An Overview of Green Human Resource Management Practices

Abstract

Generous growth in the economy and the extensive utilization of regular assets has become a matter of concern in the advanced world. As a result, Green Human Resource Management (Green HRM) practices has gained importance in research area. This paper discusses the concept of green HRM practices and some of the popular initiatives adopted by the organizations, in general, towards achieving the environmental sustainability. This paper also highlights some of the green HRM initiatives taken by the Taj Group of Hotels, Resorts and Palaces. The required data for this study were collected from various research papers and websites.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

Green Human Resource Management (Green HRM) is a set of practices of using human resource management policies in order to promote the sustainable use of resources within the business organizations and thereby promoting the cause of environmental sustainability. Green HRM encompasses all such activities those are aimed at helping an organization to carry out its programmes for promoting environmental sustainability like reducing its carbon footprint in boarding areas,  acquisition of human resources, their induction, performance appraisal, training and development and pay and reward management. In other words, only effective implementation of green HRM within the organization enables these events to take place. These practices certainly help in boosting employee morale, refining employee attitude and behaviour within the organization.

Looking at it from a different perspective, Green HRM is the integration of various human resource practices to manage environment in a better way. For maintaining organizational sustainability every organization uses green practice in their manufacturing process, creates environment friendly products and services for society.  Now, the alignment of the organizational goal of business sustainability with human resource management practices can be referred to as Green HRM. Adoption of the policies like less paper work by switching over to mail communication, holding e-meetings, imparting e-training, conducting interviews through video conferencing, encouraging employees to switch off lights and computers when they are not in use are the few examples of green HRM practices. Through these environment friendly human resource practices knowledge capital of employees can be developed which will also be helpful to the employees for their career development as well as long term sustainability of the organization.

In this backdrop, the present study is an attempt to critically discuss various popular green HRM practices adopted by the companies and the challenges faced by them in implementing those practices from the light of the existing theoretical and empirical research done by the scholars in this field. It also examines some of the green HRM practices adopted by some selected companies from Indian hospitality sector.

II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Renwick, D. et. al. (2012) found that understanding of how green HRM practices influence employee motivation to become involved in environmental activities is important. They observed that organizations are not using the full range of green HRM practices and this may limit their effectiveness in establishing sustainable business environment.

Marhatta and Adhikari (2013) highlighted the policies and practices of green HRM for sustainable use of resources within the business organizations and thereby promoting the cause of environmental sustainability.

Opatha and Arulrajah (2014) were of the opinion that Green HRM is the use of policies, practices, and systems in the organization that make green employees for the benefit of the individual, team, society, natural environment, and the organization.

Wei & Yazdanifard (2014) concluded that individual motivation is said to be the key driver for in-role and extra-role behaviours of the employees and as such it would be expected that individual motivations for each of these types of behaviours is likely to be conflicting.

Yusliza, Ramayah & Othaman (2015) concluded that the human resources are the most important assets of an organization in managing the employees. The modern human resource managers have to shoulder additional responsibility of integrating the green human resource philosophy in corporate mission statement along with human resource policies. They were of the opinion that putting green human resource efforts in an organization lead to increased efficiencies, cost reduction, employee retention, improved productivity and other tangible benefits. The green HR policies and practices also establish environmental, social and economic balance.

Mehta, K. and Chugan, P. K. (2015) reported that the sense of environmental sustainability generated increased concern among business executives, governments, consumers, and management scholars. In spite of the challenges faced by the stakeholders from environmental concerns, green HRM functions gain importance in ongoing discussions and debates. In their opinion, the business world feels the genesis of Green HRM with the expanding role of the HRM functions in quest of environmentally sustainable businesses.

Gunasekare, D. U. (2016) reported that green initiatives incorporated within the HRM perspectives support the mission of creating green environment and further create a domain of knowledge for the researchers in promoting consciousness towards the environment. The purpose of his study was to explore the green human resource management practices from the light of existing theoretical and empirical research done by the scholars in this field.

Tulasi Das, V. and Sreedhar Reddy, B. (2016) studied perceptions of employees from insurance and banking sectors regarding green HRM practices and its correlation with employees’ demographic factors. The result of their study revealed that Employees’ perceptions on Green HRM practices were significantly influenced by the Education of the respondents.

Ayeswarya, R. B. (2017) observed the impact of green HRM practices on organizations from banking sector. The result showed that the important factors of the green HRM practices are green recognition factor, training factor, recruiting factor, resource conservation factor, encouraging factor and eco-friendly manufacturing factor.

