Amy Bloom CRWM MCIWM, Technical Plant Engineer at SUEZ, explains why the sector must focus on communication, technical expertise, and collaboration to attract talent in 2026.
In 1927, philosopher Elbert Hubbard said, ‘nothing is permanent but change’, and almost 100 years later, these words are still as relevant today as ever.
We are living during a time of great transition, and as a sector, we are not immune to the opportunities and challenges this presents.
Twenty years ago, the term ‘waste management’ looked very different to how it looks today, and I imagine we will be saying the same in another twenty. What will we be calling it – the circular economy sector?
It is undeniable that the services we provide cannot be compromised during this period. However, providing these to the public and private sectors experiencing increasing financial pressures whilst meeting our own company targets for growth is complex.
New legislation, volatility in the UK and global political landscapes and the changing focus on environmental protection also introduce further challenges.
There is a lot to do then, but who will be doing it? Are your team’s current skillsets and staffing levels sufficient to maintain servicing levels whilst supporting company growth and projects to meet future needs?
Do you have an established talent pipeline and hiring budget to ensure your team can sustain output for the next three to five years? Can you list the top three skills that will be required in *insert current job title*, too?
That is a lot of questions, and I suspect many of the answers are unknowns. Without a clear map, it is difficult to understand what skills will be required, as well as when and where.
To ensure a competitive edge in the longer term, companies must allow staff space and time to undertake directed and valuable training, seeing it as job and company critical, rather than a ‘nice to have’.
This is understandably challenging and represents a risk, especially for SMEs, due to the upfront costs.
However, the intrinsic value of training to enable personal development and improve job satisfaction whilst reducing staff turnover in the longer term will pay for itself. To offset this risk, supporting SMEs to upskill their staff could be helpful to achieve broader sector growth.
Now I hear you ask, what skills do we need, and how many? Of course, we cannot know for certain what the future will look like (if we did, I would have won the lottery by now), but I see three interlinked areas to focus on.
The first is communication; not only how, but also with whom and where.
Communication
The most common response I have heard for why someone chose to work in resource management is ‘they fell into it’, but now that they are here, they find it interesting and are unlikely to leave.
This is promising for retention, but have we become too comfortable with what we have always done? Are we only engaging with the people we have shared careers with, the events we have always presented at, and the platforms we are comfortable on?
This year at RWM, it was great to have recent graduates approach the CIWM and Early Careers Team and ask for career advice.
However, how many students or recent graduates did not attend because they were not aware? Could other industry conferences and events include career and skills development advice, or diversify their advertising?
I am sure your LinkedIn feeds are normally filled to the brim with posts for certain events, but how about diverting 10% of these to a job board website? What difference could that make?
In addition, we need to communicate and show up in the places where the people we want to target are looking for opportunities. This means learning about and appearing on different social media platforms and using language that the public can engage with. This will go a long way in challenging perceptions of what we do.
Technical skills
The second area is technical skills; like many other sectors, we are struggling to recruit the right people into these roles.
Whether it is electrical engineers who install and maintain the solar farms that are transforming closed landfills, ecologists who implement and enhance biodiversity initiatives, or data security engineers who protect valuable data, the list of roles available in our sector may surprise you.
I believe skills classed as technical are lost behind well-meaning misconceptions of ‘I was never good at maths at school’ or ‘I don’t want to work with cars’.
However, sharing and supporting the awareness of alternative narratives earlier in the educational system can challenge ideas of what a role does and what someone who does it looks like.
These conversations could be powerful for those who are already in work and may be considering a career change. We can go a step further here and provide safe and hands-on exposure to what these roles entail, helping individuals feel more confident in what they can achieve.
With effective trainers and supportive work environments, we can start to change the narrative on what people believe they are capable of, as often these roles are typically well paid, offering great job security and flexibility.
Collaboration
The final skill set that I believe to be critical is that of collaboration. At its heart, a soft skill that will support impactful integration with other sectors operating at different parts of the product lifecycle.
Effective collaboration can overcome the siloed approach to problem-solving and will be at the epicentre of developing a circular economy.
Sharing our knowledge of logistics, financial modelling and collection mechanisms to ensure products developed are put onto a market that can take them back at the end of life is a must.
Inevitably, businesses must be profitable to survive, but in the long term to thrive, collaboration will be critical to unlock ‘a multi-trillion-dollar economic opportunity’ (Financing the Circular Economy, Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2020) that will become available in a circular economy.
Heading
These skills are not sector-specific, and through working with other areas, we can overcome shared barriers to growth together.
What we have achieved up to now cannot be overstated; as a sector, we have transformed and been central to the decarbonisation of other sectors also.
It is important that the experiences and skills of the teams that have enabled this progress must not be lost or alienated, either. Instead, we must pivot and bring them along with us to put the sector in the strongest position possible as the evolution towards circularity accelerates.
Ultimately, though, we can keep talking about skills for the future, but without real, inclusive action now, we will still be in this situation in another five years, and our global competitiveness and ability to manage our own waste will be undermined.
There are exciting opportunities ahead, and it would be great to have as many people as possible along for the ride.