Creating High Performing HR Systems: Green HRM

Across the globe, we are moving from an industrial-based financial system to a talent based
economy.  We are also entering a green economy – one in which consumer and employee
expectations and future environmental change will require businesses to address “green” issues.
 
Environmentally conscious organizations will become increasingly prominent as we re-enter into
a period of growth.  While CO2 growth may have stabilized during the recession, it is destined to
increase again as businesses increase production and other business activities.  In addition, during
the recession, the main environmental focus of many businesses was placed on reducing waste
and optimizing resources.  A renewed focus on growth provides unique opportunities for
businesses to become green by looking at ways to create new environmental DNA while
producing operational savings by reducing their carbon footprint.
 

What is Green HR?

 
The term ‘green HR’ is most often used to refer to the contribution of people management
policies and practices towards the broader corporate environmental agenda.  Typical green
activities include video recruiting, or the use of online and video interviews, to minimize travel
requirements.
 
Green rewards can include the use of workplace and lifestyle benefits, ranging from carbon credit
offsets to free bicycles, to engage people in the green agenda, while continuing to recognize their
contribution.  While many employees often feel it is not their responsibility to protect the
environment while they are at work, the new workforce of millenials are emphasizing
environmental consciousness as they chose their employers.  There is also a broader opportunity
to engage the workforce given that more and more people seek meaning and self-actualization in
their jobs.
 
Other simple green actions include minimizing the amount of printed materials used in
performance management, salary reviews and so on.  While there is definitely a substantial
amount of ‘green washing’ occurring in reducing waste, there are many opportunities here too.
 
However, HR is never going to have a truly significant impact on a business through the
improvement of HR processes alone so the greater opportunity is to contribute to the green
agenda of the business as a whole.
 

Building the Green Business

 
HR can have a significant impact on the broader green agenda.  For services-oriented business in
particular, employee focused green initiatives can be extremely impactful since the workforce is
often the largest single contributor to waste and pollution.  Although green initiatives are often
supported by an operations group, HR can also play a role in reviewing how the business works
and identifying how people can act differently in order to reduce their use of energy and
materials.

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Creating High Performing HR Systems: Green HRM

 
A relevant focus should be placed on job and organizational  design.  Increased efficiencies in
organizational hierarchies, more virtualized work or eliminating unnecessary time spent in the
office and optimizing the use of company resources, including travel, can uncover significant cost
savings and efficiencies.  Increasingly, companies around the global are supporting greener
options include telecommuting, flexible work schedules (allowing people to travel outside peak
times), “hot- desking” or hostelling office space, etc.
 
HR can also work collaboratively with the workforce to encourage employees to think more
environmentally consciously when developing products and services (and even creating products
and services to help customers manage their environmental impacts)..  Product and
manufacturing companies have a great opportunity to look for supply chain efficiencies that can
have both a long-term economic and environmental impact.
 
In the evolution of HR, establishing a green agenda can have a big impact on an organization and
can also increase HR’s impact outside of traditional workforce and personnel areas.   Strong
environmental management can – and should – have an economic impact to an organization
including reducing operational costs, increasing sales in new markets, engaging employees and
building a strong employee-centric culture.
 
However, for most businesses, there will still be limits to how far this approach can go.  Unless
employees are already highly engaged in helping a business succeed, it is unlikely that they
will be very highly engaged in helping the business through better environmental management

Creating a Green Brand

 
Creating a green initiative requires a comprehensive approach throughout the organization. 
Rather than using environmental policies to help achieve existing business objectives,
organizations can embed a green “brand” at the core of the corporate strategy and throughout all
aspects of sustainability and corporate social responsibility.  In other words, creating a green
brand can be, in the words of Jim Collins a BHAG – or big, hairy, audacious goal.  Being “green”
can become an integral part of the company’s way of doing business and a basis for both the
organization’s corporate and employer brand.
 
