Boston GreenScene: How to Create a Sustainable … Green … HR Function

by Lizz Pellet, Fellow Johns Hopkins University and CEO of EMERGE International

We’ve all heard that green is quickly becoming the new black. Everyone seems to be jumping on the sustainability wagon. What does that mean for HR? In December 2008, Green Tech Media offered their list of the top ten green jobs of the future. Number two on their list was Sustainability Officer. They say that this is a newly created corporate position. Companies will need to make choices about how to reduce their carbon footprint as well as make their products and services more green.

So, what is a Sustainability Officer? Here is my first pass at what an HR sustainability role would look like and the process HR would undertake in order to “greenify” their company.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)

Once the organization establishes that social responsibility and sustainability is important to their business strategy, they must define what this will mean to the company. Once this is defined, it will need to be incorporated into the company’s vision, mission, values as well as touted in their marketing materials, website, and all communication vehicles. No easy task here, but assigning the deliverable to one job function actually makes quite a bit of sense.

The role would be highly visible and would have to form strong communication channels, both internally and externally, so some good PR and platform delivery skills would be required. The person filling the role will need to be a team player with an exceptional attention to detail. Dealing with all the related functions to get the messages created and delivered will be challenging enough, so a good team approach and an ability to influence others will be a must.

A sustainability officer need not have 100 years experience in that one industry, but should understand the business as a business - possessing solid business acumen and be able to connect the soft skill and process dots to hard dollars. Finance background is always good, but we know most HR folks go into HR so they don’t have to deal with numbers all day long! (Side note here: that perception sure is changing!)

Relating to finance, the sustainability officer will be responsible to identify the current carbon footprint. While there are websites that can help you do this, such as www.carbonfootprint.com, this also will take savvy communication and collaboration skills to interface with all functions with in the organization. This is not a “nice to have” activity, it is the wave of the future and a way for HR to align themselves more closely with the CFO and financial accountability.

Recently, it was reported that environmental costs and liabilities associated with preparing environmental disclosure for Securities and Exchange Commission filings can be a complicated process. Many publicly traded company operations are subject to multiple jurisdictional requirements, from very local to international or supranational regimes, according to a Harvard Law School Corporate Governance blog posting.

According to a memorandum by Betty M. Huber and Brianne Lucyk, certain new and proposed changes to environmental accounting rules may affect current and near-term qualitative and quantitative disclosure. The Financial Accounting Standards Board is looking for more footnote disclosure about a company’s environmental liabilities. You want to score some significant green points with the C-suite? Learn more about the new reporting laws and create ways to support your CFO in this requirement. Then I would recommend a three-step process to recreate the HR function, which includes recruiting and all of its processes.

Evaluate

Does the company’s organizational culture, vision, mission, and values support social responsibility? Organizational culture and values congruence is paramount the creation of a green recruiting function. It continues to be abundantly clear that values not only create cultures, but also support the alignment of personal values with organizational values on many different levels. The amount of blogs that speak to values, personal evolution, and enlightenment is staggering. This all feeds into the school of thought that today’s individuals are seeking experiences with deeper meaning, deeper connectivity, and relational activity.

What is the company’s business proposition as it relates to being green? While sustainability is a factor in building an employment brand and HR function of the future, it also applies to retention. Organizations that are not implementing environmental policies or changing the way they’re doing business may lose current employees to companies that have established themselves as an eco-friendly company or offer socially responsible incentives. Some of these incentives include subsidies for buying hybrid cars, on-site farmers’ markets, use of green fuels and solar power, or the ability to donate reward monies to charitable causes. These are just some of the latest trends in going green.

Eliminate

Using proven business process re-engineering, deploy steps to eliminate waste. Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement are not just for Six Sigma companies. These methodologies are accepted business practices even for the “soft” processes. When I was an internal in Health Care, we deployed the Juran principles to the cycle time for filling vacancies for our nursing positions. After forming a representative team of subject matter experts, we began creating a process map which allowed us to all see the complicated steps that had been created in this process. We worked together to eliminate redundancy, waste, and duplication of efforts. The outcome was that the team reduced the cycle time for the vacancy rates by 60%! Trust me here, you probably have a ton of practices that could use some dusting off and reinvention.

Process re-engineering related to being green might be a chicken and egg situation. When I was investigating whether organizations go green to save money or for more esoteric reasons, I had a conversation with a high level HR professional in the hospitality industry. She explained that her organization did not go green for social consciousness, but more for the realized cost savings and process improvement. That struck me as funny, as I travel so much and have always applauded hotels that have implemented so many green approaches. Not that they don’t leverage their green side, it was just not the impetus I expected for launching their sustainability efforts.

Include your leader in this exercise allowing them to see what needs to be cut and the potential cost benefits from making the commitment.

Illuminate

Bring to life the new concepts, processes, and procedures and communicate them effectively. Don’t allow for “green washing.” You cannot afford a misstep in this communication activity. Focus on creating a congruent and authentic employment brand will help your organization attract, retain, and repel employees. Companies large and small are seeing a significant increase in the ROI of their recruitment and retention programs by creating an employment brand. One component of a significant employment brand is its green recruiting practices. This is not a “flavor of the month” or a new concept. Fortune 500 companies have been doing it for years and your organization might have the right stuff…you just might not be leveraging your green practices and programs in your recruitment efforts.

Way back in June, 2007 Dr. John Sullivan wrote, “While candidates of all generations have begun evaluating potential employers based on their “greenness” few in recruiting have leveraged this hot topic in recruitment communication and activities”. He goes on to say, “individual recruiters need to make the firms’ environmental stance a critical element of their sales pitch to potential applications and candidates”. Does the good doctor have a crystal ball or what?

In speaking to HR professionals around the country over the past year, I know his words to be true. Recruiters are not leveraging green enough. In 2008, while presenting at the HR Star Conference in San Francisco, I asked a room of over 300 HR professionals how many of their companies had an environmental policy. Only 10% of the room raised their hands. But, when asked if their company recycles, over 80% responded yes. I have asked this question in over 20 conferences in the past year with much of the same result. If you recycle, you have an environmental policy! I know, that seems so easy, and it is. While looking at your organization with a new lens or a green monocle may not be so easy, it can be done.

Sometimes reframing is the most cost effective approach to transformation. You are already doing great things, you just might need to rediscover them. You’ll do that in the evaluation phase and the you can repackage them. We all know how much “regifting” can save. Apply the same concept here.

For more information on creating a green employment brand, email: info@emergeinternational.com.