Green Human Resource Management

An IT campus near Bengaluru wants to cut its electricity and paper use. The facilities team can fit LED lights and set printers to print on both sides. Only the staff decide whether lights, laptops and printers are switched off at the end of the day. Green HRM is the part of the effort that works through people.

In everyday use the term means the contribution that HR policies and practices make to the firm's wider environmental agenda. It does not replace the engineers and facilities teams who handle the technology. It covers what only people can supply: attitudes, skills and daily habits.

Why firms do it. Five reasons recur:

• Saving money. Less energy, paper, fuel and travel cost less.
• Meeting expectations. Regulators, customers and investors ask how a firm treats the environment.
• Employer brand. Some applicants weigh an employer's environmental record, so a credible one helps to attract and keep them.
• Commitment. Staff who care about the environment can feel more committed to an employer that acts on it.
• Responsibility. A firm that damages the environment harms people outside it. The Business Ethics and CSR chapter in Unit 1 treats this as part of what a firm owes society.

What HR does. HR shapes three things in employees. Their attitudes are what they believe about the firm's duty to the environment. Their skills are what they can do, such as sorting waste or running a machine with less scrap. Their behaviour is what they do each day. HR works through the functions in the Human Resource Management chapter, such as selection, training, appraisal and pay, and through its own rules on travel and paperwork.

Where it breaks. The definitions are broad, so almost any HR activity can be called green. Many studies ask employees what they do instead of measuring resource use, so the link from HR practice to real environmental results is less firmly shown than the confident language suggests. Green HRM is also only the environmental part of a wider idea. Some writers use sustainable HRM for the fuller picture, which adds fair treatment, wellbeing and steady employment.

For exams. Learn the key words of the definition: policies, practices and systems; green behaviour; environmentally sensitive, resource-efficient, socially responsible. Expect "integration of environmental management into HRM" as a short answer.

Go deeper for practitioners

Why HR practices can change behaviour. Renwick, Redman and Maguire organised the research on green HRM with the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) model. Behaviour needs all three. People must be able (skills and knowledge), motivated (a reason to act) and given the opportunity (a workplace where acting is possible). Green selection and training build ability. Appraisal and rewards build motivation. Suggestion schemes, green teams and easy recycling points give opportunity.

A decision. A plant head says: "We trained every operator, but scrap has not fallen." Check the three in turn. Do operators have the skill? Does anyone gain when scrap falls? Can they act, or do tight deadlines and old machines stop them? A gap in any one explains why training alone fails.

An auto-parts plant near Pune sets out to cut its environmental footprint. The question comes up at once: where in the business can people make a difference? One framework taught in Indian courses answers with five dimensions.

The framework sorts green HRM into five areas where a firm's green aims enter its work. Study material rarely names its author, so use it as a way to organise ideas, not as a named research model. The table follows the plant, and its HR examples are illustrations.

Don't confuse these five dimensions with the key strategic dimensions in the Strategic HRM chapter. Those are employer branding, lifecycle management, performance and learning, retention and engagement, and culture and change. They describe how HR moves business results in general. These five sort the places where green aims enter a firm.

Where it breaks. The dimensions overlap. Paperless hiring is a change to an HR process (dimension 4), yet it also touches the workforce (2). The list names areas, not steps, so it does not tell a firm what to do first. And because its author is rarely named, it should not be quoted as research evidence.

For exams. Learn the five in order, with two or three items under each: products and services; workforce; workplace; function or process model; management and governance. Match an example to its dimension: board accountability and incentives belong to governance, green buildings and virtual work to the workplace.

A new employee at a bank is told in her first week to avoid printing. Her manager's scorecard never mentions paper, and nobody is rewarded for saving it. By month three she is printing again. A green policy at one stage of the HR cycle fades unless the other stages say the same thing.

Green HR policies add an environmental aim to each stage of the employee's journey. The stages are the usual ones, and earlier chapters cover them in full: Recruitment and Selection, Training and Development, Performance Management and Appraisal, and Compensation Management. This block shows only the green addition. The table follows one example: a bank with 100 branches that wants to cut its paper use by one fifth. The figures are an illustration.

The cycle closes with retention. The firm hopes that staff who see its words matched by its actions will stay.

Counting the result. Each of the 100 branches uses 500 reams of paper a year, so the bank uses 100 × 500 = 50,000 reams. A cut of one fifth saves 50,000 × 0.20 = 10,000 reams. At about ₹300 a ream, that is 10,000 × 300 = ₹30 lakh a year. A branch that falls from 500 reams to 400 has cut 100 ÷ 500 = 20%, so it meets the target by itself.

Don't confuse a green HR policy with a green HR practice. A policy is the stated rule or aim, such as "interviews are online wherever possible". A practice is what managers and staff actually do. A firm can have the policy without the practice, and the gap between them is where green claims go wrong.

Where it breaks. A green step at every stage still changes little if line managers do not back it. Online hiring is the easiest change; linking pay to green results is usually the hardest. Selecting for a "green attitude" is hard to test, because candidates tend to say what the interviewer wants to hear. Targets on what is easy to count, such as paper, can also pull attention from heavier sources of harm, such as energy and travel.

In practice. A firm need not change every stage at once, but it should name an owner for each stage it does change. Start where managers control the resource: their job descriptions, scorecards and bonuses.

For exams. Know the six policy areas and one action under each. Exams pair each HR function with an outcome: green recruitment with green talent, green training with green skills, green performance management with green KPIs, green rewards with green behaviour. The full cycle is recruit, orient, train, measure, reward, retain.

