Impact Analysis of Company Y’s Socially Responsible Human Resource Management Practices on Employee Performance ()
1. Research Background
In the context of rapid economic and social development, enterprises are not only obligated to pursue profit maximization but also required to fulfill their social responsibilities. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that enterprises should integrate their development with national prosperity, national rejuvenation, and people’s well-being, and strive to balance economic, social, and ecological benefits. Under the strategic guidance of the “dual carbon” goals and common prosperity, corporate social responsibility has become a crucial dimension for evaluating an enterprise’s sustainable development capabilities.
As a high-energy-consumption and high-pollution industry, the chemical sector is confronted with an urgent need for transformation and upgrading. Some chemical enterprises, however, neglect their social responsibilities, lack environmental awareness, and frequently violate regulations, ultimately facing severe penalties. The explosion accident at Tianjiayi Chemical Company in Xiangshui, Jiangsu Province, serves as a painful lesson. As a representative enterprise in the energy and chemical industry, Company Y has proactively transformed into a socially responsible enterprise, with the goal of building a “zero-emission” entity, demonstrating the sense of responsibility of chemical enterprises in the new era.
Socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM) is an effective approach for enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities and has emerged as a research focus in the field of management in recent years. Company Y has established a multi-level mechanism centered on the principle of “safety first and people-oriented management” to optimize organizational efficiency, stimulate employee motivation, form a virtuous cycle between performance and responsibility, and enhance corporate competitiveness. With the progress of the times, modern professionals no longer view work merely as a means of making a living; instead, they aspire to realize their self-worth at work, gain social recognition, and make a positive contribution to society. Nevertheless, some chemical enterprises still adhere to traditional management concepts, overemphasizing production efficiency and economic benefits. For a long time, they have treated employees as mere production tools, with work content being monotonous and repetitive, lacking career development opportunities, and providing no channels for employees to participate in social responsibility activities. Consequently, employees generally feel that their work lacks meaning, resulting in low work enthusiasm and creativity, and their performance has remained at a low level for an extended period. In contrast, Company Y has a profound understanding of the significance of employees’ pursuit of professional values and closely integrates SRHRM practices with employees’ career development. At Company Y, employees participate in the research and development of “zero-emission” projects. Through this involvement, they can not only apply their professional knowledge to drive the enterprise’s green technological innovation but also contribute to environmental protection, thereby achieving the alignment of personal and social values. Additionally, by participating in community welfare activities, employees can step out of the factory to serve the public, enhancing their sense of social responsibility and personal accomplishment. This management model, which integrates employees’ pursuit of personal professional values with the enterprise’s social responsibility goals, enables employees to find a sense of mission in their work. This significantly boosts employees’ work enthusiasm and creativity, leading to a substantial improvement in employee performance.
Although Company Y has laid a certain foundation in fulfilling its social responsibilities, there is currently a lack of research support to systematically assess the specific impact of its social responsibility practices on employee performance from the perspective of employees. Particularly in the current context of intense competition for high-quality talents and rising employee expectations, how to enhance employee cohesion and performance levels through socially responsible management methods has become a key issue for Company Y to achieve transformation and upgrading. Based on this, this study intends to take Company Y as the research object and explore the specific mechanism through which SRHRM practices impact employee performance. By combining theoretical analysis with empirical research, this study aims to systematically uncover the correlation path between SRHRM and employee performance. It provides a theoretical basis and practical recommendations for Company Y to improve its SRHRM practices and also offers certain reference value for the high-quality development of China’s chemical enterprises in the new era.
2. Research Methods
2.1. Research Design
This study adopts a mixed research design that combines case study method and quantitative analysis method, taking Y Company’s socially responsible human resource management (SRRHM) practices and employee performance data from 2020 to 2024 as the core research object. The longitudinal case study focuses on the complete evolution process of Company Y’s SRHRM system from establishment to optimization, and explores its correlation with changes in employee performance by tracking the dynamic adjustments of management practices (such as iteration of assessment indicators, upgrades of incentive mechanisms, and improvement of training systems) over the past five years. The quantitative analysis relies on Company Y’s internal statistical data to construct a quantitative analysis framework of “SRHRM input-employee performance output” to verify the impact of management practices on performance and achieve the dual support of “process tracking” and “data verification.”
2.2. Data Source
The data for this study are all from Y company’s internal official records to ensure the authenticity and authority of the data. Among them, the management practice investment data, including SRHRM system construction costs, incentive mechanism investment, training and resource support costs, etc., are extracted from Y company’s financial department annual budget report and human resources department special expenditure ledger: employee performance data, covering production efficiency indicators, safety performance indicators, ability and attitude indicators, from the monthly and annual performance appraisal reports of Y company’s production management department, safety and environmental protection department, and human resources department: auxiliary qualitative data, including Y The company’s SRHRM-related system documents, special meeting minutes, and employee interview records are used to supplement and explain the management logic behind the quantitative data.
