The pressure is on for HR directors to toe the line and place green policies at the heart of their business, says Gareth Chick, HR director of Spring Partnerships.

There is no escaping it, companies are under great pressure at the moment to go green; to prove they are socially responsible, environmentally friendly and are doing everything possible to reduce their carbon footprint.

A recent report from Reed Employment, of over 6,000 jobseekers, suggested that jobseekers are looking for socially responsible companies and, according to a new report from the Graduate Recruitment Company, a third of graduates want to work for ‘green’ companies.

But the pressure to go green is putting a major strain on HR professionals and they need to think carefully before jumping on the environmental band wagon as there is a danger of a green back-lash, with new policies being seen as mere PR stunts. So how should HR professionals address this very new dilemma?

HR professionals already face the classic situation whereby their commercial colleagues only really get behind people management and cultural change processes when their day-to-day business pressures allow – which is not often!

HR is often seen as the people fixers – filling vacancies, managing disciplinary processes, arranging technical training for frontline staff, fixing problem managers and so on, leaving the line managers to focus on bringing home the bacon.

So many of the senior HR executives can often face a continual battle to persuade their commercial colleagues that if they only used the existing HR processes professionally, and with a modicum of skill, the results would look after themselves.

Green objectives at the heart of management culture

So if it wasn’t hard enough for HR guys getting commercial, ‘real world’ operators to focus on people, now the company also has to be green.

Commercial managers have come to believe that leading and managing people well (using the HR processes and practices designed by their professional colleagues) is not simply a nice thing to do when we’ve got time, it is the way we achieve exceptional results. When the pressure is on we need to accelerate and increase the focus on people, not put it on hold.

And so it is with green issues – if a company is genuinely going to be ‘green’, it must devise strategies, practices and processes to achieve pre-set green objectives, and then put these at the heart of line management culture and practice.

However, the media and the pressure groups might well be ready to passionately advocate green agendas, but is the business world?

And who will be the champion? The risk is that it will be the marketing director, who will announce one day that the time has come for the company to win external PR by ‘going green’ – or at least being seen to do so. Actually the opportunity is there for HR, but are HR professionals ready to take up the challenge?

If so, here are a few tips on what you can do:

• Set one over-riding, clear, ambitious green goal for the business.




• Put a commensurate target for cost saving or additional profit against the achievement of this target.




• Put qualitative benefits in as bonuses – customer PR, employee attraction and retention, quality standard improvement, and so on.




• Design some simple outline processes for how the goal will be achieved.




• Match the processes and the results to existing HR processes so that commercial colleagues can see the link.




• Don’t ask for upfront or ‘pump-priming’ investment – show how the goal can be achieved with existing resource.




• Set up live examples with employees of how they are capable of doing two things at once – focusing on the green agenda whilst also looking after customers or achieving sales results.

Following this, HR should then prepare themselves for a battle that they are already well used to – the constant cajoling, encouragement, pleading, inspiring of commercial colleagues to lead by example and to ensure that their actions and conduct matches their words.

Gareth Chick is from Spring Partnerships, a business consultancy focusing on HR strategies and employee development.