The green opportunity for many organizations can be a compelling competitive advantage.  In
terms of the corporate brand, this is not just about making the existing business more green, but
finding more green ways to do business.  In terms of the employer brand, it is both about seeking
to recruit people who see environmental management as important, and being able to compete for
critical talent more effectively by leveraging an employment brand.
 
Sustainability and environmental management can be used as a beachhead for a number of
ongoing initiatives which, if continued over a relatively lengthy period of time, can make a very
worthwhile contribution to the environment, an employer’s carbon footprint, the employees and
the profitability of the organization.
 
Companies such as GE, Shell and Nike have recreated their corporate brands around their social
and environmental behaviors.  Wal-Mart has been using ‘going green’ to offset negative press
coverage regarding its treatment of employees and impact on local communities.  More than a
half a million of Wal-Mart employees have made personal commitments to the environment by
supporting company-sponsored initiatives.

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British Sky Broadcasting (Sky), the largest UK-based television service, has established a ‘bigger
picture' strategy to raise its customers’ awareness of the impact that individuals have just from
living their lives, and to engage them in practical and inspiring ways to use energy efficiently. 
The company believes that to support this it needs to help its employees inspire others by
becoming more progressive and efficient in their own energy use.  Specific actions within the
company’s green program have included offering staff incentives for buying a hybrid car, savings
on carbon offsetting, on public transport and bikes.  Sky have also made additions to their holiday
discount scheme to feature holiday companies operating in an environmentally friendly way, and
to their volunteering program, for example to volunteering in schools, to help pupils undertake
environmental projects.  Some of the company's actions have been really simple, but still very
effective (at least for raising awareness), for example allowing employees to buy a coffee mug at
their coffee bar rather than using disposable cups, and then receiving a small discount off a cup of
coffee.
 
Sky has also launched a carbon credit card where employees receive points for taking public
transportation or walking to work, or video conferencing rather than taking a flight.  Prizes are
given to people with the most points.  Each employee’s individual portal to the company’s
intranet shows a coral reef, and the more points that employees earn -- the more fish and perhaps
a shark swim around the reef.  Fewer points means the reef starts to get dirty and all the fish swim
away. This is a really simple but also an imaginative and engaging solution

Developing a green HR strategy provides a great opportunity for HR to increase its impact on the
business, and beyond.  As described above, the opportunity includes:
 
 Green HR activities reducing the environmental impact of HR activities
 Support for the green business, engaging staff in higher impact changes
 Creating a green employer as well as corporate brand, providing the opportunity to     
significantly transform the way an organization works.

 
 
The opportunity may be particularly significant in the US where businesses have typically done
less to develop a positioning in environmental management.  Green initiatives are seen by
prospective employees, particularly ones in the younger Generation ‘Y’ and Millennial groups as
being increasingly important as they make career decisions.  Competition for the most talented of
this generation is expected to be fierce, and a by-product of organizational green initiatives will
often be increased awareness and visibility as an employer of choice in this important
demographic. Creating workplaces of the future, reducing the organizational impact on the
environment, and making strides to becoming a highly admired employer are all benefits that can
accrue from the ‘greening’ of HR.

Green hrm helps in following activities

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The influence of social, economic, market and other external forces on the approaches
to environmental management adopted by firms

Workforce development needs created by increasing demand for employees in

the newly emerging green economy

Discussions of how and to what extent HR policies and practices can improve
the environmental performance of organizations

Specific HR philosophies, policies and/or practices that support or inhibit change

around environmental issues

International differences in Green HRM practices The Role of the HR function in environmental
management

The role played by trade unions and employee representatives in environmental

Management

Changing attitudes and behaviors related to environmental issues in the workplace

A critique addressing the pros and cons for research and/or practice of focusing
narrowly on environmental management versus addressing environmental concerns
as part of a more expansive approach (e.g., focusing on the Triple Bottom
Line or striving for “sustainability”)

