Sustainability Development on Green Human Resource Management Practices 

Fig. 1. Sustainable Development 

Green Human Resource Management creates progression towards organizationally valued pro environmental behaviors such as task-related pro-environmental behaviors, proactive pro-environmental behaviors and green recovery performance. This plays a crucial role in environmental performance and employee's performance which is associated with organizational sustainability. This is a step towards aligning organizational goals and ensuring that the organization is stepping towards sustainability. Green human resource management is one of the most important factors in forward-thinking your environment-friendly business. Employees must be empowered and environmentally aware of greening while carrying out green human resource management practices. Examining the impact of different Green human resource practices on environmental behavior directly or indirectly via Pro-environmental behavior is at the current highlight. 

High management and technical skills are involved in the implementation of green management practices. The organization will develop such environmental initiatives among the employees which have a substantial impact on the firms’ competitive sustainability. The success of the organization is determined by the economic value and need to consider environmental and social factors. The execution of different techniques like employment selection, recruitment process, training, reward and appraisal system design to boost employee’s environmental awareness and expansion of management and technical skills have great importance in fostering environmental sustainability. For environmental management proactive approach is required around the world. The level of pollution in the environment is increasing due to rapid industrialization. For this purpose, to reduce the destruction of the non-renewable resources various policies, rules and regulations are implementing by the government and by the private sector. An environmental management system is improved and enhanced by the corporate segment. As a result of which new strategic movement is emerged called green management.

Green management is the approach in which the organization shapes the management of environmental strategies to protect the environmental aspects. Therefore, there must be a balance between industrial growth and environmental sustainability. There is a need to identify the ways that how green human resource management can successfully be implemented in the educational institutes to reduce the environmental degradation. Green Human Resource practices can effectively and successfully implement the policies which will help to reduce the environmental degradation and improved the environmental sustainability. The changing market environment requires all managers to adopt a green strategy in order to remain competitive. Over the years there has been a shift in organizational goals from profit-making only to the need for environmental and social goal accomplishment. Economic and financial success need to be accompanied by the minimization of ecological footprints and increased attention to social aspects. For instance, having two Public sector federal chartered universities with several sub-campuses in different districts, there is great potential to promote sustainability both through education and practice. The need for general attitude change from reactive to proactive is required in ensuring the Green human resource management (GHRM) strategy is implemented. The need to have a sustainable environment is a collective responsibility of all employees in any organization since human resource function has the overall responsibility of recruitment and employee welfare. There is a need to educate and advocate for the green environment in the organization. Employees must be equipped with the necessary knowledge as to how to maintain and sustain a conducive environment free from pollution and disposal.

Green Human Resource Management practices is now worldwide largely recognizing that by adopting pro-environmental practices, employees in any organization can improve environmental sustainability. Pro-environmental initiatives in organizations are increasing day by day due to the alarming situation because the climate is changing irreversibly, destruction of the environment and the scarcity of resources. Environment protection is now an emerging trend all around the world.

The corporate world is changing the perspective from a business oriented financial perspective to a competency based economy and green economy. As the world is moving towards green economy, the responsivity of corporate has expanded to go green. The term Green human resources refer to promotion of sustainable employee practices with the help of interface of every employee. Its aim is to increase the awareness among the employees on the issue of sustainability. Green HR deals with the HR activities which are environment friendly and promote the sustainable use of resources in the organizations. This in turn, help business organizations to trim down employee carbon footsteps by the likes of teleconferencing, sharing of car, telecommuting, filing electronically, virtual interviews, recycling and online training.

Fig. 2. Green Human Resource Practices Well Being and Sustainable Business

Sustainability is defined as chance for businesses to present long lasting solutions that will help in increasing the socioeconomic background, in generating jobs and economic wealth well into the future. It is seen by many as increasingly necessary to making shareholder value, as investors and employees look to organizations to be good corporate people. Green business practices are those that concentrated on environmental stewardship and social responsibility. Also, is the development that meets the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development is really mostly identified by referring to this establishment of a balance between Profit, Planet and People.

The three components for sustainability developments are as follows: Environmental Protection, Economic Growth and Social Equity.

Environmental protection refers to any activity to maintain or restore the quality of environmental media through preventing the emission of pollutants or reducing the presence of polluting substances in environmental media. This includes programs that are aimed at reducing risks to the environment from contaminants such as hazardous materials and wastes, fuels, and oils. Environmental protection is so important because it creates rather than destroys livelihoods. It helps to ensure that vital natural resources are available to us in the long term. World hunger, global warming, increasing natural disasters, polluted air, water and soil, pesticide use in the fields,  species extinction, crop failures.

Economic growth is the increase of the total output of an economy. It is the ratio between people's income and the prices of what they can buy is increasing, goods and services become more affordable and so people become less poor. Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. And this denotes the continuous increase of a countries’ real national income. This component of sustainable development is important because when economies grow, states can tax that revenue and gain the capacity and resources needed to provide the public goods and services that their citizens need, like healthcare, education, social protection and basic public services.

Social equity is about being flexible and accommodating to people’s needs based on their intersection of experiences within our society. The place where race, gender, income, sexual orientation, religion, ability, etc. intersect (this is called intersectionality) needs to be understood on an individual basis to truly provide the flexibility that equity needs to uphold. Without this understanding of intersectionality and flexibility, social equity just becomes equality. Equity is about assessing the needs of people across the nation to provide them access to opportunities for success. In short, it means impartiality, fairness, and justice for all people and it is about flexibility, not equality. For example, making accommodations for people with disabilities is based on the concept of equity and they often can benefit everyone (e.g., availability of elevators). With social justice, no support or accommodations are needed because the cause of the inequity is addressed.

 

Fig. 3. Green Human Resource Management: Sustainability Development

 

Green HRM is used on HRM policies to support the sustainable use of resources within organizations and, more usually helps the reasons of environment sustainability. The term “Green HRM” is most regularly used to refer to the concern of people management policies and practices towards the broader corporate environmental schedule. Typical green activities contain video recruiting, or the use of online and video interviews, to minimize travel requirements. Green rewards can embrace the use of workplace and lifestyle benefits, ranging from carbon credit compensates to free bicycles, to keep people in the green program, as continuing to identify their involvement. Whereas many employees often feel it is not their responsibility to support the environment while they are at work, the new workforces of millennial are highlighting environmental realization as they prefer their employers. There is also a broader opportunity to connect the workforce given that more and more people search for significance and self-actualization in their jobs. Other simple green events embrace minimizing the amount of printed materials used in performance management such as salary evaluations. Although there is absolutely an important amount of “green washing” happening in reducing waste, there are many opportunities here too. However, Human Resource is never going away to have a really important impact on a business through the improvement of Human Resource processes singlehanded so the superior opportunity is to include to the green program of the business as a whole.

Human Resource Management should take advantage of green human resource practices to acquire and retain talented employees whose environmental goals and values fit those of the company. Employees should be involved in problem-solving on environmental sustainability and green management. And they should participate in continuous training programs and enhance their awareness about environmental sustainability and green management.

 

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References:

D P Deshwal, “An Organizational Strategy of Greening People”, 2015

Suhaimi Sudin, ”Strategic Green HRM: A proposed model that supports Environmental Citizenship”, 2011

Christoph Schulz, “Environment”, June 15, 2020

B F Daily, S Chaung, “Achieving Sustainability to Human Resource Factors in Environmental Management”, 2021

Fiza Amjad, “Effect of green human resource management practices on organizational sustainability: the mediating role of environmental and employee performance”, February 2, 2021