HR As Gardener: Growing a Sustainable Organization

“Sustainability” is a buzzword that seems to be appearing everywhere these days. It’s especially prominent when commentators talk about the environment, climate change, and the need to be “greener.” Given that, it might be tempting for HR leaders to think, “I’ve done my bit. We recycle; our offices have those light bulbs that look like curly fries; we’ve decreased our carbon footprint.”

But sustainability is much more than concern for the environment. And it’s critical for HR leaders to be involved at every level as companies seek to become sustainable.

Sure, sustainability developed from the environmental movement of the 1960s (Edwards, 2005). But the concept began taking on much more meaning with the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, according to Andres Edwards, author of The Sustainability Revolution. Edwards sees that conference as the first time environmental concerns were tied to economic and business issues that included “growth, development and employment” (Edwards, 2005).

Since then, the concept of business or corporate sustainability has been expanded to touch almost every aspect of a company, both inside and out. Andrew Savitz and Karl Weber, authors of The Triple Bottom Line, define sustainability as “a unified way of addressing a wide array of business concerns about the natural environment, workers’ rights, consumer protection and corporate governance, as well as the impact of business behavior on broader social issues, such as hunger, poverty, education and human rights – and the relationship of all these to profit” (Savitz & Weber, 2006, p. xii).

Overlay HR’s five key knowledge areas as outlined by the Human Resource Planning Society onto that definition, and the critical role HR can play becomes clear. Those five knowledge areas are “HR strategy and planning, leadership development, talent management, organizational effectiveness, and building a strategic HR function” (Wirtenberg, Harmon, Russell & Fairfield, 2007, p. 11). HR professionals can make a “strong contribution [in the area of] organizational development, especially for their facilitation and conflict management skills, change management, cultural change, and alignment of human resource and other systems and processes” (Wirtenberg et al., 2007, p. 11).

“It turns out that the key players in the greening of corporations aren’t necessarily top management or the environment departments. It’s the human resource folks, the department responsible for hiring, training, enhancing morale and productivity, limiting job turnover, and helping firms increase performance and improve business results,” says Joel Makower,co-founder and executive editor of Greener World Media, Inc. (Makower, 2007). Makower also serves as a consultant to GreenOrder, a sustainability strategy firm, and is a Batten Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business.

There is some empirical evidence to support this. In-depth interviews with nine large, public, multinational firms indicate that HR is contributing to the success of several of the companies, especially in the areas of leadership development, training and development, diversity and multiculturalism, ethics and governance, talent management, and workforce engagement. Areas that need more HR input are change management, collaboration and teamwork, creation and inculcation of values, and health and safety (Wirtenberg et al., 2007).

Wirtenberg and the others concluded that “human capital activities are essential to achieving high levels of corporate sustainability but … the HR function may not be involved in every important area.... This may represent a missed opportunity for the HR function” (Wirtenberg et al., 2007, pp. 17-18).

Some MBA students are recognizing this need. Members of Net Impact, a San Francisco-based network of more than 11,000 MBA students and professionals whose goal is to use business to better the world, answered a 2005 survey about the growing demand for environmental-management courses and business schools’ response to that demand (Di Meglio, 2005). Fewer than 10% said their schools were offering relevant courses, and about 30% said their schools’ offerings were disappointing when it came to sustainability (Di Meglio, 2005).

But some schools, such as the Bainbridge Graduate Institute on Bainbridge Island in Washington state, now offer an MBA or certificate in sustainable business. The first class graduated in 2004 (Di Meglio, 2005). And other schools, such as the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado and the LondonSchool of Business, are offering more courses relevant to sustainability (Di Meglio, 2005).

Despite those efforts, Makower has a gloomy outlook, saying that HR departments for the most part do not seem to be focused on creating a culture that pays attention to sustainability year-round (Makower, 2007). And the literature seems to have little information concerning the role of HR in creating a sustainable organization (Makower, 2007).

Makower has several suggestions: “Environmental matters can be integrated into employee handbooks and training. There can be learning modules employees can take to improve their knowledge and skills. There can be cross-functional green teams that meet regularly to exchange ideas and share learnings.... There’s no end to what’s possible” (Makower, 2007).

Part of the focus on sustainability is more discerning customers, who demand that they be consulted on the products they buy, according to Attracta Lagan, principal of Managing Values, an Australian consulting firm that specializes in workplace values, business ethics, organizational performance and sustainability. Lagan calls this a “high-touch world” and says it means HR must help develop talented leaders who can function effectively within the new paradigm (“HR’s Role,” 2006).

“Employees can only extend to customers what they’ve experienced themselves,” Lagan says. “If they don’t experience a high-touch world within their organization, where HR is tailor-making packages to suit their needs, then they can’t extend that towards customers. It’s critical to business success that employees are also seen as customers. The chances are they’re also investors with shares in the company” (“HR’s Role,” 2006, p. 4).

Lagan also suggests that HR spearhead more community involvement that helps the company both commercially and with employees (“HR’s Role,” 2006).

“Firms have volunteer or management development programs where they partner [with] other organizations to give employees experience of managing in a different environment,” Lagan says. “The goal is to grow intelligence in people and it’s not by reinventing the wheel” (“HR’s Role,” 2006, p. 4).

For more information:

For more information on sustainability issues, please see the institute’s new Sustainability Knowledge Center, available August 1st, 2007.

Documents referenced in this TrendWatcher include the following:

Di Meglio, Francesca. “It’s Getting Easier Being Green.” BusinessWeek [www.businessweek.com]. July 15, 2005.

Edwards, Andres R. The Sustainability Revolution. Canada: New Society Publishers, 2005.

“HR’s Role in Developing Sustainability.” BenchmarkingHR. August 25, 2006,pp. 4-5.

Makower, Joel. “Can Human Resources Departments Save the Earth?” GreenBiz.com [www.makower.typepad.com]. April 15, 2007.

Savitz, Andrew W. and Karl Weber. The Triple Bottom Line. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Wirtenberg, Jeana, Joel Harmon, William G. Russell and Kent D. Fairfield. “HR’s Role in Building a Sustainable Enterprise: Insights from Some of the World’s Best Companies.” Human Resource Planning, First Quarter 2007, pp. 10-19.