Sustainable Organisational Development Possibilities: Role of HRM - Essay Example

Sustainable organisational development possibilities: Role of HRM. Name Class Unit Introduction Sustainability is a very important issue in the management research (Wilkinson & Hill, 2001). The link between organisation sustainability and human resource management (HRM) has of late gained popularity by current literature. A sustainable organisation is supposed to meet the needs of the present, but at the same time it should not compromise the needs for those of the future. Corporate social responsibility helps the company to balance their revenue and their impacts on the environment (Pedersen, 2006). Over the past decades, there has been a strong linkage between the human resources role and the sustainability. This is contributed by the fact that the employee is the most important person in an organisation and determines its success (Barney, 2007). Sustainability and corporate social responsibility are linked to human resource management (HRM). Human resource has a role to play in making an organisation sustainable. This report analyses sustainable organisation development possibilities through looking at the role of human resource manager. Sustainable organisation A sustainable organisation is defined as an organisation that is able to strike a balance between profit, planet and people (Wilkinson & Hill, 2001). The organization should be able to grow while at the same time ensuring that it protects the environment and encourage social equity. An organisation is defined as successful if it is able to strike a balance between society, ethics and its performance. The organisation should not only be based on profits for it to be sustainable. The concept of corporate social responsibility is well known in organizations today. CSR is seen as a stage towards organisation sustainability. The concept has led to issues of organization sustainability being associated with the HRM (Pedersen, 2006). There are a number of reasons why sustainability should be linked to the HRM. Employees are an important asset to the organisation. They are responsible for enabling CSR to be successful. Human resource management (HRM) has a role to manage these employees. HRM has a task to enable the employees work relationship to grow. HRM has a task to recruit, develop and retain the employee. HRM has to ensure that the employees are productive and able to meet the organisation needs as well as their own (Pedersen, 2006). HRM main goal is to ensure that organisation is effective (Wilkinson & Hill, 2001). Human resource achieves organisation success through recognizing the importance of the employees. There is a link between the organisation strategy and employees’ performance. The high performance of an organisation is the main goal of the HRM. HRM has to select and train employees to ensure that they are able to meet organisation goals (Wempe & Kaptein, 2002). Sustainability and HRM roles The human resource department has a great role in ensuring that there is sustainability in their organisation. Many scholars have pointed out that HR is the main driver for sustainability. The human resource department regards themselves as the drivers for sustainability. The human resource department helps to improve the organisation image and make it more attractive to future employees. For an organisation to be sustainable, the human resource department has to be involved. The HR department will enable the organisation to recruit, retain and develop the appropriate personnel. The human resource department ensures that employees are engaged in sustainability (Preuss, Haunschild & Matten, 2009). Sustainability has been linked to HRM in an organisation in three main ways. The three ways are sustainable work systems, sustainable human resource management and the sustainable resource management. The three approaches looks at the ways in which HRM can manage an organisation to ensure that it have a future supply of qualified human resource. To be sustainable, HRM tries to eliminate all its negative effects. Sustainable work systems look at having an organisation that is able to balance the quality of work and life to achieve a highly performing organisation. The HRM has to put more efforts in ensuring that there is development and regeneration of human resources (Freitas, Jabbour & Santos, 2011). A sustainable organisation is supposed to have sustainable resource management. The organisation is supposed to invest in having qualified and motivated staff. The human resource department is supposed to be sustainable in their actions. This means that the organisation has to exercise sustainability in selecting, developing, training and deploying their employees. Human resource management should address three levels in an organisation to enable it to be sustainable. The three levels are; individual, organisation and social. This is done with an aim of enhancing duality and efficiency. An organisation that has sustainable HRM is able to enjoy a future supply of motivated human resource. The employee future development is looked at and enhanced. The contribution of HR policies is a major contributor to sustainability. These are policies that are designed by the human resource with a broad agenda that covers sustainability. Sustainability is for mutual benefit in the organisation (Preuss, Haunschild & Matten, 2009). The changing needs of organisations in response to sustainability have led to outlining of goal that must be pursued by the human resource management. Changes in the world have led to organisations putting more focus on their HRM. Human resource managers are confronted with changes in the employees’ demographics, technology