The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Occupation · SOC 11-1011.03 · Job Zone 5

AI exposure: Chief Sustainability Officers

Communicate and coordinate with management, shareholders, customers, and employees to address sustainability issues. Enact or oversee a corporate sustainability strategy.

Reading this score

computed

45.8% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts Chief Sustainability Officers at the 83th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 2.9 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.

What holds the line here is context. Across this occupation's 18 tasks it averages 2.11 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work depends on knowledge the model cannot hold. Much of this job runs on things that were never written down: what this particular organisation does, what happened last week, what the person across the table actually meant. That context is the barrier, and it erodes as systems are given more access.

The most exposed thing this job does is Create and maintain sustainability program documents, at 73.3%. The least is Supervise employees or volunteers working on sustainability projects, at 11.7%. A gap of 61.7% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.

Within management occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 56 roles in the group is 41.2%, and only 5 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.

What would move this score. Of 18 tasks, 14 are currently banded exposed, 3 assisted and 1 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take cheaper ways to verify output, since the cost of checking is currently doing more to hold this work in place than the cost of producing it. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.

Task by task

18 tasks, O*NET 31.0
TaskExposedAssistedUntouchedImportanceBand
Create and maintain sustainability program documents, such as schedules and budgets.73.3%26.7%0.0%3.85exposed
Write project proposals, grant applications, or other documents to pursue funding for environmental initiatives.73.3%26.7%0.0%3.33exposed
Develop sustainability reports, presentations, or proposals for supplier, employee, academia, media, government, public interest, or other groups.61.3%26.2%12.5%4.04exposed
Write and distribute financial or environmental impact reports.60.0%40.0%0.0%3.33exposed
Evaluate and approve proposals for sustainability projects, considering factors such as cost effectiveness, technical feasibility, and integration with other initiatives.58.3%29.2%12.5%3.52exposed
Formulate or implement sustainability campaign or marketing strategies.55.0%20.0%25.0%3.74exposed
Develop methodologies to assess the viability or success of sustainability initiatives.55.0%20.0%25.0%3.52exposed
Identify and evaluate pilot projects or programs to enhance the sustainability research agenda.50.0%25.0%25.0%3.88exposed
Develop, or oversee the development of, marketing or outreach media for sustainability projects or events.47.5%27.5%25.0%3.93exposed
Conduct risk assessments related to sustainability and the environment.47.5%27.5%25.0%3.13exposed
Monitor and evaluate effectiveness of sustainability programs.45.0%30.0%25.0%4.38exposed
Research environmental sustainability issues, concerns, or stakeholder interests.40.0%35.0%25.0%3.74exposed
Develop, or oversee the development of, sustainability evaluation or monitoring systems.39.6%22.9%37.5%4.33exposed
Review sustainability program objectives, progress, or status to ensure compliance with policies, standards, regulations, or laws.35.0%40.0%25.0%3.48assisted
Develop or execute strategies to address issues such as energy use, resource conservation, recycling, pollution reduction, waste elimination, transportation, education, and building design.28.3%21.7%50.0%4.37exposed
Identify educational, training, or other development opportunities for sustainability employees or volunteers.27.1%35.4%37.5%3.19assisted
Direct sustainability program operations to ensure compliance with environmental or governmental regulations.23.3%26.7%50.0%3.65assisted
Supervise employees or volunteers working on sustainability projects.11.7%13.3%75.0%4.22untouched

Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.

Where the score comes from

judged

Every task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.

DimensionMeanScale
Capability2.940-4
Embodiment0.310-3
Presence0.780-3
Accountability1.110-3
Context2.110-3
Verification cost1.530-3

What this means in practice

Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.

Occupations either side of this one

The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.

Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.