How sustainable are you? Your company? Our world?
Sustainability-based human capital management looks holistically at moving beyond a "culture of health" to a "culture of sustainability" based on three fundamental pillars: Environmental sustainability, organizational sustainability, and individual sustainability.
Environmental sustainability is what is normally considered the "green" movement...reducing an organization's carbon footprint; adopting environmentally-friendly operating and manufacturing practices; and on a more micro level, working locally in the community to promote environmentally- and community-friendly programs and practices.
Organizational sustainability is about focusing first and foremost on the ability of the business to drive sustainable growth and profitability. This includes processes to continually assess strategy (vision, mission, values, markets, and competitive advantage); operations (structure, processes and practices); innovation (the "fuel" of organizational sustainability); analytics (the lifeblood of any effective enterprise) and talent (people execute and operationalize business strategy. When people execute well, it's almost impossible to replicate).
Individual sustainability is about helping people rise to their greatest level of achievement.Individual sustainability is driven by critical talent management practices that holistically engage people in their career, health and wealth; and inspire them to achieve their greatest potential in work and life.
People have an innate desire to be part of something greater than themselves. Sustainability-based human capital management will take the individual, the organization, and the environment to the next level.
Sustainability is about understanding the best of the current environment...externally, organizationally, and internally...and creating the path that will lead to perpetually improved environmental, organizational, and individual health.
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Rex, you know I'm a complete believer. However, I am increasingly unsure that individual sustainability is possible. It is the sustainable part that is the stumbling block for me. Human capital objectives are only as strong as the HR staff pushing them and the C level belief in, and backing for them. Considering the regular changes to personnel at those levels... and the resulting cultural and engagement ripples... in addition to the varying degrees at which C level staff believe in strategic HR contribution to the bottom line... the likliehood of sustaining engagement and cultural success is near impossible. It doesn't help that successes in these areas are more difficult to quantify and less understood by executives, in my opinion. Putting it another way, whatever money is available will be spent on the first two pillars before the third is addressed. So, I believe that companies that focus on pillar three separate themselves from the rest, but I think there is so much to overcome that long-term success represents a monumental committment. Who does this well, Rex?
ReplyDeleteRex, you were so far out in front of me that I couldn't even see your tail lights. Finally I caught on to blogging and how to comment. I am not in business but education. I don't know if it matters. We in America, and maybe everywhere?, are so used to short term profits. Sustainability is the key but do we care enough or believe somewhere inside that someone else going to 'fix it' two minutes before the world is gone? I wish I had some of your vocabulary but want to share from my perspective. The only hope that I have are people like Seth Godin who are bringing a creative sense to the educational marketplace as well as business and instilling a different understanding of what it is to be human.
ReplyDeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteApologies for a late response. My priorities were out of whack. To your point, the foundation of sustainability-based HCM will be in analytics. There clearly has to be a business case, and too often HR simply assumes that the data is not available (which is an incorrect assumption), the costs are "soft" (again, incorrect), and that the data is too hard to get (true, but worth the effort). Companies who crunch numbers and use business intelligence for INSIGHTS from the data are not really that rare. But this analysis is being done in other parts of the business, like Finance, Marketing, and Operations, not very often in HR. IN retail, HR metrics impact shrinkage. Really? Yes. Who would have known? In all companies, HR metrics impact G&A expenses and productivity. Significantly. Current engagement data, and decades of cognitive data tell us that people want to be part of something greater than themselves, and want their organization to have a reputation for, well, something greater than just the business...sustainability throughout all 3 pillars. What is the business case for sustainability? We're starting to build it, one step at a time. For the environment, for the organization, and for the individual. Based on real data. And the foundation of all of this starts and ends with people. People get work done. period.