Sustainability and Your Skills, Values, and Careers
What is sustainability?
Sustainability is "the quality of being able to continue over a period of time".
That's what the word means, and it's a very broad definition. When you hear the term now, what do you think? Do you think of sustaining a way of life into the future? Or do you think of balancing our needs now to protect that future?
There are a lot of assumptions about what sustainability means and how ideas about it can be used; many of these will be presented to you as the values or goals of organisations you might work for in your own future.
There are two things that cut through all of the noise. First, we all depend on human society for our ways of life and our futures. Second, the whole of human society ultimately depends on the global environment remaining in a liveable condition for us. The sustainability of our societies, cultures, economies, and everything else we know will depend on what we can do to sustain that global environment into the future.
You're probably aware of all this to some degree, and it might even affect your values, your principles, and your understanding of what kind of future you want for yourself. It might affect your career choices, but it could also lead to doubts about how to shape that career so that your working relationships meet with those values and principles, and with the needs of environment and society on which the future depends.
More tools to develop your self awareness, motivations, skills and goals
Sustainability Careers Week
3 - 7 March 2025
Insightful discussions, interactive workshops and networking sessions to explore careers in sustainability.
Workshop: What should we expect from employers?
Monday 3 March | 10am-11.30am | Online
Practical tips for evaluating and challenging employers on their sustainability.
Sustainability Sector Pages
Explore our sector page - but remember a career related to Sustainability can cut across many sectors.
Core Skills and Sustainability
In Warwick's Core Skills Framework, we use Sustainability as a way of looking at the other Core Skills. So, we might use our Self Awareness and Ethical Values to understand better what our personal worldview and principles are in relation to others, including organisations like employers. We might use our Critical Thinking and Organisational Awareness to examine those employers, looking at their stated values and goals with regard to environment and society, and comparing their actions and behaviour (and their reputations) to work out whether they meet our expectations. We also use Sustainability as a Core Skill to think about the future, examine systems and structures, and consider the balance of human needs and the wider environment, critically and creatively.
Develop your skills: online Moodle courses
If you want to know more about the Core Skills mentioned above, including techniques for practising them, check out these Moodle courses (current students only):
- Self Awareness– includes an exercise on exploring your Personal Worldview
- Critical Thinking– includes tools for effective critical Questioning
- Organisational Awareness– guidance on researching an organisation
All of these courses count towards the Warwick Award too.
Warwick Award
Sustainability is one of the 12 core skills that make up the Warwick Award - and it can also be used as a lens for reinterpreting any other skill on our framework. The Warwick Award recognises and showcases all the skills you’re building through all your activities here.
Engaging with Employers about Sustainability Issues
When you’re engaging with employers you might consider working for or with one day, if you want to explore these ideas and issues there are loads of critical questions you could ask. Remember, you’re their future, and they need you; you have a right and a responsibility to challenge them over their values and their records. Here are some suggestions:
- What do they say they’re doing about the future of the environment and human society?
- What have they actually done to meet these goals?
- Do they have a future in a sustainable world? What might it look like?
- What resources do they use, and do they replace those resources?
- What is the wider impact of their existence, their practices, and their outcomes?
- Are they transparent about energy use, materials, waste, community relationships, political relationships, or equalities within their organisation and across those wider relationships?
Navigating Sustainable Careers Workshop: What should we expect from employers?
Monday 3 March | 10am-11.30am | Online
Come to our Careers and Skills workshop –Navigating Sustainable Careers: What Should We Expect From Employers?– during careers week to explore these ideas further and get some more practical tips for evaluating and challenging employers on their plans and records for the sustainability of our world.
If you attend this session and at least one more event during Sustainability Careers Week, then complete a reflection on your Warwick Award profile, you will be entitled to 1 Core Skills Point for every two sessions you have attended during the week.
Sustainability Careers Stories
Our library of Careers Stories, written by alumni and current students, can help provide you with career inspiration and confidence, as well as lots of hints, tips and advice on gaining your first graduate role.