Conceptual Understanding of Green
Human Resource Management (G-HRM) initiatives by Organizations
ADITI SINGH
Email singhaditi503@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Green Human Resource Management (G-HRM) is a gracious
and inventive essential concept of an economy and
this paper is providing conceptual understanding of
Green HRM. It fulfills the need of the demanding economy for
sustainability. Green Human Resource is the implementation of HRM
policies to support
the sustainable use of resources
within the business organization. Objective of this
paper is to finding out the various greening activities
through saving the environmental effect adopted by various companies. It
examines the nature and extent of G-HRM successful initiatives undertaken by
few organizations in our country which had been observed as an increasing
awareness within business communities on the significance of going
green and adopting various environment management
techniques. Benefit and yield of
these Industries are setting well example for other
Industries in India. Green HRM will play an important role
in making the employees alert of and concerned for preservation of natural
resources, manufacture of eco-friendly products, by
adopting a holistic & integrated view of people exploring
alternative resources and contribute in pollution control and waste management
Keywords: Environment, Sustainability, HRM practices, Green HRM,
Industries, Corporate HR
INTRODUCTION
As per Bourne Creative
(2011), the term Green means color of life, renewal, nature, and energy. It is
associated with meanings of growth, harmony, freshness, safety, fertility, and
environment. The color of Green illustrate as money, finances, banking,
ambition, greed and jealousy. Verb Green considered as environmentalist,
conservationist, preservationist, nature-lover/ eco-activist. The New Oxford
Thesaurus of English (2000) presents several meanings such as I-verdant
(grassy, grass-covered, leafy, verdurous, rural) II- Pastoral (opposite:
barren); III- Environmental friendly; unripe; unseasoned; raw; inexperienced;
naive; vivid; and vigorous. Wehrmeyer (1996) edited a book named as ‘Greening
People: Human Resources and Environmental Management’ (as in Jackson, Renwick,
Jabbour, and Muller- Camen, 2011).
Our lifestyle both at
personal and professional level affecting the environment and affected by the
environment directly and indirectly that complete the cycle. The industries
have major important part of the solution to the environmental hazard. G-HRM is
to solve environmental issues and facilitate and generate green workforce that who
appreciate green culture in an organization.
We must aware about one famous business
phrase as business is the activity of Give and Take. Similarly we are
utilizing various resources from environment as a free gift, now it’s
individual and business responsibilities to give back to the environment. In business
planned steps can be well executed and spread across the team of people called
HR and the new process could be considered as Green HRM. If we explore
abundantly it will create situation of exploitation which also create scarcity
in future, then resources and relationship of human-resources will almost
vanish. If few resources will diminished it becomes so costly or not under
buying capacity. For eliminating many of the problems of future we must find
new ways to sustain the resources, prevent the place where we live, invent new
resources or lessen our habit for optimum utilization of resources.
OBJECTIVE
We can understand the
meaning of the Green through this paper. Main objective of this paper is to
understand behavioural pattern of individual resources and convert from
Employee to green employee. These includes electronic filling, car scooter
sharing, teleconferencing, online patterns rather than hard copy paper usage,
NO PAPER or LESS XEROX concept based on the example with industries adoption of
G-HRM practices.
With the principle of 3R-
Reducing waste, Reuse- repeated use of items, Recycle utilization of waste as
resources and products, recently added one more R as Recovery for Ecological sustainable business growth and adaptability.
The focus is now on conservation of energy and water, minimising greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions, carbon emission and recovering as waste management, improving
recyclability, maximising material conservation, and use of recycled material.
“Green HRM is the
use of HRM policies to promote the sustainable use of resources within
organizations and, more generally promotes the causes of environment
sustainability” (Marhatta & Adhikari, 2013). Green HRM depends on the
unique and identifiable patterns of green decisions and behaviours of HR
managers (Jackson, Renwick, Jabbour, & Muller-Camen, 2011).
Green HRM collaborates
with environment in few different ways as:
(a)
Preserve: existing resources saving
for future use especially water, petroleum, minerals, coals, plants etc. Habits
should be changed like optimum and less utilization of existed resources
(b) Avoidance/ Minimization:
By using HR practices we
would be able to reduce carbon footprint, with new habits we can change the
behaviour of human resource as setting of new beliefs which reducing all kind
of pollution (air, water, land, noise, radiation)
(c) Conserve: To protect non renewable resources through greening behaviour.
