Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 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

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Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 2

Model of a sustainable human resource

management
Culture  Attitudes  Values

Companies

Individual

Work-Life-Balance
Strategies  Objectives
Instruments  Methods 
Processes  Structures

(All diagrams and statistics from Zaugg/Blum/Thom 2001.)

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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

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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).

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Sample

Country Switzerl. Germany Italy France Spain Netherl. Austria England

Questionnaire Abs. % Abs. % Abs. % Abs. % Abs. % Abs. % Abs. % Abs. %

Mailed
3020 47 500 7.8 500 7.8 500 7.8 500 7.8 500 7.8 400 6.2 500 7.8
Questionnaires
Returned
749 73.7 45 4.4 81 8 42 4.1 37 3.6 37 3.6 12 1.2 13 1.3
Questionnaires
Return rate 24.8% 9% 16.2% 8.4% 7.2% 6.8% 3% 2.6%

Total of mailed questionnaires 6420

Total of returned questionnaires 1016

Total return rate 15.83%

• 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

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Objectives of HRM in European companies

Economic objectives

Health 4 Employability

Social responsibility 2 Self-realisation

Compensation Pleasure at work

Social contacts Individual responsibility

Quality of life

Europe Netherlands France

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Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 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.

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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

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Environment 9

Conception of sustainable HRM in

Culture / Structure / Management 52
Progress / Innovation 94

European companies: keyword Strategy / Planning

63
126
Stability
Quality 43
Development of company 69
Controlling 42
Information / Communication 58
Incentives 123
Human resource management (excl. HRD) 96
Human resource development (HRD) 308
Job 26
Working conditions 45
Leadership / Coaching 126
Involvement / Loyalty 55
categories

Characteristics of employees 245

Well-being of employees 67
Relationships / Stakeholder 36
Value orientation 120
Others 144

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

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Sustainability in European companies

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

40

35 37

30

25
Percentage

23 24
20

15

10

5 7
5
4
0
agree partly agree tend to tend to partly do not agree
entirely agree disagree disagree at all
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Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 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

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The instruments in practice – selected results

Deployment: health management
Effective health management rests on systematic collection of data on
absences and health of employees.

~ 60% of questioned companies across countries charge at least 1

person or unit with employee health.

Health management more sophisticated in large (>500 empl) companies

of the industry and construction sectors. Less common among service
providers.

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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!

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Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 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.

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Advanced working-time schemes in European companies

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Sabbaticals (long-term leaves)

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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.

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Individual responsibility

In our company we specifically encourage our employees to develop a sense of

responsibility (e.g. by providing them with course budgets that they can administer
themselves) .

Europe 3,31

Spain 3,22

England 3,54

Italy 2,98

France 2,80

Netherlands 3,89

Austria 3,75

Germany 3,16

Switzerland 3,35

1 2 3 4 5 6

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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.

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Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 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

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Non-material incentives

Our company offers its employees attractive non-material incentives (scopes of

decision-making).

Europe 4,25

Spain 3,86

England 4,46

Italy 3,32

France 3,24

Netherlands 4,68

Austria 4,00

Germany 3,62
Switzerland 3,66

1 2 3 4 5 6

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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.

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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.

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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.

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… 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.

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Mykolas Romeris University, Sept 2006 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).

© IOP  University of Berne