Organizational Sustainability-Why the Need for Green HRM?

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of change when sustainability programs were implemented, in addition to the drivers of sustainability initiatives and organizational performance. The large, Asia-Pacific based professional services company where the study was undertaken had introduced a number of sustainability initiatives prior to this investigation. An employee survey concerning the company's sustainability program and change processes was conducted consisting of 70 questions. The sample comprised 2557 respondents representing every hierarchical level. Opportunity was also provided for open ended comments. Findings showed that while employee involvement, accountability, leadership support and commitment were important drivers of sustainability initiatives, they were perceived as lacking in this organization. Moreover, teams lacked the ability to change business practices and there was a lack of recognition and reward related to any sustainability improvements. The implications of the study are that, despite environmental sustainability being of great concern to employees personally, it did not translate to the corporate agenda, which was mainly focused on 'compliance'. This led to frustration amongst some employees who were undertaking sustainability initiatives at home but were unable to translate them to their workplaces, reportedly because there was an apparent absence of any sustainable leadership or promotion of any Green HRM initiatives in this organization. This value of this study is that it emphasises that, if senior management introduces sustainability initiatives without any attempt to embed them within company practice/client relationships, reward systems and more, they are likely to fail and attempts to introduce a circular economy need to be accompanied by 'Green HRM' policies and practices.