The Conference Board’s recent survey of 104 Chief Sustainability Officers and other sustainability executives employed with US companies (public 58% | private 34%) across sizes and industries (hereinafter, “CSOs”), 87% of which have a CSO or equivalent, revealed the following key takeaways regarding the role and responsibilities.
Organizational reporting & structure—Nearly half of CSOs report to a C-Suite executive other than the CEO. One-third report to the CEO. CSOs who don’t report to the CEO or who have a dual role are most commonly also part of the Legal or Strategy functions (18% and 15%, respectively).
Internal collaboration
CSOs generally rate their collaboration with other functions in the organization as good or excellent. They meet with various senior leadership groups regularly—most commonly, quarterly or bimonthly, although the frequency varies by group, as shown here:
Responsibilities
From a big picture standpoint, CSOs most commonly play a primary role on corporate Environmental issues (76%) and a supporting role in the Social and Governance areas (54% and 57%, respectively).
More specifically, while CSO’s responsibilities don’t tend to encompass integrating sustainability into the company’s compensation programs or managing investor relationships, they do encompass numerous other sustainability-related matters, as noted below:
CSO spend most of their time on developing and executing strategies (72%), managing their team and internal relationships (67%), regulatory compliance (45%), and interacting with investors and other stakeholders (41%), with "organizing to execute their sustainability strategy" being identified as the most significant challenge.
The survey and accompanying report also address sustainability staffing, centralization/decentralization of the function and related focal areas, governance/steering committees, and the corporate sustainability programs.