Kanapala, P. K. and Battu, N. (2018) studied the impact of green HRM practices on employee performance from health sector. The results revealed that the Green HRM functions like green recruitment, green performance management and appraisal, green training and development, green employee relations and green pay and rewards had a moderate effect on employee performance.  

Zubair, D. S. and Khan, M. (2019) were of the opinion that to ensure the world being remaining a good place to live in, environment friendly policies should be implemented. Both public and private organizations have to contribute significantly in ensuring a greener environment by integrating different basic environment friendly initiatives in their business plans and operations.

Mukherjee, S. et. al. (2020) observed that over the last few decades, many environmental issues have emerged, the government of various nations have directed the industries and organizations to focus on environmental management program vis-a-vis their business operations.

Suharti, L. and Sugiarto, A. (2020) observed that, at the organizational level, implementation of green HRM can result into creation of environment friendly organizational culture and work climate, increased efficiency of various resources, the formation of a positive corporate image and enhanced economic performance.

III. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

Objective of the Study is to discuss some popular green HRM practices adopted and implemented by the organizations with a view to promote the ideology that it is important for proper alignment of human resource management principles with the objectives of green management. The study also highlights adoption and implementation of various green HRM practices by the Taj group of Hotels, Resorts and Palaces. It is a descriptive method based on the existing literature on this subject.

IV. POPULAR GREEN HRM PRACTICES

In this section, discussion has been made on some common green HRM practices generally adopted by the organizations in order to establish environmental sustainability. These include:

1. Green Recruitment / Selection: Green recruitment can be defined as the process of hiring individuals with knowledge, skill, approaches and behaviours that goes with the environmental management systems within an organization. Recruitment practices helps in establishing effective environmental management by making sure that new entrants are familiar with the organization’s environmental culture and are capable of maintaining its environmental values. Another dimension of green recruitment, selection and job analysis is the green employers’ interest in achieving the environmental goals and how the potential job seekers perceive them on the parameters of sustainability as they claim. For example, inclusion of green job descriptions, eco-friendly locations, paper less interviews and such other practices in their recruitment portfolio, new recruits are being made aware with the environmental policies and adherence of the company at the commencement of the job itself etc. Often environmental dimensions and green competencies are included as components of job specification.
2. Green Performance Appraisal: Integration of environmental performance into performance management systems by the human resource managers can safeguard environment management against any damage. Installation of corporate wide environmental performance standards and green information systems and audits can give useful data on environmental performance.  Performance appraisal is considered to be the most important aspect of performance management. An effective performance appraisal system provides useful feedback to employees and support continuous improvements in the firms’ environmental outcome.
3. Green Training, Development and Orientation: Green training and development programmes help to educate employees of the organization in spreading the awareness about green practices in the industry and also train them in work methods suitable for conservation of energy, reduction in wastages of scarce resources. This will also provide opportunity to the employees to take part in environmental problem solving as well as devising new methods of reducing workplace environmental pollutants and hazards especially in chemical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and service sectors like hotels and hospitals. Thus, orientation / induction programme in such industries include familiarizing the entrants with the greening effort of the organization and developing modules for them that will help in developing green citizenship behaviour in future.
4. Green Compensation and Reward: The effectiveness of green rewards and compensation can be best felt in case of firms operating in high polluting industries. Firms having eco-friendly ambiance contribute more than non-eco-friendly firms. In long-run, companies with green rewards and compensation mechanism can produce greater pollution prevention success. By incorporating green compensation programme, managers can promote the green behaviours among the employees. Green rewards include the of use workplace and lifestyle benefits that ranges from carbon credit offsets to distributing free bicycles to the employees so that they can be engaged in the green agenda of the company while contributing.
5. Green Relations with Employees: It is evident that individual empowerment positively influences productivity and performance, and enhances self-control, individual thinking and problem solving abilities of the employees. Inviting suggestions from the employees from top to bottom level can broaden the scope of employee relations within the organization wherein they can get the opportunity to contribute something for the company. This practice helps in creating greater awareness on green issues besides new ideas for eco-friendly practices. Companies often give grants to its employees and their families to encourage them to get involved in local environmental project. Supportive behaviours from supervisors towards employees encourage employees to give possible solutions to environmental problems. Publishing rules of conduct related to greening of workplace and developing progressive disciplinary system to punish employees who violate the rules of green conduct are the other practices to mention under this initiative.
6. Green Building: It has become a trend-setting phenomenon that the organizations all over the world these days are noticeably opting for green building as their workplaces and offices instead of traditional offices. Green buildings reduce the exploitation of natural resources that are utilized in their construction.
7. Green Welfare Practices: Now these days, in many organizations, the concept of health, safety and welfare of employees have been changed to health, safety and environmental management. Management of these organizations put continuous effort to reduce stress occupational disease and hazards at work place. 
8. Paperless Office: Paperless office is a work place where the use of paper is either restricted or eliminated by converting important official documents and other papers into automated workflows. Even few years ago most of the office works were managed on paper, but with invention and advancement of information technology, the consumption of paper has been reduced. With the advent of e-business and learning, most of the offices, now these days, have been converted into paperless offices.
9. Conservation of Energy: The human resource managers of organizations often undertake campaigns whereby the employees are asked to turn off computers, TVs, lights etc. when they are not in use. To use 100% renewable energy, solar lights are installed in organizations. Some organizations emphasize upon car sharing and increased use of public transport as being part of their travel policy to conserve energy.
10. Recycling of Waste: The method of processing used up materials (waste) into new and useful products is called recycling. This process reduces the use of raw materials that would have been otherwise available for production of new products. Thus, this practice has the potential of saving energy in considerable quantity, reducing the amount of waste that is thrown into the dustbins and thereby producing greener and cleaner environment with fresher air.