(d) Creation: Generation of
alternatives: finding new or
alternative resources for reducing resources like Bio Diesel, Solar Energy
instead of coal energy
(e) Environmental sustainability: it refers to the
policies, practices and systems that make employees of the organization green
for the benefit of individual, Society, natural environment and the business.
The purpose of Green HRM is to create, enhance and retain greening within each
employee of the organization so that individual can contribute maximum
GREEN
HRM PRACTICES
Lee (2009) defined 'green
management' as the exercise whereby companies develop an environmental
management strategy to manage the environment. Changing or altering the
company’s corporate culture, strategic
intent and underlying values support that related with sustainability
goals. Alteration should start from vision, mission, objectives and goal
setting of the all departments of organization. The culture and underlying
values will have to support each other in order to create a Green HRM functions
as:
I) Green Job Analysis:
a) To include environmental dimension in job
descriptions
b) Green competencies should be added as special component in job
specification
II) Recruitment
a) Environmental
sustainability messages include in procedures.
b) E-pattern of involvement
should enhance like e-resume, audio/video resume, web conferencing, soft
applications, portfolio sharing, biding/ payment on soft, virtual screen
sharing, online payments instead paper currency used etc.
c) Employer’s concern
should aware to maximum through recruitment efforts which enhances e-branding
of the organization.
III) Selection
a) Selection of the
applicants who aware, concern and
possessive about Greening activities
b) Extra grades, marks,
preference to Green Achievement of the employees or candidate.
IV) Induction:
a) New employee orientation should be with all green efforts of the
company.
b) Green club initiated in the company in which every new employee
should be registered as a Green member who take care about the organization as
well as create Green efforts for environment.
V) Training:
a) Greening KSA- knowledge, skills and Attitude of new as well as
existed employee would train towards greening
b) Green TNA- Green components
should be included in Training Modules.
VI) Performance Evaluation:
a) Performance of the employees
should connected with their green efforts
and green initiation
b) Feedback review should include the parameter for greening in the
department
c) Employee will get extra facilities/benefits who taken care for
sustainability components
VII) Rewards Management:
a) Financial and non financial rewards provided to those who perform
greening during job
b) Green trophies or rewards provided in a year for green employee
VIII) Discipline:
a) Formulation of rules and code of conduct related to green
b) Punishment for violating the green rules of the company
REVIEW
OF LITERATURE
Concept of G-HRM developed from
various aspects together as Green Marketing (Peattie, 1992), Green Management
in General (McDonagh and Prothero, 1997), Green Accounting (Bebbington, 2001),
Green Reatiling (Kee-hung, Cheng, and Tang, 2010) and ). According to Renwick
et al, (2008), the integration of corporate environmental management into human
resource management is termed as green HRM. It includes practices to reduce
carbon footprint and gain carbon credit in organizational outcomes. In
addition, some companies use teamwork and cross-functional teams as job design
techniques to successfully manage the environmental issues of the company (May
and Flannery, 1995; Florida, 1996; Clement, 1997; Palmer and Andrews, 1997;
Beard and Rees, 2000; Griffiths and Petrick, 2001; Daily and Huang, 2001;
Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004; Jabbour, Santos, and Nagano, 2010). There are
various researchers who support the HRM practices to be effective for promotion
human capital and results in providing to contributors of organizational
performance and competitive advantage (Boselie,2001). Green HRM depends on the
unique and identifiable patterns of green decisions and behaviors of HR
managers (Jackson, Renwick, Jabbour, & Muller-Camen, 2011). Deshwal (2015)
stated that Green Human Resources Management (Green HRM) is the use of HRM
policies to support the sustainable use of resources within organizations
(Deshwal, 2015).
METHODOLOGY
This paper is based on secondary
date from various available resources as research papers, latest news from media
channels and print media, books, journal, magazines, company websites,
analytical research industries reports.
This is defining as explanatory
paper not quantitative paper in which analytical tools are not utilizing. Major
focus based on combination of explicit and tacit knowledge and experiential
explanations of organizations. Though organization are utilizing and
implementing concepts of Green HRM but why the exploration and expansion of the
practices are very less? To find new ways of Green HRM refer to modern management
is the major concern as these practices are not certified yet. Different work
areas have to improve and invented innovative HRM areas.
Hypothesis: HRM practices need to
prepare modern concept of management with availability of resources without
affecting the existing flow of practices.
