HR and Sustainability

“Sustainable development is not just the responsibility of environmental specialists or communications professionals. It requires contributions from people across all functions of an organization.”⁽¹⁾ That is the main reason why Human Resources play an important role in the sustainable development plans of any organization. But the most important thing before Human Resources take action over this matter is that sustainability is in the company’s goals.

“CSR – HR = PR. If employees are not engaged, Corporate Social Responsibility becomes an exercise in public relations. The credibility of an organization will become damaged when it becomes evident that a company is not ‘walking the talk’.” ⁽²⁾ From this particular phrase I can think of the different challenges that a Human Resources Department faces their main goals a part of the organization: Recruiting and retaining top talent, creating incentives for exceptional performance and enhancing critical competencies. And combine it with sustainability in order to get the best results from the employees to support the organizational Corporate Social Responsibility and also develop sustainable practices at their own homes or community.

Something that surprised me was the idea that sustainable development practices of a company where just seen as cost reduction measures, that was accompanied by the awareness of the environment and sustainability. However, if the people are the heart of a company, why the relationship between Human Resources and Sustainability is seen as a new discovery of the lasts years.

At the end the main goal is that ”HR has an important role to play in building the capabilities that enable the organizational change, from an economic, social and environmental perspective, and as a way to achieve a new competitive advantage”⁽³⁾

References:

⁽¹⁾ Driving Success - Human resources and sustainable development By:

·         The World Business Council for Sustainable Development

·         HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme

·         The University of Cambridge Programme for Industry

www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk/~/media/Files/.../HR_briefing.ashx

⁽²⁾Adine Mees and Jamie Bunham, Canadian Business for Social Responsibility

Driving Success - Human resources and sustainable development By:

·         The World Business Council for Sustainable Development

·         HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme

·         The University of Cambridge Programme for Industry

www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk/~/media/Files/.../HR_briefing.ashx

⁽³⁾ Role of HR in the new world of sustainability

Isabel Rimanoczy, Tony Pearson.

Industrial and Commercial Training.

Guilsborough: 2010. Vol. 42, Iss. 1; pg. 11

Personal Sustainability Practice

My purpose in life is helping. And I asked myself.  How can I help people visualize how important is to save water? So I decided to work on that and I started at my home. After a long conversation with my eight year old son about how to save water. I explain to him that t not every person in the Dominican Republic have water supplied to their homes, and have to walk miles to get water for cooking, cleaning and bathing.

So I decided to prepare a presentation for other children at my son’s school to help them understand and be aware of how important is to save water. So I’ll have a meeting with the teacher in order to plan a 10 to 15 minutes meeting with my son’s classmates. 

Eco-Efficiency, Sustainability has you heard of any of these words. Are you doing something about it? Because I wasn’t!

I wasn’t paying attention was the first thing that came to my mind when I started this assignment. First I had the knowledge of the environmental threats that the world is suffering but my main concern is, what I’m doing about it? NOTHING was the only thing I could think. The worst thing is that I realized that my family, workmates and neighbors are sharing the same ignorance that I decided to live in.

First in my house am I saving water, recycling. Second the company that I work for, the only one that seems to matter is Ariel, he is the one with 3 boxes under his desk there he recycles paper, newspaper and plastic bottles. Besides him and some others that help him, nobody looks towards the green side.  

My first intention is to start in my house with small initiatives like putting a bottle filled up with sand in every toilette of my apartment, recycle cans, plastic bottles, paper. At work I’ll start helping Ariel with his recycling efforts and encourage him to talk to the management and spreading more recycling recipients through the office. A great idea can be to create a working eco-friendly committee to help the management to create a set of initiatives as goals to start taking the company to the green path.

After this catharsis I should say that I also learn some things too. I didn’t hear before about natural capitalism and triple bottom line. Now I know and I cannot look aside.