and effects of globalization. Due to these trends, sustainable HRM has become a major issue (Wempe & Kaptein, 2002). HR is expected to lead an organisation in adopting a sustainability strategy in its goals. Having a sustainable human resource management gives the organisation the capability to adopt a strategic position. The human resource have to ensure that the organisation has a sustainable future supply of qualified workers who are motivated. The human resource department is supposed to ensure that they engage the employees into corporate social responsibility practices (Daily & Huang, 2001). Human resource management aims at utilising the employees within the organisation policies. Human resources are capable of enabling an organisation attain a competitive advantage. Sustainable human resource management can help the organisation to go green in its operations. The employer thus has the responsibility to train the employees and instill environment consciousness and sustainability awareness. The HR department has the capability to ensure that the organisation is sustainable (Freitas, Jabbour & Santos, 2011). Future supply of workers A sustainable organisation should have an adequate number of future human resources. Demographic development has led to scarcity in the human resources. The employees have changed their expectations towards organisations with demands for a better pay, work life balance and wants their employer to be more sustainable and socially responsible. The employees also require the organisation to treat them well (Savitz & Weber, 2006). The organisation must have responsibility towards the employees. The organisation is thus expected to hire capable employees and make sure they treat them with dignity. The employees are the one supposed to carry corporate behaviour during their work. The organisation ability to be sustainable will depend on the employees’ willingness to adopt the corporate social responsibility (Freitas, Jabbour & Santos, 2011). Diversity is a major contributor to sustainability. Diverse workforce is associated with sustainable human resource management. The interests of the employer and employees are connected through diversity by the sociological perspective. Diverse workforce has been positively associated with sustainability. The organisations are supposed to have diversity policies in place to enhance diversity (Savitz, W., & Weber, 2006). Flexible organisation A sustainable organisation should be flexible. The working hours and method of working should be flexible. Flexible working environment depends on the organisation ability to organize their labour resources. There is a strong association of flexible working environment with the concept of sustainable human resource management (Wilkinson & Hill, 2001). Flexible working conditions lead to the organisation having less working hours, which means there is reduced utilization of resources such as the company cars and buildings (Peirce & Madden, 2005). The employees are also more satisfied and have enhanced freedom and control. Most of the modern organisations engage in demanding jobs. This makes it important to have sustainable human resource management practices in an organisation. Having a sustainable HRM is associated with making these jobs flexible (Daily & Huang, 2001). Engaging the employees in volunteering works helps them to increase their commitment, motivation and ability to attain their personal goals. Volunteer work has been associated with the sustainable HRM. Large organisations are more aware of their social responsibility than smaller organisations. This makes large organisations to be more active in volunteer work (Peirce & Madden, 2005). Sustainable use of resources by an organisation is associated with the human resource management. The human resource policies and philosophies are supposed to ensure that there is sustainability. The human resource managers are supposed to come up with green policies that will help in coming up with decisions and behaviours towards sustainability (Renwick, 2008). The HRM has the major role of coming up with policies that are environmentally friendly. Environmental management is supposed to be encouraged by the HR department. The HR department have a role to train the employees and develop them towards sustainability policies (Peirce & Madden, 2005). Reward and Motivation Sustainable organisation should be able to recognize the efforts of employees towards sustainability. The human resource department designs compensation packages that are able to cater for rewards system. The reward system is supposed to recognize individual efforts towards sustainability. The most used reward systems are monetary and non-monetary. The Monetary reward system is based on incentives and salary increase. Non monetary rewards include use of gifts, leave and appreciation. The human resource department creates these incentives to ensure that the organisation is sustainable (Barney, 2007). Sustainable organisation must have motivated employees. Motivated employees are able to help the organisation in its goals to achieve sustainability. The effective wage policy is one of the methods used to motivate employees (Wilkinson & Hill, 2001). The ability of the employee to be satisfied and help the organisation to achieve its goals is based on whether their current wages are enough to sustain them. The human resource department has to give reasonable wages for the organisation to attain sustainability. If the employees are not satisfied with their wages, they are more likely to quit jobs in the future which compromise sustainability. An organisation is only sustainable if it can maintain the employees for future needs. Motivation is a major