The scopes of Green HRM are huge for
but major limitation is with availability of knowledge and acceptability by
number of employees and employers. Individuals are not concerned and sensitize
about the crucial disappearing condition of various available resources
As this paper is based on secondary
data only so we can not identified the exact number of sample size. The various
study worked on Green HRM since 1997 to present we utilised the data of few of
the industries
PROBLEMS
TO ADOPT GHRM:
1. Adaptation time:
Changing the behaviour immediately of the employee is difficult in shorter span
of time.
2. Perception of Individuals: why I should go for this?
It disturbs my continuous working style? Is it deviates my comfort level? To
break these comfort are difficult without a big step.
3. Cost: Costly and high investment required to initiate and execution
of greening at initial stage
3. Difficult HRP: Sourcing, recruitment and selection of green
employees are a tough task.
4. Leading and Supervision: Green Leadership and Green Supervision
finding difficulties to prepare by HR department
5. Interest: De-motivation of employee in participating or promotion
of Green HRM practices in the organization.
6. Cultural patterns: Developing the culture of Green HRM in entire
organization is a burdensome and persistent process.
7. PAS: To assess the employees' behaviour is difficult to measure the
effectiveness of green HR practices any organization has to plan again for rewarding
and promoting employees.
8. Restructuring HR plans and Practices: HR professionals faced
various problems in terms of essential green (structures, processes, tools and
thinking) to find the best selection.
9. Reengineering required to create new quality standards for
measuring employees task.
10. Creation of green reward system: New award and reward system has to
create.
11. Organization design should includes new parameters
12. Need brainstorming for forming, storming and framing HR practices and
culture in the firm.
GREEN
PRACTICES: EXAMPLES
This should include on
various platforms as Individual, team, group, level, hierarchy, structure,
power, position, skilled unskilled criteria etc. few of generic habits to start
Green practices are mentioned below as:
●
Reporting to a relevant office regarding damages inside the
premises, possible harms to the environment.
●
Continuous drained water from tap in the washroom or pantry,
overflow water from tank, cooler drainage, excessive watering in the garden
●
Once you have done three times proofing then only print paper. Use
both sides of paper when Printing, writing, Xerox (which reduce electricity and
save trees)
●
Use natural water: chilled requires more electricity as well as
not good for health of human (reduce electricity consumption & prevent from
health issues)
●
Local transport and pool conveyance should adopted (reduce fuel
consumption and air pollution)
●
Don’t sleep or hibernating instead of shut down (reduce
electricity and air pollution)
●
Don’t switch on the lights where sufficient sunlight inside the
room
●
Keep natural plant in working area like Jade plant, African
Violet, peace lily,
●
Drain water of bottle water in the plants instead of pouring into
sink
●
Disposable utensils replaced with reusable utensils
●
If something rest after parties donate to NGOs who are
distributing to needy people
●
Influenced other to opt for off the lights, fans and air
conditioner when going out
●
Environmental Protection and Waste Minimisation is the
responsibility of every employee
●
All applicable Environmental Legislation and regulatory
requirements run and followed by the entire organization human capitals
●
Inside competition should organised based on Greening and Go Green
●
Social media awareness has to created by the employee and
employers of the firm
GREEN
PRACTICES ADOPTED BY FEW INDUSTRIES:
Khanna Papers Mills Ltd: The Indian Paper Industry is among
the top 15 global players today, with an output of more than 6 millions tones
annually. Paper Industry in India is riding on a strong demand and on an
expanding mood to meet the projected demand of 8 million tons by 2010 & 13
million tons by 2020. The prime consideration of Khanna paper mills is given to
the prevention of pollution and proper systems have been installed for the
eradication of waste and discharge which result from the manufacturing process
followed to produce paper. Factually recycling 1 ton of newsprint saves
about 1 ton of wood while recycling 1 ton of printing or copier paper saves
slightly more than 2 tons of wood.
Resources Saved Per Ton of Paper
Recycled: 17 trees, 275 pounds of sulphur, 350 lbs of limestone, 9,000 lbs of
steam 60,000 gallons of water, 225 kilowatt hours, 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space (Source: Khanna papers)
Harit
Moksha: This
unique CSR venture with Mokshda Paryavaran Evam Van Suraksha Samiti (Mokshda
PEVSS) has led to the development of an energy-efficient and environment
friendly wood based crematorium with a system called Mokshda Green Cremation
System (MGCS) which is capable of reducing wood consumption by 60% besides
minimizing air and water pollution in a significant manner. Now, there are 10
such MGCS units across the cities of Vadodara, Cambay, Ahmedabad and Delhi.
