Sustainability in Human Resource Management

1. Sustainability in Human Resource Management Norbert Thom, Robert Zaugg, Adrian Blum Presented by Prof Dr Dr hc mult Norbert Thom Director of the Institute for Organisation and Human Resource Management (IOP), University of Berne www.iop.unibe.ch

2. Model of a sustainable human resource management Culture  Attitudes Values Companies Employability Individual Responsibility Individual Work-Life-Balance Strategies  Objectives Instruments  Methods  Processes  Structures (All diagrams and statistics from Zaugg/Blum/Thom 2001.)

3. Three pillars of sustainability Work-Life-Balance ♀: Growing importance of professional career ♂: Growing importance of private and family life Individual Responsibility Increased autonomy and self-determination in questions of professional development Employability Focus on continuous development and professional agility rather than specific activity

4. The pillars in practice • Survey* of 1016 European companies. Aims: • Overview of state of the art of HRM in Europe • Determining conception and stage of implementation of sustainable HRM in European companies • Cross-country comparison *The project was kindly supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Personnel and the European Association of Personnel Management (EAPM).

5. Sample • Sectors: industry, service providers, trade, transport, public sector, IT, healtchcare, banking, construction, insurance • Company size: 40% >500 empl; 47% 50-500 empl; 13% <50 empl

6. Objectives of HRM in European companies

7. Central objectives of HRM in European companies • Contributing to achievement of economic objectives • Promoting individual responsibility (90% of questioned companies!) • Ensuring adequate pay and promoting employee health • Enhancing employability (strong dispersion: 68% of Dutch vs. 22% of French companies) • HRM is gaining in strategic importance. • Sustainability as defined by the model is an issue.

8. Conception of sustainability in European companies Keywords associated by HRM responsibles with sustainability in HRM: • HR development: training, continuous education, career planning • Employee characteristics: motivation, flexibility, responsibility • Leadership: consistency, social skills, MbO • Staff retention, incentives

9. Conception of sustainable HRM in European companies: keyword categories

10. Sustainability in European companies „I am of the opinion that our company has a particularly innovative concept for sustainable human resource management.“

11. Major instruments of sustainable HRM • Recruitment: requirement & job profiles; HR marketing; labour market research • Deployment: health management; staff composition (older employees!); advanced working-time management • Development: encouraging continuous education; career planning; promoting individual responsibility & participation • HR marketing; image analysis & improvement • Retention: sophisticated incentive systems • Disemployment: exit interviews; outplacement • Management & Leadership: participative management styles; MbO; assessment of superiors

12. The instruments in practice – selected results Deployment: health management Effective health management rests on systematic collection of data on absences and health of employees. Health management more sophisticated in large (>500 empl) companies of the industry and construction sectors. Less common among service providers. ~ 60% of questioned companies across countries charge at least 1 person or unit with employee health.

13. Deployment: staff composition Demographic and economic developments in Europe increase the significance of the potential of employees of advanced age. Less than 5% of questioned companies indicate that they have recognised and made efficient use of the potential of older employees!

14. Deployment: working-time • Flexible working-hour models are conducive to improved work-life-balance. Especially so are • Job sharing • Sabbaticals • Telework • Long-term or lifelong working time schemes Flexible working hours are used in more than two thirds of the questioned companies, though mostly for individual cases only. Systematic implementation is still very rare.

15. Advanced working-time schemes in European companies

16. Sabbaticals (long-term leaves)

17. Development: promoting individual responsibility Participation and/or autonomy in decision-making is a crucial feature of sustainable HR development. Around half of the companies interviewed report that their employees can directly participate in important decisions. Also roughly half claim to promote individual responsibility & partial autonomy of their employees.

18. Individual responsibility

19. Management & Leadership Management and leadership styles contribute essentially to participation and individual responsibility on the part of employees. ~ 80% of European companies claim to be using participative management styles, and also MbO seems widely implemented. Far less widespread is superior assessment, which would provide an excellent opportunity for enhancing sustainability in HRM.

20. Staff retention Attractive non-material incentives are an essential element of sustainable HRM.* While around four fifths of the companies questioned claim to offer generous material incentives to their employees (compensation, fringe benefits, bonuses), 40% believe that non-material incentives are "rather not" or "not at all" attractive for employees. *Cf. also Thom/Friedli 2003

21. Non-material incentives

22. Disemployment Sustainable HRM must take into account the needs of employees laid off or leaving on their own initiative in order not to harm the company image on labour and sales markets. A large majority of European companies uses exit interviews systematically as a classic method of disemployment. However, a significantly lower percentage (61%) consider it important to give professional advice to employees during their leaving process.

23. Conclusions • Sustainability in Human Resource Management is an issue in companies throughout Europe, though with local differences. • A considerable variety of specific instruments supportive of sustainable HRM is in use. However, these instruments so far have been implemented only restrainedly and unsystematically. Much more could and will have to be done to ensure and enhance employability, individual responsibility and a work-life-balance that does justice to the societal changes of recent decades among European workforces.

24. Further steps The above conclusions suggest the following immediate recommendations to European HRM responsibles: • Reconsider staff composition: make sure to fully exploit the potential of "minorities", esp female and elderly employees. • Do not underestimate the motivating effects of non-material incentives. There are many more of these besides having employees participate in decision-making. • Include superior assessment in a comprehensive workforce assessment scheme. • Take better advantage of the great potential for flexibility in the area of working time schemes.

25. … and always remember: Sustainable Human Resource Management concerns both the individual and her or his employer as equal partners: it is not simply a question of better satisfying the individual needs of employees, but stands in the service of corporate competitiveness – fully in agreement with the central purpose of HRM to support the achievement of the company's economic objectives.

26. References Zaugg, Robert J.; Blum, Adrian; Thom, Norbert (2001): Sustainability in Human Resource Management. Evaluation Report. Bern 2001. Thom, Norbert; Friedli, Vera (2003): Retention. Case Studies on High Potentials. Bern 2003. Further results to be published in: Zaugg, Robert J. (2006): Nachhaltiges Personalmanagement. Eine neue Perspektive und empirische Exploration des Human Resource Managements, Wiesbaden 2006 (in press).