Embracing eco-friendly practices requires companies to go beyond adapting their internal processes and products. It means making fundamental changes to the corporate culture, and this is where human resources (HR) professionals are indispensable.
HR departments act as a vital point of communication between senior leaders directing the company’s vision and the wider workforce that shapes and participates in the organisational culture. They oversee employee relations, compensation and benefit schemes, and performance management, placing them in the ideal position to help foster support for greener behaviour.
So how can they achieve this in practice?
One of the most common approaches to boosting support for sustainability goals is through offering “green training”. This refers to training that equips employees with knowledge of the prevalent ecological issues and skills to help them work towards solutions in their daily tasks and responsibilities.
While educating the workforce can act as a solid foundation for promoting sustainable transformations in business, the prevalence of green training may paint an inaccurate view of its usefulness. Over 80 percent of French companies report offering green training, but new research suggests other strategies can yield results that are just as positive for encouraging greener employee behaviour.
Finding Alternatives to Green Training
A study I published in collaboration with researchers at the Université de Rennes and ESSCA School of Management shows that knowledge of the challenges is not enough in and of itself to spur people to action.
In fact, most employees are already relatively well-educated on the key environmental issues, and appreciate the importance of finding more sustainable ways of working and conducting business. A prior report by Totaljobs finds that 71 percent of workers in the UK want to work in roles that directly involve environmental conservation or for companies that value ecological sustainability.
The results are reflected in other countries too, with a report on the French labour force by the CSA Institute showing that 78 percent of French employees would prefer to work for companies committed to ecological transition, and the environment is the top concern for people under 35.
So, offering education through training could be an effective option for companies that are new to green management, but those who are further along in their sustainability agendas may find it more fruitful to consider alternative approaches to fostering employee support for ecological targets.
Encouraging Employee Participation in Change
Our research highlights three key factors that drive this support: ability, motivation, and opportunity.
Improving ability means empowering employees to act by giving them pathways to make changes. In concrete terms, this could be one area where training is beneficial, by teaching people how to use digital tools more responsibly, or how to use new resources to inform their work, such as carbon footprint calculators.
At the same time, employees should be encouraged to use their new capabilities by fostering motivation to engage in more sustainable practices. Changing behaviour and methods of work requires more cognitive effort from employees, so these efforts should be supported and rewarded.
Organising participatory initiatives, such as tree planting, can be an effective way to motivate employees by putting sustainability at the heart of community-building activities. Adopting a more game-like approach, for instance, by styling initiatives as ecological challenges for employees to solve in teams, is another way to boost engagement.
Last but not least, creating opportunities for employees to adopt more sustainable behaviours means implementing enabling infrastructure. This could be physical infrastructure, such as charging stations in the company car park to support people who commute in electric vehicles. Equally, it could be additions to the organisational structure, in the vein of bonuses for employees who cycle to work or forums where employees can share their ideas. People are more likely to align themselves with the new company culture if they feel their voices are heard and their ideas considered.
Choosing the Right Approach
With so many options at HR managers’ disposal, the question then becomes how to select which approaches will be the best fit for each organisation. No two firms are the same, and therefore, there is no one pathway to success that will work in all cases.
The good news is that our research shows HR managers do not need to cover every base to observe positive outcomes when they are developing their strategy to bring employees on board with the ecological transition.
Instead, they should strive to implement a consistent, customised approach that takes into consideration the company’s size, its degree of ecological maturity, and the specific requirements of its industry.
The importance of environmental concerns to employees and job applicants means shifting to more eco-friendly practices is no longer an option for employers – it’s a necessity to recruit and retain talent. At the same time, care and thought must be put into designing a strategy that allows each company to embed sustainability in its practices, products, and workplace culture in a way that empowers employees at all levels to contribute however they are able.
How to align individual employees’ personal aspirations with the company’s mission is an area in which HR professionals are well-versed. Senior leaders should recognise that they can play an important role in reframing the corporate dynamic from one where employees simply execute top-down ecological policies to one where they become active participants in sustainable transformation.
Pascal's research focuses on topics relating to HR management, environmental issues in the workplace, and organisational theory. He has written four books and is widely published in well-respected academic journals.