Going green makes strong business
sense, said management expert Michael Porter. As one of the key representatives
of India Inc, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) realised the potency
of those words more than a decade ago. In the summer of 2004, it unveiled the
CII-Godrej Green Business Centre (GBC) in Hyderabad-a public-private
partnership project between the Andhra Pradesh government, the Pirojsha Godrej
Foundation and CII, with technical aid from USAID. At the time GBC was India's
greenest building-the only structure outside the United States and the third in
the world to get a platinum rating, the highest level of certification for
environment-friendly buildings under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. So what has
this green power achieved? The building shows a 53 per cent saving in overall
energy use, 35 per cent saving in the use of potable water, and 80 per cent
usage of recycled and recyclable material. And that's just the tip of the
proverbial iceberg.
CII-
Godrej Green Business Centre:
Green Initiatives: 23.5 KW solar power units that caters to 20% of the
lighting requirements, Rainwater harvesting, recycling of waste water, Wind
towers installed on campus
Benefits:1.100 tonnes per year reduction
in CO2 emission, 55 % lower energy use. 20 to 30% reduction in potable water
consumption
(Source: indiatoday)
To encourage the movement, the
Ministry of Power and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency have come up with a
Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) programme for big energy consumers. The
government has identified 478 companies that together consume 75 percent of industrial
energy and given them targets to reduce energy consumption over a period of
three years
1.
Green Innovations:
new environmental initiatives, new solutions for waste reduction, pollution
reduction etc.
2.Green
Outcomes: number of
hours of working with natural light or minimum number of electricity bulbs,
amount of reduction of electricity consumption, amount of reduction of existing
level of inputs wastage, and degree of achievement of specific environment
performance targets.
Few more organization runs different
Green Practices and its positive effect are considered as:
Company
|
Green Practice
|
Impact
|
Infosys
|
New ERP system and cloud
implementation
|
85% in energy reduction
|
Smart meters
|
50% reduction in lighting
|
|
Nokia
|
Green operation and facilities
shifting from Air to ocean transport
|
Reduction in volatile compound by
40%
|
Introduced energy efficient
chargers AC-20 & AC-50
|
80% reduction in CO2. Reduction in
no load consumption by 73%
|
|
ITC
|
Manufacturing and freight
management
|
Reduction in CO2 from 15,63,526
ton to 14,74, 558 ton
|
Waste management
|
99.8% waste is recycled
|
|
Water management
|
Fresh water intake reduced from
3645 L/unit to 3495l/unit
|
|
Lufthansa Group
|
Active noise production
|
Reduction of 18,000 ton of
CO2/year
|
eFLY Campaign
|
2mn paper saved
|
|
Airport eMOVE
|
Reduction in CO2 and noise
pollution
|
|
Coco Cola
|
Up Gradation of 30 air handlers
|
Reduction of CO2 by 650
metric ton
|
Energy management devices
|
Reduction of 3.1 mn metric ton of
CO2
|
(International Journal of Management
and Social Science Research Review, Vol.1, Issue.8, Feb - 2015. Page 67 )
SCOPE
a) It stimulates innovation
and facilitating growth, improvement in
quality and enhancement of new methods in the processes
b) It provides competitive
advantage to the company in industry/market. With increasing global issues,
many organizations are becoming cautious of their active impact over the
environment
c) It helps in capable use
of resources and manages risks more effective
d) It reduces the cost of
the company (by reducing wastage and optimum utilization)
e) It helps in building
company image to catch the attention of effective human resource
f) It also used as
marketing strategy
g) It improves relationship
of the company with its stakeholders- customer, suppliers, shareholder, Govt.
Agencies and employees
h) It develops green
learning environment in the organization
ANALYSIS
Initiative taken by govt. of India (MCA) regarding Indian
corporate’s to promote green HRM.
1. GreenCo' rating
companies based on their environmental performance across few parameters,
including energy efficiency, water conservation, use of renewable energy and
waste management.