Discussions of how current theoretical perspectives and frameworks (e.g., those

related to strategic competitiveness, knowledge management, learning organization,
communities of practice) can be applied by reflective practitioners to create
an eco-friendly organizational culture

Recruiting & Selection

Green Recruiting – Google

Until recently, few firms have made a concerted effort to leverage the company's environmental
stance as a critical point in recruiting pitches. Firms like Google, Timberland, and yes, even old-
school General Electric have led the way by undertaking major efforts to make being
environmentally friendly a critical element of their employment brand. Google, the world's only
"recruiting machine," leads the way not just in its environmental practices but also in publicizing
their environmental record and approach. Like many emerging green companies, Google has
hired a director who coordinates corporate environmental efforts in an attempt to match their
corporate business strategy with their environmental efforts.

Green Recruiting Helps Bring in Top Talent - General Electric

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In the race to attract the most talented innovative employees, some companies like GE are
painting themselves in green - a rich environmental green - to boost their recruiting leverage. An
environmental pedigree, recruiting experts say, can help lure applicants.

Training

Raising Employee Awareness - Land Rover Group. UK

Land Rover Group encourages all their employees to play a role in reducing the impacts of our
operations. All Land Rover employees receive environment training appropriate to their job, from
basic awareness to spill response training. They communicate with staff about environmental
issues through briefings and regular newsletters. Environmental notice boards at all sites display
their sustainable development policy, key goals and environmental commitments. They run
suggestion schemes to encourage employees to come up with new ways for us to reduce their
environmental impacts. Awareness-raising events such as their water and energy weeks
encourage employees to use resource efficiently. In 2007, they held events at Gaydon and
Halewood to promote water - and energy - saving ideas through competitions and give-a ways.
For example, staff attending Gaydon's energy awareness day learned about the importance of
energy efficiency and were offered grants towards insulation for their own homes. They plan to
hold further awareness events at all sites in 2008. Their employees also learn about:
environmental nest practice by observing the good work done by their colleagues and promoting
these achievements through company magazines. At Solihull, 'centers of excellence' were used as
best practice example on which to base environmental performance of the whole plant.

Employee Training – Siemens

Key activities in fiscal 2008 also included delivering more extensive training to employees who
interface with suppliers or who specialize in providing buyers and quality managers with
professional support in implementing the Code of Conduct for Siemens Suppliers. These training
help to ensure that their employees are fully equipped to answer questions on sustainability in the
supply chain, professionally and precisely, and to take appropriate action. This is why, in fiscal
2008, we not only trained their procurement staff intensively but also those in key interfacing
roles such as quality management, compliance and legal affairs. They also extended their
procurement training program, adding a special module on supply chain sustainability which they
co-developed with their operating units and based partly on real-world situations that they had
experienced. In addition, they continued their successful program of procurement compliance
conferences and put more then 400 senior managers in procurement, quality management, legal
and compliance functions through mandatory training on compliance requirements and execution
at events in Europe (Prague), India (Mumbai), the U.S. (New York), and Latin America (Mexico
and Colombia). They also designed a special course for their global auditor training program in
how to work with the corporate responsibility Module in regular supplier quality audits.

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Performance Management

SVA/1b (shareholder value added per pound of production) – DuPont

DuPont defines SVA as the shareholder value created above the cost of capital, which typically is
10% to 12% for corporations in the United States. A company can increase its SVA by adding
either material or knowledge or both, but SVA/1b. emphasizes only the addition of knowledge:
The higher the SVA/1b., the greater the knowledge intensity in creating economic value. Along
with more traditional financial measures like return on invested capital and cash flow, the new
metric provides a useful indicator of the long-term sustainability of different growth strategies .

Performance Review Process & Management Review – Siemens

Siemens' most important HR management instruments are their Performance Review Process and
their Siemens Management Review. Now standard practice company-wide, their purpose is to
enable management-level and non-managerial employees alike to set clear personal goals and to
give and receive continuous, open feedback. They provide a transparent measure of employees'
environmental performance and accomplishments and, as such, determine future career
development and remuneration.

