Green jobs need ready people, not just more people
Mat Ilic ·
In 2023, I spent a lot of time arguing that the UK did not have the green workforce it needed. In Management Today, I put it bluntly: “Our green workforce does not exist - nor is it being trained.”
I still believe the UK needs more people in green jobs. But what we have learned since has changed how I think about the problem.
What I argued then
Three ideas ran through that coverage.
- Recruit more widely. In Construction News, I argued that firms filling green roles should look beyond the usual pool, to existing tradespeople, young people and groups the sector rarely reaches.
- Share the responsibility. Government targets would not train the workforce on their own. Business had to take on the skills crisis together.
- Back new starters. In the New Statesman, I called for employers to be able to use apprenticeship levy funds to support new starters in shortage trades.
What we learned next
We acted on those ideas. We trained more than 500 people in accredited energy efficiency qualifications, and helped dozens of them into green roles. Then employers told us something we had not expected: “They’re trained, but they’re not ready.”
New starters held the right qualifications, but many lacked the practical experience for live, regulated retrofit work. Experienced teams were struggling to keep up as standards tightened. I wrote about what that gap costs the sector in Fixing the Competency Gap.
More people is only half the answer
A bigger workforce that is not ready for the work brings rework, delays and residents who lose trust in the programme. Every new starter and every experienced worker needs to be competent in the role they actually do, and to stay that way as standards change.
That is the gap Greenworkx now works on: helping organisations see where their teams’ skills fall short, build practical capability and evidence the gains.
Ready, not only trained
The argument I made in 2023 still stands: the energy transition will be delivered by people. What has changed is how I measure success. It is not how many people we train, but how many are ready for the work in front of them.
