Do I Need a Sustainability Team or Can I Outsource It?

Your business has sustainability work that needs doing. Carbon calculations, customer questionnaires, policy development, tender responses, supplier engagement. The question is whether you hire someone to do it internally or bring in outside help.

The answer is not as simple as comparing a salary to a consultancy fee. It depends on volume, timing, and how well you understand the role.

When outsourcing makes sense

Outsourcing is the better option when the work is new and you do not yet know the full scope. Most businesses that are new to sustainability do not have a clear picture of how much work is involved, what skills are needed, or how the role will evolve over time. Hiring a full-time person based on guesswork is expensive and often leads to a poor match.

It also makes sense when the work is specialist and intermittent. EcoVadis preparation is a project that takes 8-12 weeks. A carbon baseline is a focused piece of work. Tender responses come in bursts. None of these require a full-time person if they happen a few times a year rather than every week.

And it makes sense when you need senior expertise but cannot justify a senior hire. A Head of Sustainability is a significant salary commitment. If you need that level of expertise for 10 hours a month rather than 40 hours a week, outsourcing is dramatically more cost-effective.

Most of our clients start with the Virtual Impact Team for exactly these reasons. We do the work for three to six months while the business learns what the real workload looks like. That gives them data to make a hiring decision properly rather than guessing.

When hiring makes sense

A full-time hire becomes the right option when the volume of sustainability work is constant rather than project-based. This is typically the case when you have multiple customers requiring regular reporting and data submissions, your procurement team needs daily support on sustainability criteria in tenders, you are bidding frequently for contracts where sustainability carries 10% or more of the evaluation, or the volume of supplier engagement work requires someone dedicated to managing it.

The tipping point is usually economic. The Virtual Impact Team model is cost-effective up to a certain volume of hours each month. Beyond that, a full-time hire becomes more economical. If you are consistently using high volumes of consultancy hours every month, it is time to hire.

The hybrid approach

In practice, many businesses end up with both, and this is often the most effective model. A mid-level hire (Sustainability Coordinator or ESG Analyst) handles the day-to-day: data collection, questionnaire responses, reporting, stakeholder management. External consultancy (like our VIT) handles the specialist work: carbon strategy, EcoVadis preparation, complex tender responses, supply chain programme design.

This keeps salary costs reasonable while still accessing senior expertise when it is needed. The internal person learns from working alongside the consultancy, building capability over time.

How Ltt Recruitment fits in

When a client reaches the point where a full-time hire makes sense, Ltt Recruitment places the right person. Because we have been doing the sustainability work inside the business through VIT, we understand exactly what the role involves. We know what the day-to-day workload looks like, what skills are needed, and what kind of person will succeed in the specific environment.

That means better job specifications, better candidate matching, and better outcomes than hiring blind. The new person starts with systems and processes already in place (because we built them during the VIT engagement), which means they are productive faster.

This progression from outsourced support to permanent hire is the model we designed the business around. Consultancy first, recruitment when ready. It works because the hiring decision is based on experience, not assumptions.