Rewards

3P(Pollution Prevention Pays) Program - 3M

3M has encouraged employees to propose changes to generate revenue and reduce pollution
through their Pollution Prevention Pays (3P) program. So far, 3M claim their 3P initiative has
produces more than 2,500 pollution solutions, halving their waste release, and saving them nearly
$300 million. Indeed, later estimates for 3M are that their 3P program has seen employees
propose more than 4,750 projects worldwide, preventing 1.7 billion pounds of pollution, and
saving them $850 million in pollution control and raw material costs.

ECompetition – Roche

Employees submit their suggestions as to how Roche can help to protect the environment or use
energy or natural resources more efficiently, and prizes are awarded for the best submissions. The
competition is open to individuals or teams of up to three employees. Managers at the local site
level then examine the feasibility of their employees' suggestions, estimate the potential cost
savings, and commit to implementing the proposed improvements. Ideas are evaluated by a team
consisting of the eco-delegates and two members of the corporate SHE department (CSE). The
inclusion criteria have been tightened up over the years in order to focus on those projects which
are significant at a group level.

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Share Matching Plan – Siemens

Siemens' Share Matching Plan, open to their entire employee base as of fiscal 2009, was launched
to enable their people to share in the company's environmental success and to help them
accumulate assets. Under the terms of the scheme, participating employees receive one free
Siemens share for every three shares they have purchased, provided the latter are retained for a
period of three years

Job Description

Land Rover's Environmental Job Description

In the Rover Group, UK, environmental responsibilities were introduced in all job descriptions;
therefore environment was defined as a criterion for the selection of new employees.

Team Organizing

Green Core Team – Avaya

Avaya's executive team oversees the Green Core Team and considers Avaya's environmental
stewardship a top priority. The Green Core Team's role is that of a catalyst and driver for
company-wide green targets, roadmaps and actions.

Compliance Organization – Siemens

Clean business everywhere and at all times: this principle guides Siemens' actions and their
company culture, without any ifs, ands or buts. Worldwide, all Siemens managers and employees
are bound to a fundamental rule: zero tolerance for corruption. All business activities have to
comply with applicable laws and regulations. To fight corruption, Siemens also has internal
organizations that are binding worldwide. Their compliance organization has been designed to
provide interfaces and full transparency with other staff functions as well as with the company's
operational units. They see the work of the compliance organization as an important career step
for the respective compliance employees. This is backed by a Competency Management Program
initiated together with Corporate Human Resources to systematically support and promote
employees in the compliance organization. Compliance conferences in the regions and regularly
scheduled meeting with their worldwide compliance Officers support their goal of strengthening
cooperation within the compliance organization and exchanging best-practice examples .

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Organizational Culture

"Tone-from-the-top" Principle – Siemens

The behavior of managers plays a decisive role in the creation of an integrity culture. "Only clean
business-everywhere and at all times. Compliance has the highest priority at Siemens as part of
their corporate responsibility." All Siemens managers are required to spread this message from
Siemens president and CEO Peter Loscher throughout the company. By the end of the period
being reported, members of the managing board, the chief compliance officer and top managers
of the compliance organization had visited a total of 54 regional companies. The visits focused in
particular on those countries that are especially important for the success of the compliance
program due to their high business volume or existing corruption risks. Their top management
acted as compliance ambassadors and spoke at employee town hall meetings and with local
managers about the importance of compliance. These efforts paid off, because a worldwide
employee survey on compliance conducted in the summer of 2008 confirmed that their messages
have reached their employees.