2. Overall, being a
green employer may help to increase:
a) Employee motivation and engagement (through shared set of
values)
b) Create competitive advantage from the opportunities presented by changing
markets.
c) Reduce labor turnover
d) Improve the health of the workforce (by encouraging cycling
to work, car sharing, and public transport, gym facility, games etc).
e) Reducing carbon footprint: Example in ACC, carbon footprint more than 33%
since 1990, and as per its Low Carbon Technology Roadmap, this will further
reduce by 20% by 2040.
f) Rooftop rainwater harvesting projects: water consumption
reduces by 40%.
g) Energy-efficient technology, example- KBL- Kirlosker Brothers Ltd. Dewas
plant has reduced specific energy consumption by 30% in the last five years. It
has put in place rooftop rainwater harvesting projects. This has helped the
Dewas plant reduce water consumption by 40% over the last five years and become
a zero water discharge facility for the last 15 years. According to KBL
officials, 45% of all power consumption at Dewas is wind energy and the
facility has cut down carbon dioxide emission by 10% in the last five years.
h) Wind energy: as per the example one plant energy utilization decrease can be
45 per cent of all power consumption also cut down carbon dioxide emission by
10 per cent min. in five years.
LIMITATIONS OF GREEN HRM
1. It is difficult to alter
the behaviour of employees in a short span of time
2. Not every employee is
equally motivated to participate in the promotion of Green HRM practices in the
organization
3. It is difficult to
measure the effectiveness of Green HR practices in employees’ behaviour
4. Sourcing and
recruitment of Green employees with quality talents is a challenging task
5. Developing the
culture of Green HRM in entire organization is a burdensome and persistent
process
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Green Printing- In printing industry wherein all 3R-recyclling,
reusing, and reducing are done to lower the number of resources used for
printing and advertising
This method involves the
use of low-VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) inks, recycled paper,
energy-efficient computers and equipment, remanufactured laser toner
cartridges and ink cartridges for printers, paperless information
dissemination and attempts to educate the public on green printing
2. Green design for
payroll and Taxation forms
3. Green
manufacturing and disposal of staff ID card. Few companies uses ‘Ribbon
Only Replacement’ card which used less or no plastic
4. Reduce commuting: many work of one place should done at one
time
5. Buying green
products for professional and personal use majorly Biodegradable products
6. Implement green
manufacturing processes
7. Implement green
policies
8. Green building:
An airy atrium, cubicle-free open workspaces, terrace gardens & intelligent
lighting and cooling systems that get activated only when needed. The gardens
and ample
open spaces are lined
with native species of trees and plants, and it requires less water and
maintenance
9. No use of plastic
bags inside the organization.
10. Disposable replaced
by steel or glass in the canteen
11. Utilizing the solar
energy instead of electronic energy
12. Cloud computing
instead of print material
13. Organization can gift
plants to employees on Birthday, Anniversary, festival or in foundation day
to their employees which not only save environment but also create emotional
bonding and better team spirit
14. Celebrate Employee Day- in which employee may tell about their
green experience on monthly or quarter basis, which also motivates others to
celebrate and share their green efforts
15. Linking of
performance with green efforts of employees either direct or indirect methods
16. Using of Electric vehicle rather Petroleum fuel
based vehicle that will save huge amount of petroleum as well as impacting less
pollution to the environment
17. Solar products
utilization: maximum use of solar product like solar cooker, solar plates for
rickshaw, geysers, lights or producing electricity
18. LED or CFL instead
of regular electrical equipments reduces the consumption of energy
19. Green Award & Green
Recognition certificates to finding new ways of Greening in the
organization
20. Construction,
building design, Interior redesigning in the way to reduce carbon emission
CONCLUSION
As per the objective of this paper
is to understand behavioural pattern and change from Employee to green
employee. After reading many philosophers efforts and hypothesis that Green HRM
is not only concept though it is a deep
practice for developing and sustaining the organization by the cumulative
efforts of HRM as well as employer-employee combined relationships. How
employee can be a green employee with various practices of Green HRM as green
job analysis, Greening practices of recruitment and selection, induction and
training includes green components, performance evaluation includes parameters
of greening, rewards based on greening, few discipline also included voluntary
as well as compulsory. This also proved
by various organizations experimentation into their practices and industries
not only in India but major countries of the world. Green HRM is not on limited
to few habits of HR department but this also includes technological advancement
in that level where we will not harm to environment and can earn best profit
and practices. To bring Green and sustainability into companies vision and
mission
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