An IT campus in Hyderabad puts up posters asking staff to save energy. A year later the electricity bill has not moved, and nobody can say whether the posters did anything. A practice needs two things: a clear action, and a number that shows whether it worked.

Practical initiatives. Most cut the use of resources. A few add a benefit for staff.

A further group serves the social side of sustainability: fair treatment, wellbeing and long-term employment security, which spare staff, families and communities disruption. Some writers count these under sustainable HRM. Flexible work also links to the Employee Engagement and Work-Life Balance chapter.

Measuring it. Green KPIs work at three levels.

Set a baseline year first, then compare like with like. Report use per employee and the total. Worked example (illustrative). The campus used 4,000,000 kWh with 2,000 employees in year 1, and 4,500,000 kWh with 2,500 employees in year 2.

1. Year 1: 4,000,000 ÷ 2,000 = 2,000 kWh per employee.
2. Year 2: 4,500,000 ÷ 2,500 = 1,800 kWh per employee, a fall of 200 ÷ 2,000 = 10%.
3. The total rose by 500,000 ÷ 4,000,000 = 12.5%.

Efficiency per head improved, but total use grew. Each figure alone would mislead.

Don't confuse activity with impact. Training 90% of staff is activity. Lower electricity use is impact. A firm can score well on activity and still not change the result.

Where it breaks. Other causes muddy the numbers: new LED lights, a cooler summer or a smaller team can each move electricity use more than HR does. Flexible work can shift energy use rather than cut it, because staff then use power at home, and the office may be lit and cooled for those who still attend. Counting only what is easy, such as paper, can hide the larger sources.

In practice. Pick three to five KPIs, one from each level where you can. Name an owner for each. Put at least one result KPI into the appraisal of the managers who control that resource.

For exams. Pair the remaining outcomes: green workplace with resource efficiency, flexible or virtual work with lower travel emissions. Green KPIs belong to performance management.

A bank's careers page says "we are a green employer". New joiners find printers on every desk, no recycling bins and a rule that every meeting be held in person. Several leave within a year. The gap between the claim and the daily experience is the main risk of green HRM.

In HR, greenwashing shows up as slogans without targets, a policy with no budget or owner, and green promises in job advertisements that the workplace does not keep. It also shows up as reports that count posters and workshops (activity) instead of results. A quick test: can the firm name the baseline, the target, the owner and what happens if the target is missed?

Three other limits matter.

• Employee resistance. Staff resist when a green rule adds effort, feels imposed from above, or looks like cost-cutting under another name. They also resist when it does not fit their lives: carpooling is hard on irregular shifts, cycling is unsafe on some roads, and some homes are poor places to work. Resistance is a normal response to change, and the Organisation Development and Change chapter covers its causes and remedies. Explain the reason, involve staff in the choices, give them tools, show results and offer alternatives.
• Cost. Training, systems and rewards cost money now. Savings come later and are less certain. Illustration: a programme costs ₹10 lakh a year and saves ₹6 lakh in energy and paper. On savings alone it loses ₹4 lakh (₹10 lakh minus ₹6 lakh). The case then rests on gains that are harder to count, such as compliance, reputation and keeping staff. A manager should say so openly, not stretch the savings figure.
• Weak proof. Many studies rely on what employees say they do, not on measured resource use. Treat large claims for green HRM with care.

Don't confuse green HRM with CSR. CSR is the whole of a firm's responsibility to society. Green HRM is the part that works through people management and aims at environmental behaviour inside the firm. A firm can fund a village project and still run a wasteful office. Green HRM targets the office.

Links to CSR and law. The Business Ethics and CSR chapter says responsibility starts with how a firm earns its money, not only with what it gives away. Green HRM meets the environmental side of that duty in daily work. CSR spending usually funds projects, while green HRM changes how the firm itself operates. Environmental law sets legal limits on pollution and waste. Staying within them is the minimum (the Business Ethics and CSR chapter calls law the minimum that society enforces), and green HRM aims to go further.

Links to the sustainability goals. In 2015 the member states of the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to be met by 2030. Green HRM bears most directly on goal 12 (responsible consumption and production), goal 13 (climate action) and goal 7 (affordable and clean energy). Through fair, safe and secure work, its social side touches goal 8 (decent work and economic growth). Firms use the goals, and the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit from the CSR chapter, as a common language for reporting.

For exams. Be ready to define greenwashing, name the limits (resistance, cost, weak proof) and link green HRM to CSR and the sustainability goals.

Go deeper for practitioners

A decision. The IT campus has budget for one of three steps. (a) A carpool and shuttle scheme. (b) A green training module for all 2,000 staff. (c) Green goals in the scorecards of the 40 facilities and admin managers who control its energy and paper. Option (c) costs little and targets those who control the resource, but it works only if their own managers back it. Option (a) helps only the staff who live on the routes. Option (b) builds awareness but creates no duty to act. Which first, and what would you measure after six months?

Fairness. A reward for cycling or public transport pays more to staff with short, safe routes, and little to staff on late shifts or long journeys. Offer several ways to earn it, so the scheme does not favour one group.

Links. The employer-brand risk is the one the Strategic HRM chapter describes: a brand that promises more than the job delivers raises early quitting. The Business Ethics and CSR chapter lists trust and honesty among its principles, and a gap between claim and conduct breaks it.