Green human resource management is the use of HR practices, such as recruitment, induction, training, appraisal, rewards and employee participation, to encourage environmentally responsible behaviour at work and support an organisation's sustainability goals.

What is the AMO framework in green HRM?

AMO stands for ability, motivation and opportunity. Employees behave sustainably when they know what to do and how (ability), when that behaviour is noticed and valued (motivation), and when they are involved and their ideas are heard (opportunity). Renwick, Redman and Maguire (2013) organised green HRM practices around it.

How can a college practise green HRM?

Add the campus's environmental commitments to staff induction, run short practical training, include a line on green initiatives in self-appraisal, recognise departments that lead green work in public, and set up a green committee with teaching, administrative and support staff and students.

Green HRM on campus: where an Indian college can start

Walk around most college campuses and the visible signs of sustainability are physical: solar panels on a roof, a rainwater pit, labelled bins. They matter. But the institutions that keep their green commitments over years tend to have something less visible in common. They have made sustainability part of how they manage people.

That is the idea behind green human resource management, or green HRM: using the ordinary tools of HR — recruitment, induction, training, appraisal, rewards and participation — to encourage environmentally responsible behaviour at work.

What green HRM means

The term gained ground after a widely cited review by Douglas Renwick, Tom Redman and Stuart Maguire in 2013. They organised green HRM around a familiar framework from HR research: ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO). People act sustainably at work when they

have the ability to do so (they know what to do and how),
have the motivation to do so (it is noticed, valued and rewarded), and
have the opportunity to do so (they are involved and their ideas are heard).

Each HR practice can be read through that lens.

Why colleges are a special case

Higher education institutions are unusual workplaces. Staff are a mix of teaching faculty, administrators and support workers, each with very different daily routines. Students pass through in a few years, so habits must be renewed with every intake. And in India, colleges have an additional reason to take this seriously: accreditation. NAAC’s assessment framework asks institutions to show their green campus practices, energy and waste management, and environmental awareness under its criterion on institutional values and best practices.

The danger is that sustainability becomes a once-a-year documentation exercise before an accreditation visit. Green HRM is one way to make it an everyday habit instead.

Practical starting points

Induction. Every new staff member goes through some form of orientation. Add twenty minutes on the campus’s environmental commitments: what is collected where, how to book shared resources, which printing and energy norms apply. Ability starts here.

Training. Short, practical sessions work better than lectures: how to set up a paperless assessment on the learning management system, how to run an event without single-use plastic, how to report a leaking tap. Digital teaching tools have a quiet green dividend; every component test moved online saves paper at scale.

Appraisal. If a contribution is never asked about, it is rarely made. Faculty self-appraisal forms can include a line on environmental initiatives in teaching, research or extension. This is not about scoring people down; it is about making the work visible.

Recognition. Departments that lead a plantation drive, cut energy use or run a zero-waste fest should hear about it from the principal, in public. Recognition costs little and signals what the institution values.

Participation. The most underused resource on any campus is the ideas of the people who work there. A green committee with representatives from teaching, administrative and support staff — and students — gives people a real opportunity to act, and builds ownership that no circular can.

What the research suggests

In a study of green HRM in higher education that I co-wrote with V. Udhayageetha, published in 2026, we looked at how green HRM, employees’ own green behaviour and their participation relate to sustainability in higher education institutions. The broader literature is consistent on one point: HR practices tend to work through employees’ behaviour and involvement, not around them. Policies change outcomes when they change what people actually do, and people change what they do when they are equipped, encouraged and included.

A simple test

If you want to know whether your institution practises green HRM or only green infrastructure, ask three questions:

Would a new staff member know, within their first week, what the campus expects of them environmentally?
Is there anywhere in appraisal or recognition where green contributions are noticed?
Do staff and students have a real channel to propose and lead initiatives?

If the answer to all three is yes, sustainability will survive the next change of leadership and the next accreditation cycle. If not, those are the three places to start.

Further reading: Renwick, Redman and Maguire (2013), “Green human resource management: A review and research agenda”, International Journal of Management Reviews.