HRM practices used to promote pro-environmental behavior: a UK survey

To date, the extent to which UK organizations use human resource management (HRM) practices to promote pro-environmental behavior through workplace HRM policies and initiatives is under-researched within the literature. Therefore, this paper presents results of a survey investigating current HRM practices used to promote pro-environmental behavior in a sample of 214 UK organizations representing different sizes and industry sectors. Overall, findings indicated that HRM practices are not used to a great extent to encourage employees to become more pro-environmental. The most prevalent practices used within organizations incorporated elements of management involvement supporting the idea that managers are the gatekeepers to environmental performance. Although organizations indicated that some HRM practices were more effective than others at encouraging pro-environmental behavior in their staff, only a very small percentage of organizations actually conducted any form of evaluation; organizations consequently lack clear evidence as to whether their HRM practices actually result in employee behavior change. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.