Organizational Learning

Organizational Learning of Colombia's Cauca Valley

In 1968 and 1993, Cauca Valley could continuously improve its programme of pollution
reduction of effluents because, by using a process of attempt and making mistakes, it took into
account the opinions of the representatives from local companies when devising its strategies.
Learning by exploration took place when Cauca Valley corporation introduced a system of fees to
control the water pollution by companies of the region. Nowadays, pollution reduction
programmes run by this Colombian company are recognized by the World Bank as some of the
most effective in the world.

Organizational Learning of Dow Chemical

Dow Chemical in the USA annually publishes its Waste Elimination Idea Book. It contains the
main ideas and projects used in procedures of pollution reduction in one year. This book is
distributed to the various plants of the company in order to motivate discussion. The success of
the environmental management activities of this organization has to be attributed to its effort of
organizational learning, which focused on transferring knowledge to employees and the various
productive units.

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HR has a role in the pursuit of greener business practices; a role which could help to both save the
planet and recruit new employees.

Human resources (HR) has a role to play in building greener businesses. Its closeness to people
across departments makes it arguably the best-placed business function to introduce and enforce
greener working practices and change environmentally unfriendly behaviors. And while its scope
may be limited to managing the behaviors of people (as opposed to directing wider strategic or
operational policies), HR has a significant opportunity to contribute to the green movement. If
being green is not reason enough, the motivation to get involved might be driven by the fact that,
increasingly, people want to work for greener businesses.

HR is already involved in the development, training, re-training and behavioral management of

people, with the overall objective of improving business performance. It also has a role in
defining organizational policies, such as flexible working rules or codes of conduct. With these
competencies in mind, it is apparent that managing certain green policies from within HR could
be advantageous. Where an individual’s choice of behavior could impact the environment, HR
could play a role in defining policy. For example, HR could define instances where face-to-face
offsite meetings are necessary, or where video or web conferencing could be used as a greener
alternative.

A survey conducted in the US, which analyzed responses from 93 organizations from a range of
different industries, identified some commonly practiced green-friendly HR initiatives, including
encouraging online/tele-conferencing to reduce travel, and promoting the reduction of paper use.
The survey commented that “employee involvement in green programs dramatically increases
when organizations appoint an individual to lead the efforts”. Don Sanford, managing director of
Buck’s Communication, the company behind the survey, concluded that “there is still much more
that organizations can do”.

To go further, HR leaders could pursue green initiatives on a number of levels. For example, HR
could work with IT departments to define policies on the correct use of computer power
management systems, or promote the importance of turning off computers, printers and lights
when leaving the office. More widely, building green responsibilities directly into job
descriptions could provide a two-fold benefit; first ensuring green policies are explicitly part of
an employee’s responsibilities, and second, providing routes for employee feedback on ideas
which could help to improve environmental efficiencies. Employees who are familiar with their
own job roles may be best-placed to identify green opportunities and proactively suggest
improvements.

Increasingly, new recruits are likely to consider the green credentials of employers. If HR has a
vested interest in a company’s environmental practices, it could position the business as a more
attractive proposition to new talent. In this respect, being green could be strategically valuable to
tomorrow’s HR.

It is clear that whilst HR cannot always take the lead in an organization’s green approach, it could
work with decision makers to define and disseminate information and instructions to its people,
so that they can learn how to behave in more environmentally friendly ways. As well as
contributing to an important corporate social responsibility, this positive action could make the
company a more attractive employment proposition for new talent. If you work in HR, why not
ask yourself what role you could play in helping to save the planet.

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How to Create a Sustainable … Green … HR Function

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)

Once the organization establishes that social responsibility and sustainability is important to their
business strategy, they must define what this will mean to the company. Once this is defined, it
will need to be incorporated into the company’s vision, mission, values as well as touted in their
marketing materials, website, and all communication vehicles. No easy task here, but assigning
the deliverable to one job function actually makes quite a bit of sense.

The role would be highly visible and would have to form strong communication channels, both
internally and externally, so some good PR and platform delivery skills would be required. The
person filling the role will need to be a team player with an exceptional attention to detail.
Dealing with all the related functions to get the messages created and delivered will be
challenging enough, so a good team approach and an ability to influence others will be a must.

