According to a report from Lancaster University’s management school, today the HR director forms part of the “golden triangle” in the boardroom, along with the CEO and the finance director.
For the finance department, every move made will reflect the present state of the company, from releasing funds to hire more staff when business is buoyant, to cutting back on bonuses when stormy waters lay ahead.
In the same way, as HR increases its profile in the boardroom, there is a need for this division to be more aligned with corporate agendas, and one agenda that is racing up the priority list for businesses across Britain and the rest of the world is an environmental one.
Having a policy on the environment and a strategy to bring down carbon footprint has gone from being a ‘nice to have’ to vitally important to business success, and there is a huge role for HR to play in ensuring that the people within organisations and companies walk the walk, as well as talk the talk. Business leaders are well aware that customer loyalty is no dependent on corporate vision as well as quality of product and strength of brand.
Here are five key areas that human resources teams have the power to influence and align a corporate vision to cut carbon emissions and reduce environmental impact with HR practice:
The company car scheme is one of the hottest topics in the workplace, and still has a massive impact on loyalty and motivation at work. However, HR teams need to make sure they work closely with the fleet manager to make sure they are striking a balance between offering quality cars and reducing impact on the environment. Introducing hybrid vehicles into a fleet can dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, and increase profile of a ‘green-focused’ business.
Bike to work schemes remain popular in company benefit programmes and basically mean that employees have the tax-efficient option to fund a bike as a means to go between home and work. Obviously the bike is far more ‘green’ than most modes of transport, but not always applicable for companies outside cities.
Getting online is not just the job of then IT department, HR is an admin-heavy department, and having a policy in place to that ensures all correspondence is online rather than printed out would certainly help pull HR in line with an overall environmental policy. One area to target immediately would be pay slips and reward statements, both of these can go online very easily, saving paper in the process.
Having a flexible working policy can also be a good way for HR to align itself with the green values of the organisation. Working from home and making good use of modern technology (Skype and email) to communicate with colleagues can have a massive impact on the amount of electricity used at the workplace.
From an HR point of view, flexible working is straight forward to implement, and requires a clear policy on when and where it is appropriate, though many businesses have been running flexible work and ‘hot desking’ for many years with great success.
Carbon credits allow workers to offset their own carbon footprint, and often this is something that comes under the employee benefits, and therefore HR, banner. Under these tax-friendly schemes, employees can calculate their own impact on the environment and make contributions to reduce them. Under some schemes, employees can build up a bank of credits which are then converted to cash and used to off-set carbon emissions by investing in the planting of new trees, for instance.
Debbie Hunt is business centre manager at car manufacturer, Lexus.
