Compliance and reporting have become the main focus for sustainability teams, even as budgets shrink and headcounts are reduced, according to a survey of 124 sustainability professionals published last month.
The results, collected by advisory and consultancy firm GlobeScan and nonprofit sustainability consultancy Business for Social Responsibility, indicate that compliance concerns are taking up “outsized resources compared to other priorities that might deliver more strategic business value and impact.”
The report includes responses from sustainability professionals in senior positions, employed at companies generating at least $1 billion in revenue. Nearly half, or 48%, of respondents were based in North America, while 39% were based in Europe, with the rest spread across the globe.
Sixty-one percent of respondents called compliance a “very significant priority,” with climate target setting coming in second as a high priority for 51% of respondents. Other topics, such as supply chain engagement, climate transition planning, human rights, and responsible use of technology, ranked lower on the list.
Regulatory requirements have also emerged as the main driver of companies’ sustainability efforts, with 76% of respondents citing them as a driver, compared to just 31% cited in the survey’s 2016 edition, pointing to how regulations’ impact has more than doubled over a decade. Consumer or customer demand has also become an important catalyst, cited by 60% of respondents in 2026 compared to 21% in 2016, while market growth opportunities have become less of a motivation, dropping from 47% in 2016 to 35% this year.
Similarly, sustainability teams also feel more capable tackling compliance and reporting requirements and climate targets than other issues, such as supply chain engagement and climate transition planning.
But rather than uncritically focusing on reporting requirements, teams should be “taking a step back and trying to understand what they are enabling within the company,” GlobeScan Director James Morris said in a webinar held last month.
Integration of sustainability with finance, legal, and IT teams has increased in the last decade, further reflecting the focus on reporting and compliance. But the report noted that integration with other departments has decreased, except for investor relations and board engagement, for which integration stayed the same.
The biggest loss of integration occurred in the CEO’s office, with only 36% of respondents this year saying the CEO was very engaged, compared to 55% in 2016. Similarly, sustainability has dropped significantly among the perceived priorities of the CEO, compared to a decade ago. In 2016, 23% of respondents said it was a top-three priority, versus only 10% of respondents in 2026.
The report said this could be due to a disconnect between how sustainability professionals and CEOs view sustainability. Respondents said most senior leadership professionals view sustainability as a risk management and compliance function, while sustainability team members view it as a “core driver of long-term business strategy.”
“Closing this gap will be critical to sustaining executive support and investment,” the report’s authors wrote.
Respondents also cited factors inside the company, such as tension with business value and internal buy-in, as their biggest obstacles, even surpassing external factors like geopolitical volatility.
“This is a really positive finding in that you have control over it,” BSR Chief Impact Officer Laura Gitman said in the June webinar. “It might be a frustrating finding in that it means the work has to happen in terms of internal engagement.”
Professionals are facing these obstacles with fewer resources at hand, the report found. A third of respondents said their budgets decreased in 2025, and a quarter expect further decreases.
Sustainability teams are also smaller compared to a decade ago, with most respondents (25%) saying their teams ranged from 2 to 5 employees, compared to 2016, when 25% of respondents worked with teams of 51 employees or more. Only 9% expect headcounts to increase in the coming year, despite 31% of respondents saying their companies accelerated implementation in the past year.
Looking ahead, 56% of respondents said that the next phase of corporate sustainability would see a focus on fewer, clearer priorities. Seventy-one percent of respondents said one or more sustainability commitments are at risk of being scaled back at their companies, with diversity, equity and inclusion being the most likely target, cited by 44% of respondents.
And companies’ management of human rights is narrower, focusing more on employees and direct suppliers, with 33% of respondents saying they assessed and managed human rights further down in their supply chain, compared with 46% in 2017, despite the fact that further down in the supply chain is where workers are more vulnerable, according to the report.
Sustainability teams are also not well-equipped to deal with the social and environmental impacts of artificial intelligence, despite the growing ubiquity of the technology, the report found. Only 1 in 3 respondents said their companies have formal AI governance in place to manage such concerns.
“We think this is a real high-risk area, and one that is really critical for sustainability teams in the coming year,” Gitman said.
Only 19% of survey respondents said they foresee sustainability entering a period of renewed ambition and integration.
Gitman said that refining sustainability goals is “potentially a really good thing” if teams are “focusing on the issues where companies have the most impact and that are most aligned with business strategy.”
“[It’s] not so great if . . . we’re trying to do less and dedicate less resources,” she added.
