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Milton Nyamadzawo
Correspondent
A United Nations’ report titled “Our Common Future” underscored the crucial role of human resources management in strategically greening the organisation and, in turn, economics and society at large.
This awareness gave birth to green human resources management (GHRM).
‘Greening’ an organisation has an impact on how it deals with its supply chain; the production process; the waste management and production; the organisational culture; and its values, strategies, choices, and employee behaviours, among other aspects.
Green HRM concerns the awareness of an organisation towards environmental issues. It also manages the social and economic well-being of both the company and its employees.
It has the goal of developing a green workforce that comprehends, values and practices green initiatives actively (Ahmad, 2015). Hence, a key dimension is the actual engagement and commitment of employees (Haddock-Millar, et al., 2016).
The focus is on spreading the knowledge and raising awareness of how to cope with issues of sustainability, what actions are required in order to carry out the green programs and how the environment can benefit from them.
In the last two decades, the mainstream nature of sustainability and environmental awareness pushed both practitioners and academics to address the issue of human resources management as a strategic tool for greening an organisation and, in turn, economics and society at large.
In fact, as observed by Ahmad (2015), if a company is to adopt an environmentally-aware approach to its activities, the employees are the key to its success or failure.
GHRM focuses on the aspect of pursuing environmentally-friendly HR practices as well as preserving the knowledge capital.
The proper management of the above two concepts are optimal to the attainment of the CSR and eventual business sustainability, which is critical for every business entity.
More precisely, GHRM covers all the practices that contribute to an organisation’s economic, environmental, and social (this last one being in terms of employee safety, health, equity, and wellness) sustainability dimensions from the perspective of employees, in the light of the corporate sustainability requirements.
Why HR management is crucial in the greening project
Firstly, human resources management plays a pivotal role in greening organisational policies and practices at the very heart of an organisation’s sustainability through recruitment, selection, training, development, performance appraisal, rewards, compensation management, and exit policies, as well as in communicating values and corporate culture.
Secondly, the changes required by the organisational shift towards a sustainability approach call for the commitment by both management and all employees, not just by those directly affected by new green and HRM practices.
These activities can promote and sustain green behaviours among all members of an organisation. A further factor of the relevance of GHRM lies in the fact that environmental issues impact employees’ personal lives in different manners.
This is not only because the quality of the environment has an obvious impact on the quality of the lives of individuals, but also due to environmental questions linked to employees’ behaviours, values, and choices.
The successful implementation of sustainable corporate strategies heavily depends on all departments of the company, with the HR department being the most influential when it comes to introducing “green” policies and changes.
HRM is a crucial part of management which oversees the most valued assets of the organisation — its human capital.
The stronger the green human resources policies, the easier it is for companies to implement the environmental management systems (EMS) (Ahmad, 2015).
The alignment between HRM practices, systems and activities with Environmental Management (EM) of organisations is the subject of ongoing research.
Although (GHRM) is gaining traction across the world, it is widely accepted that the practice has not gained popularity, particularly in Africa, with Zimbabwe lagging far behind.
That being said, careful consideration needs to be made regarding the obstacles involved in applying green HRM practices.
Organisations are likely to meet certain risks when engaging in sustainability, some of which include lack of support from leaders, costs of maintaining, lack of internal capacity or knowledge, as Jackson, et al (2012) point out.
Another difficulty can be the uncertainty in whether the expected results can, in fact, be realised in which case, companies are advised to deliberately evaluate the risks of investing in such a strategy.
Organisations are also encouraged to clearly communicate the purpose of undertaking green policies to their staff so that voluntary participation becomes apparent and counterproductive effects eliminated.
There is a plausible argument that companies can enhance the attainment of competitive advantage by incorporating environmental management into their strategy.
A critical step when contemplating the alignment of HR practices is to do it consistently so that employees can be placed in charge of environmental management.
Green human resources management (GHRM) is very critical in helping different organisations achieve environmental sustainability.
This is a novel concept in relatively many organisations, especially those in developing countries.
Although more effort is required to help organisations in the implementation of the green policy, some of these organisations have already embraced the concept and have been utilising it in some or all of their human resources management practices.