A sustainability officer need not have 100 years experience in that one industry, but should
understand the business as a business - possessing solid business acumen and be able to connect
the soft skill and process dots to hard dollars. Finance background is always good, but we know
most HR folks go into HR so they don’t have to deal with numbers all day long! (Side note here:
that perception sure is changing!)

Relating to finance, the sustainability officer will be responsible to identify the current carbon
footprint. While there are websites that can help you do this, such as www.carbonfootprint.com,
this also will take savvy communication and collaboration skills to interface with all functions
with in the organization. This is not a “nice to have” activity, it is the wave of the future and a
way for HR to align themselves more closely with the CFO and financial accountability.

Recently, it was reported that environmental costs and liabilities associated with preparing
environmental disclosure for Securities and Exchange Commission filings can be a complicated
process. Many publicly traded company operations are subject to multiple jurisdictional
requirements, from very local to international or supranational regimes, according to a Harvard
Law School Corporate Governance blog posting.

According to a memorandum by Betty M. Huber and Brianne Lucyk, certain new and proposed
changes to environmental accounting rules may affect current and near-term qualitative and
quantitative disclosure. The Financial Accounting Standards Board is looking for more footnote
disclosure about a company’s environmental liabilities. You want to score some significant green
points with the C-suite? Learn more about the new reporting laws and create ways to support
your CFO in this requirement. Then I would recommend a three-step process to recreate the HR
function, which includes recruiting and all of its processes.

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Evaluate

Does the company’s organizational culture, vision, mission, and values support social
responsibility? Organizational culture and values congruence is paramount the creation of a green
recruiting function. It continues to be abundantly clear that values not only create cultures, but
also support the alignment of personal values with organizational values on many different levels.
The amount of blogs that speak to values, personal evolution, and enlightenment is staggering.
This all feeds into the school of thought that today’s individuals are seeking experiences with
deeper meaning, deeper connectivity, and relational activity.

What is the company’s business proposition as it relates to being green? While sustainability is a
factor in building an employment brand and HR function of the future, it also applies to retention.
Organizations that are not implementing environmental policies or changing the way they’re
doing business may lose current employees to companies that have established themselves as an
eco-friendly company or offer socially responsible incentives. Some of these incentives include
subsidies for buying hybrid cars, on-site farmers’ markets, use of green fuels and solar power, or
the ability to donate reward monies to charitable causes. These are just some of the latest trends
in going green.

Eliminate

Using proven business process re-engineering, deploy steps to eliminate waste. Total Quality
Management and Continuous Quality Improvement are not just for Six Sigma companies. These
methodologies are accepted business practices even for the “soft” processes. When I was an
internal in Health Care, we deployed the Juran principles to the cycle time for filling vacancies
for our nursing positions. After forming a representative team of subject matter experts, we began
creating a process map which allowed us to all see the complicated steps that had been created in
this process. We worked together to eliminate redundancy, waste, and duplication of efforts. The
outcome was that the team reduced the cycle time for the vacancy rates by 60%! Trust me here,
you probably have a ton of practices that could use some dusting off and reinvention.

Process re-engineering related to being green might be a chicken and egg situation. When I was
investigating whether organizations go green to save money or for more esoteric reasons, I had a
conversation with a high level HR professional in the hospitality industry. She explained that her
organization did not go green for social consciousness, but more for the realized cost savings and
process improvement. That struck me as funny, as I travel so much and have always applauded
hotels that have implemented so many green approaches. Not that they don’t leverage their green
side, it was just not the impetus I expected for launching their sustainability efforts.

Include your leader in this exercise allowing them to see what needs to be cut and the potential
cost benefits from making the commitment.

