of, and several people come back with advice based on their experience.

“It just helped me move forward much quicker than if I were to go to consultants, or try to find an answer on my own. We're all in the same boat, we all recognise that feeling of loneliness and that we need to move really quickly on our feet. So everyone is really happy to help,” she adds.