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.
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.
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.
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 companys way of doing business and a basis for both the
organizations corporate and employer brand.
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.

Green hrm helps in following activities

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

Recruiting & Selection

Green Recruiting
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 oldschool 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.

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 companys 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.
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.

Evaluate
Does the companys 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 todays individuals are seeking experiences with
deeper meaning, deeper connectivity, and relational activity.
What is the companys 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 theyre
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
3

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 dont 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.
Dont 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
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 stuffyou 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.
Its 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

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)

Loughborough Students 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 organizations 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