Illuminate

Bring to life the new concepts, processes, and procedures and communicate them effectively.
Don’t allow for “green washing.” You cannot afford a misstep in this communication activity.
Focus on creating a congruent and authentic employment brand will help your organization

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attract, retain, and repel employees. Companies large and small are seeing a significant increase
in the ROI of their recruitment and retention programs by creating an employment brand. One
component of a significant employment brand is its green recruiting practices. This is not a
“flavor of the month” or a new concept. Fortune 500 companies have been doing it for years and
your organization might have the right stuff…you just might not be leveraging your green
practices and programs in your recruitment efforts.

Its impact on business and HR..

 Gaining Reputation, perception and goodwill.

 It’s economically useful has a direct impact on the profit and enhances the return on
investment.
 Better Power Utility.
 Low cost.
 Smarter Performance which translate into cheaper products.

ESSENTIAL GREENING ACTIVITIES FOR HR

1. Corporate Office Building

Greening the building means getting certified as a “GREEN BUILDING”. By this it can save
around 50% of all the energy consumed in the economy as it uses air conditioners and office
equipments.

Two bodies are set up with the help of UN for certification----

 LEED INDIA

 GRIHA

2. Separate Department

Having a separate department like “ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT TEAM” which

drive the green awareness both within and outside to as a social contribution.

Some practices can be:

 Mandating use of disposable paper

 Giving option of drinking coconut water in canteen instead of soft drinks
 Switching off the system at lunch time.
 Car pooling
 Using natural daylight instead of electricity

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3. Conduct a Research

Within the organization on consumption of resources like paper, newspapers, pen , photocopy
ink, that are subscribed by the organization and their disposable.

4. Create an Questionnaire “How to green our company”

And get it filled by the top management as it creates awareness at right place and amongs
right people.

5. Initiate Cleanliness Drive

Local news papers helps in initiation of cleanliness and educating underprivileged ones with
the help of volunteers

6. Increased recycling

7. Decreased printing

8. Elimination or reduction in the use of bottled water, plastic and Styrofoam cups

9. Using reusable grocery and lunch bags

10. Switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs and other energy saving and green
products

11. Changing transportation habits, including limiting car trips, carpooling, buying
hybrid cars, using mass transit, and biking or walking to work.

EXAMPLES OF PROUD COMPANIES

• Toyota
• Tata
• J C Atkinson and Son (Manufacturing)
• Carillion (Construction)
• Co-operative Financial Services (Financial Services)
• Pureprint Group (Printing and Publishing)
• Skanska UK (Construction)
• HBOS (Financial Services)

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• Loughborough Student’s Union (Education)

CONCLUSION

According to The Greening of HR Survey "green" initiatives that companies are utilizing
involving their workforce and human resource practices. Companies are incorporating and
working toward integrating a number of green practices. There are several areas for HR
practitioners to consider in the green space .

The various green programs followed by the companies are:-----

• Using the internet or teleconferencing to cut down on business travel

• Putting Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) or other company information online to reduce
printing

• Promoting the reduction of paper usage

• Implementing wellness programs around proper nutrition, fitness, and healthy living

• Offering opportunities for employees to "tele work" or work from home

• Ride/Share programs

Environmental responsibility a part of their organization’s mission statement and view the
promotion of social responsibility as the most critical objective of their green programs.

References

Harvard Business Review on green business strategy by Harvard Business School Press Books. 2007.

Human Resources Management by Wendell L. French, Hardcover.

Organizations, policy and the natural environment: Institutional and strategic perspectives By Hoffman, A.
J., & Ventresca, M. J. (Eds.). 2002. CA: Stanford University Press.

www.greenhrm.org

Human Resource Development Review , Human Relations Journal of Management ,Human Capital ,
International Journal of Training and Development , Indian Journal of Training and Development
Human Resource Management Journal ,Industrial Relations Journal

www.books.com , www.hrm.com , www.management.com ,www.hrmthejournal.com

www.managementjournals.com

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