Max Pichon | business@ben-global.com
When it comes to corporate sustainability, how much leaders get paid for focusing on green within their firms is just the tip of the iceberg. GreenBiz.com has published its second annual Salary Survey results researched and written by John Davies, the VP of Intelligence at GreenBiz.com and the leader of the GreenBiz Executive Network.
Davies asked 536 members of the GreenBiz Intelligence Panel, primarily at billion-dollar firms, not just how much they make, but how they work.
A key finding in thsurvey shows that, helping senior management develop a sustainability
strategy that syncs with their company's overall strategy is the
primary task for all sustainability executives. Not surprisingly in
the current economy, "energy efficiency and facilities management" jumped into
the top three tasks for those at the VP level. The survey also asked if companies have a full-time dedicated corporate energy
manager and 48% of large companies have this role at their
company.
Amongst the key findings are:
- 86% of large companies now have at least one full-time person spending all of their time on sustainability, compared to 81% last year; nearly 75% of respondents have a VP or Director-level executive working full-time on sustainability.
- Budgets are growing, if slowly: The number of companies spending up to $10 million on sustainability grew by 6% over last year, up to 22%.
- Staff is growing, too: Companies with green teams of six to 10 people also grew 6% in the last year, while green teams of up to 20 people in size grew just 1, to 9. The biggest group of companies – 48% - have between one and five people on their green teams.
- Management takes sustainability more seriously: 56% of respondents said that sustainability is "on the agenda permanently, but not core" to operations, while another 29% called it "a permanent fixture and core strategic consideration."
The results show that VP-level sustainability execs make an average of US$218,409 annually; Director-level leaders earn $161,510; and Manager-level leaders make $105,345 annually.
The gender breakdowns show that men dominate at the highest levels of sustainability inside companies: More than two-thirds of the VP roles and nearly three-fifths of the director roles in large corporations were men. And there's a pay gap in addition to the gender gap: A female VP makes 11% less than a male VP, on average, and a female director makes 20% less than her male counterpart on average.
The survey also found a slight waning of optimism amongst sustainability leaders, just 84% of VP-level respondents were either optimistic or very optimistic -- down from 90% last year -- and 12% of managers were pessimistic or very pessimistic this year -- up from just 1% last year.
For more insight into the results, read Davies' analysis of the findings: 5 Myths About Sustainability Executives.
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