The main HRM practices generally include recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management and appraisal, compensation and reward, empowerment and participation, and the management of the organisational culture.
This shows that HRM has a major role to play in helping turn their particular organisations green.
Customer experience can be enhanced with the knowledge that the business adopts a green revolution and sustainability agenda.
Customers are concerned and conscious about businesses pursuing and fostering activities that focus on “going green” through the adoption of environmental management techniques.
This has helped the business communities to achieve their sustainability goals.
HRM activities are considered as one of the major drivers towards the achievement of business sustainability goals.
It is in this context that many businesses, both in developed and developing countries have turned to the GHRM concept. The concept of environmental management, which is critical in ensuring business sustainability, has been a key concern in the modern business environment. To achieve this, different businesses have been adopting and implementing the concept of GHRM in their HR departments. Existing literature has recognised the need to adopt environmental practices as primary objectives towards the achievement of organisational functioning.
It has gone ahead to create a nexus between these environmental performances and the HRM practices; hence, the need to integrate the two in the delivery of sustainable business entities.
How does HRM practices influence the green concept?
In the context of HRM, recruitment denotes the aspect of requiring different potential candidates to apply for a particular open position in an organisation, while selection is the process of choosing the best qualified and suitable candidates that meet the necessary merits from the list of the job applicants.
However, this has been re-coined in the recent GHRM context, whereby it refers to the systematic hiring process, which focuses on the significance of the environment in making it a central element within the particular organisation (Deepika and Karpagam, 2016).
As such, the skills-set of the particular qualified candidates goes beyond the basic organisational performance in their areas of performance and into their ability to have basic understanding on the critical sustainability concepts, such as recycling, conservation, as well as the creation of a more logical and “green” world.
More and more organisations are now becoming aware that building a reputation as a green employer is one of the best strategies of increasingly attracting new talents.
The recruitment and selection practices are central to ensuring effective environmental management.
This is achieved by ensuring that the new recruits are made aware of and are familiar with an organisation’s aim in maintaining its environmental values.
An important point to note is that there is a strong positive correlation between employee training and development with the organisational performance.
It is the role of an organisation’s HRM department to impart the necessary training and developmental skills and knowledge among the employees in order for them to remain competitive in the job market.
It is in this context, that organisations have the ability to acquit the employees with relevant knowledge regarding the concepts of “going green”. Some of the employees may possess these basic concepts of “going green” during the recruitment and selection process while others may not.
Green performance management and appraisal processes are equally crucial. Organisations undertake regular performance management and appraisal in order to help align individual employee performance with the expected optimal organisational performance. We have to infuse the green agenda in the appraisal process and influence sustainability.
It is in this context that the green performance management and appraisal focuses on going an extra mile to assess an organisation’s abilities towards achieving the goals and objectives and demonstrate the activities and strategies they are putting in place in order to help an organisation achieve its environmental management goals and objectives.
In the context of GHRM, the green compensation and rewards are considered as latent elements that can be used in the support and promotion of environmental activities in the particular organisation or business entity.
Ahmad (2015) notes that in order to push for eco-friendly initiatives, different modern organisations are embarking on strategic reward and management approaches integrated on their strategic approaches in order to motivate the particular employees to continuously work towards achieving the organisation’s goals of augmenting the environmental management techniques.
Green management of organisational culture in creating awareness and developing GHRM practices, is not necessarily enough in achieving the optimal green initiatives.
On the contrary, there is a need for an organisation to embed these initiatives and policies onto its organisational culture through continuous appraisal.
There are different environmental challenges that different organisations face, while trying to pursue the goals of going green.
There is an obvious lack of commitment from different organisations concerning the implementation of corporate green policies in their particular business organisations
There is a lack of consequence management on those violating the green initiatives.
Policies such as paperless work and waste disposal within the office and organisational setting are basic principles to achieving the agenda, but this has failed in many organisations.
The United Nations Environmental Programme has been keen in ensuring that different firms work towards full achievement of their corporate social responsibility.
These include, among others, reporting on greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation, and energy consumption. Unfortunately, this has been violated in some instances, eventually compromising the concept of going green by different organisations.
Milton Nyamadzawo writes in his personal capacity and can be reached for feedback on [email protected].
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