'Green HR needs to be more transformative,' says academic
More than two-thirds of workers in New Zealand say their employers aren’t doing enough towards sustainability and caring for the environment, according to a recent survey.
In the Frog Recruitment poll, only 27% of 955 workers said their company was going over and above to protect the environment.
HR leaders have an important role to play in an organisation meeting people’s green expectations, says academic Marjo Lips-Wiersma. What’s more, HR can be a powerful force in helping turn the tide to create environmental wins that can make a real difference to the planet.
“To make the biggest advances, though, will involve a radical change,” says the professor at AUT, who specialises in Ethics and Sustainability Leadership.
“I think Green HR needs to be more transformative than just including it in traditional HR with a few add-ons.”
Strategic HR, with an active place in the boardroom, is so important to making the difference between sustainability being an add-on and something that’s actually embedded throughout the organisation, she says.
“Green HRM helps implement an organisation’s sustainability strategy because anything you have as a strategy needs to be activated through people. That’s where HRM has traditionally played the role and increasingly we see advertisements with ‘sustainability knowledge’ as a requirement.”
Those in the HR role are already making an impact by increasingly seeking employees with sustainability credentials, she says. However, for those prepared to push the boundaries further, there’s a great deal to be gained in terms of sustainability.
A key area that needs addressing — over which HR can have a significant impact — is the configuration of organisations, says Lips-Wiersma.
“You find that those companies that are successful at doing sustainability usually have much flatter structures. They know they need everybody to come up with their best ideas, so they have an open, trusting and flat arrangement.
“Only then do they get all of the ideas — like those from the shop floor, from the customer interface, or ideas of more sustainable financing.”
Hierarchies with many layers of management can be punitive if people want to do something innovative, she says.
“With sustainability, you want people to think about what can be done that’s better.”
HR also has an important role to play in the coordination of training needs in the sustainability space, says Lips-Wiersma.
“Increasingly, businesses want people with sustainability knowledge, so the question is how do you train people to have up-to-date skills in a fast-moving field? Will the organisation send them on courses, or train them internally? Do you need to give them credit for that time? How is the matter of additional responsibilities and workload addressed?
“People are interested but if sustainability is on top of their normal roles, then it often goes on the backburner again.”
Although Green HR can lead to success, it can also backfire, warns Lips-Wiersma.
“In some cases, you could lose your employees by doing Green HRM because you're actually not backing it up. If the company is in fact not green, but it's using that sort of language, then employees can become quite cynical.”
In this case, it’s easy to lose trust in the leadership of the company or the culture of the business.
Talent attraction and retention are just some of the benefits to be gained by HR driving the organisation’s strategy towards a greener goal, she says.
“Companies that have a green reputation have people lining up to join them. They don’t have to advertise jobs. Ethique would be an example, or Ecostore.
“It’s even more attractive to the new generation because it’s more pressing for them - they’re the ones who are going to live that future - as long as they can have some input and there’s integrity. They want to be able to co-shape things they don’t like those hierarchical management systems so much.”
But organisations should consider carefully how any cost savings through eco efficiency are used, she says.
“If that money goes to investors, or to higher salaries for those higher level in the organisation, then people might say, ‘That's not what I thought we would do with those cost savings - I thought we were going to put them back into sustainability efforts’.
“These days people are very sensitive to ‘greenwashing’. From an employee retention perspective, if you can't walk the talk, it's better not to have the talk.”
