Green Business How Can HR Boost Environmental Sustainability? – GWC Mag gwcmagSeptember 18, 2023048 views How Can You Make a Company More “Green”? It’s Not Just Manufacturing – Look to HR To Boost Environmental Sustainability! In today’s day and age, companies are being held increasingly accountable for their carbon footprint and environmental sustainability. As a quick example, a company might use more water in a day than a single resident might use in a month. As such, business leaders set environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals to improve the sustainability of their practices. But beyond manufacturing operations, how else can a business boost its eco-friendliness and sustainability? The answer to that is the human resources (HR) department. Though it may not seem so at first glance, HR can play a powerful role in improving a company’s sustainability. If you’re a business owner or HR leader, here are five different ways you can leverage your HR department to boost your company’s environmental sustainability. 1. Cut Down On Office Waste As the ones who ensure a healthy and happy working environment, HR has a lot of prerogative when it comes to changing up the office environment and supplies. That means that HR can start green initiatives to reduce the amount of waste produced by the company on a day-to-day basis. For example, HR could do an audit of the vendors that supply the company’s papers and office supplies, and cut out suppliers who have a larger-than-average carbon footprint. They could then switch to more eco-friendly vendors who source their materials responsibly. The same goes for single-use plastics for your office’s food and drinks. Rather than supplying single-use plastic cups at the water cooler or plastic forks in the cafeteria, HR could instead gift a reusable mug to each employee and invest in metal tableware and a dishwasher. Not only does this cut down on waste, but it also make your employees happier to use higher-quality goods in the office! 2. Invest in Digital Documents As the ones in charge of employee records, timesheets, pay stubs, performance records, and more, HR has quite a lot of paper files on hand for each employee. The more employees your company has, then, the more paper waste HR creates. In other words, by investing in digital payroll and document management databases, HR can greatly reduce the amount of paper used by the company. An HR management system, or HRM, can do this for you, alongside a separate automatic payroll software system. On top of reducing paper waste, these systems can also help HR automate repetitive tasks and ensure payroll is run perfectly every time. Employees will also be able to access their own records online at any time. For more information about choosing the best HR software for your business, visit humanresource.com. 3. Run Green Competitions If you’re trying to start a green initiative, the best way to raise awareness and get buy-in from employees is to make a game out of it and offer prizes to stoke employee’s competitive spirits. For example, you could make a competition out of which department can produce the least amount of flammable waste in a month, have employees go head-to-head on how to properly sort their trash, or promise a pizza party if the company can recycle more than it throws away in a week. Rather than forcing employees to be eco-friendly, adding competitive elements and prizes helps employees see your green initiatives as something to look forward to. Once the competition ends, they might even ask you for a rematch! 4. Run Green Seminars Speaking of buy-in, another way to increase employee mindfulness regarding the environment is by educating them on what practices could help them improve their sustainability both at home and in the workplace. For example, you could run a seminar on properly sorting garbage, or give a demonstration that shows exactly how much electricity an idling computer or left-on light wastes. With an internalized understanding of why sustainability is important and how to be more sustainable, you’ll hopefully see more eco-friendly action from your employees. As such, it might be worthwhile for HR to create its own seminar on environmentally friendly practices or invite a guest speaker over. By educating all of the company’s employees at once, HR can help build a culture of environmental mindfulness in your company. 5. Screen for Green Finally, though we went through four ways to improve your current employees’ green mindsets and actions, the best way to encourage the company to be more environmentally friendly in the long term is to simply hire more environmentally-minded employees. You might do this by asking job applicants to rate environmental concerns on a list of priorities, or by asking how much they value environmental friendliness in companies. Think about it: even if you train and educate your current employees on how to be green and act responsibly, there’s no guarantee that the newer hires will follow the trend unless you specifically screen for it in your acquisition and hiring process. And it’d be a waste of time to educate each new hire on the importance of eco-friendliness every single time. Luckily, Millennials and Gen Zers tend to be more conscious about sustainability, so as they join the workforce, you shouldn’t be lacking for choices of eco-friendly new hires. Over time, you’ll hopefully be able to build a fully green-minded workforce. Conclusion Just like how you can’t grow a tree overnight, you can’t expect your company’s sustainability to improve in a single day. But by changing policies and employee mindsets, HR can help a company boost environmental sustainability and work towards a greener business. Please Share this post with your friends and family – it’s easy – sharing buttons below and right! What do you think? Let me know in the comments below. Warm regards, P.S. Don’t forget to see what you can do to help slow climate change – click here (it’s free) Related boost sustainability, green your company, hiring, HR can boost sustainability, human resources, make company more sustainable