V. INSTANCES OF GREEN HRM PRACTICES IN TAJ HOTELS, RESORTS AND PALACES

1. Taj hotels resorts and palaces has launched EARTH (environment awareness and renewal at Taj Hotels), a movement towards minimizing the impact of its businesses on environment.
2. The hotel follows green practices conforming to green global standards to ensure a brighter tomorrow for future generations. The initiatives under this practices include environmental training for all employees, energy audit at frequent intervals, phased reduction of fresh water consumption etc.
3. Kitchen waste and dry leaves are converted into fertilizers
4. Waste papers from printing is reused as writing pads
5. Pipe, steel waste is used as safety railings or in barricades
6. Linen bags and cotton napkins being made by reusing old bed sheets
7. Taj hotels use energy efficient lights which consume significantly less energy
8. Taj Coromondal, Chennai generates energy from wind mills
9. Solar Water heating systems at the Taj West End, Bangalore saves quite a significant quantity of fuel
10. A biogas plant at Rambagh Palace, Jaipur also helps in cutting energy cost
11. Located in a sensitive ecological zone, the Taj Exotica, Maldives restricts the use of plastic bags and hazardous substances such as lead acid batteries are sent to Thilafushi Island, a landfill allocated for rubbish disposal.
12. The Taj Coral Reef, located on a tropical island takes excessive care to protect the delicate eco-system of the coral reefs. These are planted near the beach and extraction of sand from the beach is prohibited.
13. At Lake Palace Udaipur, which stands at the centre of the famous Pichola Lake, the authority takes care to avoid polluting the lake water and damaging its marine life. They use battery operated boats instead of those powered by gasoline and waste water is recycled and used for irrigation.
14. The Taj Garden Retreat at Kumarakom is located near the Vembanad Lake and the Kumarakom bird sanctuary which is a favourite haunt of numerous species of migratory birds. So, the hotel uses special lighting to reduce the brightness so that the animal life doesn’t get disturbed and waste water is also treated before being discharged.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to provide a knowledge how green HRM practices can help employees to take positive steps towards establishing green environment. Green HRM includes all such initiatives taken by the organizations that can be productive towards reducing its carbon footprint. This is only possible by the effective implementation of green HRM within the organization like green recruitment of human resources, their orientation towards maintaining environmental sustainability, green performance appraisal system, green training and development process and green pay and reward management. It is evident from various studies that adoption and implementation of green HRM practices create a sense of belongingness amongst the individuals towards the organization resulting into improved employee attitudes and behaviours within and outside the organizations. Green HRM practices enhance corporate image and brand. It creates a sense of concern amongst the employees towards preservation of natural resources, contributing towards pollution control, waste management and manufacturing / rendering of eco-friendly products / services. The present study also highlights some initiatives adopted by Taj Group of Hotels, Resorts and Palaces towards implementing green HRM practices.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2022 Dr. Basab Kumar Sil. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.