Business Futures: Sustainable Business Through Green HR (FutureLearn)

While governments encourage responsible social and environmental action, implementation is often left to individual organisations and many of these are under pressure from shareholders driven by a profit-centred return on investment (ROI) model. And so, environmental and sustainable practices often become a HR matter - it’s people that must make the difference.

This course will explore what constitutes sustainability from both ecological and business perspectives. We will investigate the emergence of sustainable approaches to human resources, known as ‘Green HR’, and identify various types of sustainability models.

Examine Green HR in the fashion industry

We will take you on a journey through the fashion industry where we’ll explore the essential features of Green HR, including the value placed on human capital and the necessary balancing of sustainable values and business viability.

Make sustainable business work in practice

Operating a sustainable business is a balancing act. We will examine how sustainability and Green HR can work in practice by examining:

- How to change mindsets to balance self-interest and social responsibility

- How to identify and overcome barriers to sustainable business

- The drivers of change towards a sustainable approach

- How to implement a multi-stage approach to sustainability

- The role of Green HR in developing, implementing and maintaining sustainable shared values and initiatives.

Throughout the course we identify the internal and external drivers of sustainable practice and cultural change, and explore several critical issues, such as transparency and authenticity.

What topics will you cover?

- What is green HR and how relevant is it to organisations becoming sustainable

- The nature of sustainability including internal and external drivers toward change and barriers inhibiting change to show the nature of the organisational mindset required to acknowledge the need to move toward sustainability and beyond compliance

- Sustainable return on investment (S-ROI) and ‘Triple top line’ (TTL) to demonstrate how sustainability gains can be measured and valued by the business

- The role of HR in corporate human sustainability to show operational functions for sustainability within the business including networking and green rewards

- Human sustainability to understand the importance of human capital and being inclusive of all stakeholders

- Ecological sustainability to distinguish between green practices and organisation-wide sustainability and show how leadership is required to go beyond rhetoric and provide transparency

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

- Define sustainability from an ecological and human resource perspective

- Identify the stages of sustainability, and the drivers of change to business sustainability

- Define and apply green HR tools and strategies

- Develop green HR as a concept for organisations to achieve beyond compliance

- Explore the concept of triple top line approach for sustainability

- Explore the elements of green HR and the linkages between ecological and human sustainability

- Assess the effective of business strategies and approaches to sustainability

Who is the course for?

This course is aimed at professionals and students in disciplines of operations, finance, marketing, or human resources, who wish to learn more about sustainable Green HR practices.

What software or tools do you need?

To take part in this course, you'll need:

A computer or laptop, with access to the Internet.

Computer audio output.

Adobe Reader; and

A computer mouse.