Many organisations now report on sustainability, yet a firm can cut its energy use while exhausting its workers, or post strong profits while running down the water, skills or communities it depends on. This paper explains what sustainable human resource management (HRM) is and how it differs from other conventional approaches. It sets out seven components of Sustainable HRM in four groups: protecting people, building capacity, extending responsibility and governing for the long term. It then proposes the Three Links Model. Managers often review people, environmental and financial indicators separately. The model helps them examine how decisions in one area affect the others by tracing three relationships, which it calls the Employment, Stewardship and Resource links. Evidence and cases from various countries show each link at work. The paper ends with a link test and a self-assessment that managers can apply to a live decision.
Key words: Economic, Social and Environmental; People, Planet and Prosperity; Sustainable HRM; Three Links Model
Suggested citation: Syed, J. (2026). Sustainable HRM and the Three Links Model. SAAM Working Paper No. 20261109. South Asian Academy of Management.
Questions for discussion
- Consider a factory that saves energy and recycles water, yet its workers regularly work excessive hours, agency staff have weaker safety protection and supervisors discourage injury reports. Which Sustainable HRM components need attention, and which of the three links reveal the main problems?
- A business must close a polluting unit in a region with few alternative jobs. What should management do before closure, during the transition and afterwards?
- Choose one HR practice in your organisation. Identify its economic, social and environmental consequences, including effects beyond the permanent workforce.
- Apply all three links to a current decision in your organisation. Where does a benefit in one area risk creating a burden in another?
- Identify one change your organisation could make in the next three months. Who should lead it, whose views are needed, and what evidence would show that it worked?
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