Using HRM Practices to Encourage Environmental Sustainability in the Workplace Recently, organisations have been coming under increasing pressure to address environmental issues and to improve their environmental performance (Ramus & Steger 2000) . For example, in many industrialised nations, the government has set legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over both the short and long terms, informed by the Paris Agreement. Authors (e.g. Rimanoczy & Pearson, 2010) have suggested that human resource management (HRM) practices can support organisations in reaching sustainability goals and as such HRM practitioners have a key role to play in developing strategies for this purpose. One area where HRM strategies could be important in delivering organisational improvements

Question

is using interventions throughout an employee’s life cycle in an organisation – for example by selection individuals who are committed to the environment, or using induction programs that focus on pro-environmental behaviour. In a recent survey by Zibarras and Ballinger, 2011 organisations surveyed used ‘recruitment and selection criteria that recognise environmental behaviour/commitment’ at least sometimes as a method of encouraging employees to be pro- environmental in the workplace. However, this was ranked 14th out of 17 different HRM practices used in the organisations surveyed.

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

For
? Pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours would be relatively easy to assess
using traditional selection methods. For certain organisations – particularly those
concerned with environmental issues – these attitudes and behaviours represent
criteria that could be important predictors of both job-person and person-
organisation fit.
? Jabbour and Santos (2008) outline a number of important ways in which HRM
practices can support an organisation’s environmental performance and suggest
that recruitment and selection are crucial in supporting the ‘green’ initiatives.
? Not only can recruitment practices cultivate a greener workforce, organisations
adopting green HRM practices can benefit from attracting a wider pool of high-
quality candidates. For example, a UK survey found high-achieving graduates
consider an organisation’s environmental performance and reputation when
making decisions for job applications (CIPD, 2007).
? Similarly a number of studies have found that job seekers are attracted to
organisations with good green credentials (e.g. Aiman-Smith et al, 2001;
Backhaus et al, 2002; Behrend et al, 2009).

Against
? The case could be made that it is more appropriate to train employees to develop
pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour than to select employees on the basis
of them.
? The use of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours as criteria in high-stakes
selection could be difficult to defend if challenged legally.
? By the same token, pro-environmental criteria could rather be incorporated in to
the appraisal process, with the aim of developing pro-environmentalism in
employees.
? Pro-environmentalism might only be relevant in certain organisations, such as
Greenpeace.