HR's role in promoting sustainability

 

Workers have a critical role in the growth and success of an organization. It follows that treating these internal stakeholders properly, equitably, and ethically is crucial.

The implementation of sustainable and ethical human resource policies, along with their transparent disclosure and daily execution, are crucial for a company's various stakeholders. Internal stakeholders, employees, and their overall well-being and satisfaction are all impacted, as are external actors. Additionally, a company's reputation and image are positively impacted by transparent S-HRM.

"Under this framework, the primary functions of Sustainable HRM are to enhance the economic, ecological, and social sustainability of business organizations as well as to increase the sustainability of HRM systems in general. (Cohen et al. 2012; Ehnert and Harry 2012; Ehnert et al. 2014; Wilkinson et al. 2001).”

Key Sustainable HRM Practices

he concept of sustainable HRM as a complement to the main principles of strategic HRM used since the 1980s, while De Lange and Koppens (2007) in De Prins et al. (2014) distinguished sustainable HRM from the mainstream HRM. De Prins et al. (2014) further presented a model based on three characteristics that can be assigned to Elkington’s (1994) three Ps of sustainability (people, planet, profit) and used the abbreviation ROC, consisting of the words R = respect, O = openness and C = continuity. According to these authors, the sustainable HRM concept has the following characteristics: respect—restoring respect and consideration for the internal stakeholders in the organization, i.e., employees; openness—environmental awareness and HRM perspective from the outside; and continuity—a long-term approach to economic and social aspects and with regard  to the employability of the individual.

Employee centric HR practices for sustainability

Organizational structure, procedures, and strategies have also been emphasized in a number of recent studies, such as Roper et al. (2020), as significant elements affecting internal stakeholders, employees, and influencing many S-HRM features. For instance, Richards (2020) recommends a corporate sustainable practices strategy that is employee-centric as opposed to employer-driven. The adoption of a sustainable corporate approach is the main focus . This entails creating coherent HRM strategies that are converted into sustainable HRM systems, where these strategies call for new employment connections.

Three distinct conceptualizations of employees with respect to the sustainability agenda were found when approaches to sustainable human resource management (HRM) were compared: employees as a force for sustainability, employees as consumers of HR practices, and employees as members of a community. Only in the organisations where an effort had been made to address all three responsibilities at the same time were strong levels of integration between the HRM and sustainability agendas evident. The results point to the importance of employees' responsibilities as consumers of HR practices and members of larger communities,

 suggesting that embracing a sustainability agenda broadens the purview of the HRM function.
Through discussing how HRM may be integrated with a sustainability agenda, this article assists practitioners in identifying the diversity of responsibilities played by employees and the range of needs that go along with them. There are examples of practice and policy initiatives that successfully meet these needs given.

Human resource management (HRM) has faced significant criticism for prioritising shareholder value over the demands of other stakeholders, such as employees. The results of this study indicate that a sustainability agenda's holistic approach can successfully allay these worries. Akmal,Edgar, Everett, (2022)

References

• Cohen, Elaine, Sully Taylor, and Michael Muller-Camen. 2012. Rep. Society for Human Resource Management. HRM’s Role in Corporate Social and Environmental Sustainability. Available online:
  

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Corporate-Social-Environmental-Sustainability.pdf

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• Podgorodnichenko, N., Akmal, A., Edgar, F. and Everett, A.M. (2022), "Sustainable HRM: toward addressing diverse employee roles", Employee Relations, Vol. 44 No. 3, pp. 576-608. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2019-0016

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