The Role of HR in Achieving a Sustainability Culture

An organization’s Human Resource function can be instrumental in facilitating a comprehensive approach for creating a culture of sustainability and environmental stewardship. As such, it is recommended that an organization’s Sustainability Coordinator work more closely with the organization’s Human Resource executive. This idea might be considered a new area of focus for the practical implementation of sustainable development in a company. The strategy involves making significant changes to the organization’s systems for: recruiting applicants, selecting new employees, conducting new employee orientation, conducting performance evaluations, determining employee compensation, creating a succession planning process, providing employees with training and development, and mentoring employees and managers. It also involves creating a win-win-win collaboration among multiple stakeholders who are in conflict with each other. Numerous examples are provided demonstrating how a focus on each of the HR systems has helped organizations to create a sustainability culture.