Transferable skills aren’t transferable: Why policy gets “soft skills” wrong

Skills underpin everything. They define what we can do, how we work, and how much we can achieve. Collectively, they guide the economy, they shape our systems, and they expand the horizons of our future.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that so much time is spent thinking about skills in policy conversations. For the environment in particular, “green skills” and “green jobs” are both major attention-grabbing topics, factoring into all kinds of discussions. 

More often than not, the specifics are missing. Getting skills out to people is a massive delivery challenge, particularly in the context that most of the people who need new or updated skills for the transition to a sustainable society won’t pass through formal education between now and 2030. Most are in the workforce already, with precious little time for development.

It’s in that context that we get so-called ‘soft’ or ‘transferable’ skills wrong: policy assumes that many of the most important competencies will arise without intervention.

For IES members only, this month’s Essential Environment is taking a special look at the policy challenges around delivering skills for the sustainability transition, and what it means for environmental professionals.

Joseph Lewis is Head of Policy at the Institution of Environmental Sciences, working to promote the use of the environmental sciences in decision making. Joseph leads the delivery of the IES Policy Programme, standing up for the voice of science, scientists, and the natural world in policy.

Joseph has more than ten years of experience in public policy, including in Parliament and the charity sector. He was recognised on the ENDS Power List 2026 as "a prominent advocate for ensuring environmental science is reflected in public policy".

Why do skills matter to the environment?

Before facing the challenges, we need to understand the problem we are trying to solve.

Policy is fundamentally about trying to solve problems in the world. People see something that needs to change, and policy is put in place to make that change happen. Take something like flooding, where the problem is obvious, but its causes are complex.

If you want to understand why flooding happens, you would want to think about the weather, because more or less rain will affect the risk of flooding. You would also want to look at watercourses, because what happens downstream is affected by the shape and state of the water upstream. And you would also be interested in the soil, because if soil is healthy, it can store water before flooding happens, while if it is compacted or sealed, it will hold less water, which means more water on the surface and a higher risk of flooding.

Then you might need to consider that the weather also affects the health of the soil; as soil degrades and erodes it can affect the state of watercourses; and if flooding happens once, it can also lead to knock-on effects for both watercourses and soil. All this means that we are dealing with a complex system.

All of these factors are also shaped by megatrends like climate change, which has consequences for all our natural systems and the ways that they interact. In turn, climate change is caused and shaped by our social systems: our economy, society, and politics. Each has direct implications for the risk of flooding, even if the causes are mediated through all kinds of complexity along the way.

If we want to make a change in that complex system, the change has to be transformative. We need transformative change so that we can take the parts of the system that make a big difference on outcomes and turn them towards the ones we want.

That brings us back to skills. Skills define our economy, because they determine the jobs we can do. They shape how our society makes choices, because you cannot pick an option you don’t know exists. They also drive political decisions for the same reasons. Giving people new skills and new ways to understand the world, like Carbon Literacy and systems thinking, has a clear and profound effect on environmental outcomes and the things that matter to people, including the risk of flooding.

Transferable skills aren’t transferable

If you start a conversation about skills, you will quickly reach the topic of ‘soft skills’ or ‘transferable skills’. Both ideas are referring to similar things, but both create challenges when we put them in the policy space.

The idea behind transferable skills is that there are certain skills which you need across different industries, jobs, and careers. You can learn them in one role and apply them elsewhere. That idea isn’t necessarily wrong, but you can’t transfer the same skills without acknowledging the change in context.

That should be intuitive: if we think about a typical job interview, we ask candidates about these skills all the time, but if they can’t apply the existing skill to the context of the new job, they won’t get far. The economy recognises that there is an extra step here, but often policy does not. We take so-called transferable skills for granted, without considering the support needed to help workers apply their existing skills in new contexts.

There are two areas where this is really important for policy. The first is about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. Lots of the skills we are talking about help scientists from one field work in a different one, though the context is often subtly different, so understanding those differences is a core competency of taking an interdisciplinary approach.

The second challenge is even more important, because it is essential for a just transition. If we expect workers to move from one industry to another, we have a responsibility to ensure they are equipped for that change. When it comes to technical skills, there’s already strong recognition in policy that we need to provide the new skills, but many transferable skills are taken for granted: it is assumed that they will be transferable.

Soft skills aren’t soft

Thinking about technical skills, there is another misconception around these types of skills, which is that they are ‘soft’. The idea of soft skills is that they are interpersonal and behavioural, so they require less formal instruction and technical understanding.

Despite that characterisation, communication is an industry with incredible depth of technique, precision, and refinement, so it should be intuitive that lots of these skills actually have a high level of depth to them. The idea that these skills are softer directly leads to more casual approaches to helping people to learn them.

The problem for policy is simple, which is that it gets much harder to deliver the necessary skills if they are only taught at a surface level. Beyond communication, this is even more stark, because problem solving, leadership, innovation, and collaboration are all complicated challenges. 

They benefit from deeper learning and understanding, which is often lost when they are seen as ‘soft skills’ that anyone can pick up quickly. 

A better perspective: Enabling skills

These linguistic challenges have real consequences on the workforce, the economy, and therefore on our social and natural systems. If we can’t find a better way for policy decisions to deliver skills effectively, we may fail to meet our commitments for a just and sustainable society.

In our vision for the future of environmental science, the IES set out a different approach to thinking about these skills. We call them ‘enabling skills’, because they are the skills that enable the effective translation of environmental science into action. 

There’s a multiplier effect with these skills: they enable other skills to be used more effectively, and they enable one person to get more value out of the skills of others. When people have a deeper understanding of these skills and are able to apply them in context, they can shape the economy and also make change in their lives and their communities.

What does it means for professionals and CPD?

The language here is abstract, but the lessons for policy are what matters. When we want to drive change in skills policy, we need to take skills seriously. Even if we think they are ‘soft’, we need plans to deliver them in depth. Even if we think they are ‘transferable', we need to support workers who move to a new context.

What does it mean for environmental professionals? We need to think about our skills, and the skills of our team, as tools for the transition to sustainability. We don’t want blunt tools, which is why Continuous Professional Development is so crucial. Contexts change constantly, so we should prepare for that change and build in professional resilience.

For the sector as a whole, we need a better and more honest conversation about skills and what we want from policy. Action should be urgent, but it also needs to be deep, well-informed, and designed to tackle these delivery challenges from the start.

Get involved: if you want to support the work of the IES to stand up for science and nature, become an affiliate, or if you’re an environmental professional, join the IES.

• Read more about enabling skills and the future of environmental science in 'Transforming the Planet: Our vision for the future of environmental science'
• Join our Environmental Policy Implementation Community to support the delivery of effective policy and find out more about CEDHE, our education community
• Catch up with our recommendations for environmental education policy in chapter 11 of 'Our Shared Mission for Sustainable Wellbeing'
• Sign up for our on-demand training course on ‘Understanding environmental policy’ to take your first steps towards engaging with the complex policy landscape
• Learn more about recent policy developments in our briefings on clean air, water policy and land and nature policy
• Find out more by reading the latest articles from Essential Environment, including insights on the Santa Marta Climate Conference and our analysis on the Land Use Framework for England

If you want to learn more about environmental policy or the training we offer for members, please contact Joseph Lewis, Head of Policy (joseph@the-ies.org).

Header image credit: © Syda Productions | Adobe Stock