contributor to workers’ retention (Peirce & Madden, 2005). Organisations strive to success where ecological and social performance is taken into account. These are sustainable organisations which utilize strategies capable of having positive impacts on the natural resources, social and the environment. Through sustainability, some of the organisations are capable of reducing the unwanted impacts and enhance human sustainability. The HRM has a capability to help the organisation come up with a sustainable development agenda. Practices of the HRM such as recruitment, development and retention of the employee are some of the advantages of sustainable HRM (Freitas, Jabbour & Santos, 2011). Employee development Employee development is a key feature in sustainable organisation. The employees are supposed to move out of the low skilled section to high level jobs with time through the development of their skills. The HRM is supposed to work in developing a path where employee progress takes place. The human resource department is supposed to work as a stepping stone towards sustainable employment. The low skilled workers are supposed to advance in an incremental way from low paid jobs to well paying skilled jobs (Daily & Huang, 2001). The HRM is supposed to come up with expansive working environment. This is an environment where the employees are able to unleash their full potential through career development. Access to training is very vital for an organisation to be sustainable. Having a restrictive environment leads to the employees not being able to move from the low skilled labour which makes an organisation not to progress. Lack of sustainable development among the employees makes it hard for the organization to be sustainable. The organisation investment in training and development resources is a major step towards sustainability (Freitas, Jabbour & Santos, 2011). Though not all organisations have adopted sustainability through HRM, it can be proved that sustainability is supported by the HR policies and practices. Organisations have to balance their financial considerations with social economic impacts. The practices of the human resource such as recruitment, training, deployment determine whether the organisation will have future skilled workers or not. The HR perspective is capable of giving the social and environmental benefits to organisation while at the same time ensuring that their profits. The short term efficiency of the organisation and its sustainability are the main areas of tension in the sustainability debate. The human resource practices should enable the organisation to balance the two which ensures that there is sustainability (Daily & Huang, 2001). The ability of the employees to access training and development is a major step towards sustainability. For example, the organization may start hiring the employee on a permanent basis and eliminate low paying contracts. This ensures that they can train the employees with an aim of maintaining them in the organisation. Job progression has the capability to attract new recruits and creating employment path in an organisation. Employee development connects the performance of the employees and the level of their development. The employees are exposed to learning opportunities that can help the organisation to attain its goals (Wilkinson & Hill, 2001). The main aim of the program is to ensure that the employees’ effectiveness is increased to help in present and future tasks. This is referred to as sustainable investment on the employees. Employee development is an important task carried out by the human resource management that helps in sustainability. Constantly developing the employees and treating them appropriately is a great way to attain sustainability (Peirce & Madden, 2005). Conclusion Developing a sustainable organisation requires it to strike a balance between profit, planet and people. The organisation should be able to balance the profits gained on short time and its future needs. Through enhancing the concept of corporate social responsibility, an organisation is able to enhance sustainability. The human resource management is linked to sustainable organisation. Sustainability has been linked to human resource management in an organisation in three main ways. The three ways are sustainable work systems, sustainable human resource management and the sustainable resource management. The tasks of the HR are capable of ensuring that the organisation is sustainable. Through recruiting, training and deploying the workforce, HR department ensures that the organisation have a future supply of human resource. The HR department also connects the employees to the corporate social responsibility. A sustainable organisation should have flexible working conditions. The HR department have a role to make the working environment more flexible. The HRM is thus an important player in ensuring that an organisation is sustainable. References Barney, J.B 2007, Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage (3rd ed.), Upper Saddle River, NJ., Pearson Education. Daily, B & Huang, S 2001, ‘Achieving sustainability through attention to human resource factors in environmental management International’, Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 21, No. 12, p. 1539-1552. Freitas, W., Jabbour, C & Santos, F 2011, ‘Continuing the Evolution: towards Sustainable HRM and Sustainable Organizations’, Business strategy series, Vol. 12, No. 5, p. 226- 234. Pedersen, E.R 2006, ‘Making Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Operable: How Companies Translate Stakeholder Dialogue into Practice’, Business and Society Review, Vol. 111, p. 137-163. 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