Two topics, circular economy and human resource practices, have been in separate baskets. However, recent studies have shown that both have a major impact either directly or indirectly on each other. Human resource management or human management is largely associated with a behavior of an economy. It has been largely debated and accepted that human resource management has a major role in creating sustainable organizations. Human resource management as a function involves a lot of postulates of sustainability in the scope of an organization. We all understand that the role of human resources has widened throughout time, and there is a need for more innovations in better management with various stakeholders and employees to create HR as a more solution-based function.
TopIntroduction
Over the years Human Resource function of organisations has evolved from becoming felicitator to a Strategic arm of developing organisations. Since 1980’s there had been numerous debates on better management of humans or employees in the organisations and tremendous research shows us direct and positive relationship between Human Resource Management Practices and Organisation Performance.
With the urgent requirements of increasing environmental and sustainability issues around the world, organisations are developing and introducing relevant strategies to focus and address the same.
Research shows that the focus of organisations is growing in terms of demonstrating their commitments to sustainability.
The Think Tanks, Government and other stakeholder bodies are making certain conscious attempts to make these changes through corporate consultative groups and bring a radical change.
We understand that to make Human Resource Practices more sustainable, the functions shall work around economic performance, social performance, and environment performance.
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Economic Performance here means that we analyse the appetite of the organisation to be more innovative in terms of its functions and Products.
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Social Performance would mean effectiveness to manage diversity of resources and human potential.
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Environment Performance is to introduce functions and processes which are more environment friendly and help in providing the conducive work environment to the staff.
Sustainable Human Resource Management has been tried to define through various research studies and the recent rising interest on the topic has shown varied definitions of the same.
Sustainable HRM can be defined as the adoption of HRM strategies and practices that enable the achievement of social, financial and ecological goals by creating an impact inside and outside of the organisation and over a long term time horizon while controlling for the unintended side-effects and negative feedback. (Michel, Muller-Camen, 2016)
The above definition highlights two vital points:
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The recognition of multiple, potentially contradictory, socially, economic, ecological and social goals such as human sustainability (Dorchery, Kira and Sherry, 2009)
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Complex Interrelations between HRM systems and impact on internal and external environments with the long term impact on resources and externalities.(Mariappandar, 2003)
“Sustainable human resource management (SHRM) refers to the concept which combines the idea of sustainability with the soft approach to human resources. This approach promotes basing an HRM strategy on fostering a culture of trust and cooperation and on developing employee involvement, one component of which is loyalty to one’s employer. The soft approach to HRM aims to achieve adequate financial results, but through the policy of building a good “employer–employee relationship.” A soft strategy – according to the research – is effective in retaining an employee for a longer period of time in an organization and encouraging them to share knowledge, work more productive, act with passion and commitment, generate creative ideas in order to achieve the business goals” (Smaliukienė et al., 2017;Ogbeibu et al., 2018;Kim and Shin, 2019;Meier et al., 2019).
“sustainable HRM is the pattern of planned or emerging human resource strategies and practices intended to enable organizational goal achievement while simultaneously reproducing the HR base over a long-lasting calendar time and controlling for self-induced side and feedback effects of HR systems on the HR base and thus on the company itself”(Ehnert I., Parsa S., Roper I., Wagner M., Muller-Camen M. Reporting on sustainability and HRM: a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world’s largest companies. Int. J. Hum. Resour. Manag. 2016;27:88–108. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2015.1024157)
Green HRM is defined that socially responsible human resource management function in an organisation helps in building employee-oriented practices which increases overarching sustainability goals in terms of employee retention, performance, and measurement and all other valid HRM Practices. (Dyllick T., Muff K. and López-Fernández M., 2016)