3. Theoretical Basis and Concept Definition
3.1. Socially Responsible Human Resource Management
Traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices primarily focus on macro-strategies and external stakeholders (such as consumers and the government). However, when implemented within the organization, they encounter problems such as inefficient cross-functional collaboration and insufficient employee participation, making it difficult to balance social and commercial goals. Consequently, scholars have recognized that employees are the core drivers of CSR implementation. It is necessary to integrate CSR into organizational operations from the perspective of strategic human resource management (HRM) through functions such as recruitment, training, and performance management to address the disconnect between “concept and action”. Shen & Zhu (2011) proposed embedding the concept of social responsibility into HRM practices, which is known as socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM). This includes recruiting employees with a sense of responsibility, providing CSR-related training, and incorporating social contributions into promotion or salary evaluation criteria. The objective is to enhance employees’ sense of participation in CSR and enable them to become both recipients and disseminators of CSR.
Socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM) is a management model that organically integrates the concept of social responsibility with human resource management practices (Tian & Jiang, 2020). Its core lies in recognizing the dual identity of employees in corporate social responsibility—both as implementers and recipients. Through a series of policies and practices, SRHRM closely links employees with the enterprise’s social responsibility. In terms of connotation, SRHRM belongs to a sub-module of strategic human resource management. It is based on the organization’s strategic planning, business characteristics, and values, and its essence is the specific application of corporate social responsibility at the micro-level (focusing on individual employees) in the field of human resource management. Although SRHRM places greater emphasis on the realization of employees’ interests, its fundamental purpose is to maximize the value of the organization. By establishing an “employee-enterprise community of interests”, it identifies the intersection of interests between the enterprise and employees, and mobilizes employees’ subjective initiative to achieve organizational goals.
In terms of structure, there are different classification methods. Shen & Benson (2016) proposed a single-dimensional integration approach, arguing that SRHRM is an indivisible holistic construct that focuses on the in-depth integration of HR functions and CSR rather than the independent operation of each dimension. CSR elements are embedded in the entire process from recruitment to compensation. This framework includes 6 items, which is suitable for the context of Chinese organizations, easy to operate, and widely used in empirical research. Nie & Lamsä (2018), based on the dual identity of employees in corporate social responsibility, divided SRHRM into a two-dimensional structure of “social care” and “employee care”. “Social care” emphasizes employees’ role as implementers of corporate social responsibility and focuses on their participation in social responsibility activities. “Employee care” emphasizes employees’ role as recipients of corporate social responsibility, reflecting the enterprise’s care and support for employees. In addition, there are three-dimensional and four-dimensional structural classifications. Tu et al. (2025) also mentioned the three-dimensional division of SRHRM in their research. The purpose of these classifications is to enhance employees’ enthusiasm and initiative in participating in corporate social responsibility through sustainable human resource management practices, promote the development of employee behavior and performance in a favorable direction, and thereby have a positive impact on employees’ positive psychological perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and performance.
3.2. Employee Performance
Employee performance is a multi-dimensional and dynamically evolving concept, and its definition is continuously enriched with the expansion of research perspectives. Its core can be summarized as follows: it refers to a series of behaviors exhibited by employees in a specific organizational context to achieve organizational goals, as well as the comprehensive reflection of their work outputs. It includes not only measurable work results but also the behavioral processes, ability traits, and situational adaptability that support the achievement of these results. In terms of dimensional classification, employee performance has gradually evolved from a two-dimensional model to a multi-dimensional model. The two-dimensional model divides employee performance into task performance and contextual performance. Task performance refers to the formal work behaviors prescribed by the organization, while contextual performance refers to behaviors such as organizational citizenship behavior and dedication. The three-dimensional model adds adaptive performance, emphasizing the ability to respond to environmental changes. The multi-dimensional model covers more dimensions, such as management performance, effort level, and communication effectiveness. Localization studies in China have also incorporated factors such as interpersonal collaboration and long-term investment, forming a more realistic evaluation framework.
Employee performance is affected by many factors. Intrinsic motivation such as self-competence, positive work attitude, and emotional commitment can improve performance; behaviors such as seeking feedback and suggestions also play an important role. Zhao et al. (2019) found in their research that social responsibility-oriented human resource management perceptions will affect employee performance-related performance by affecting employee voice behavior, which also reflects the important impact of employee behavior on performance. Among external factors, job autonomy, challenging work requirements, organizational culture, organizational support, leadership style, organizational justice, psychological capital, job satisfaction, etc., all have a positive impact on employee performance.
4. Current Status of Company Y
4.1. Basic Information about Company Y
Company Y was established in December 2017 and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shaanxi Coal Group. Its business scope includes general projects: coal processing such as coal-based activated carbon; manufacturing of basic chemical raw materials (excluding hazardous chemicals and other licensed chemicals); production of chemical products (excluding licensed chemical products); manufacturing of special chemical products (excluding hazardous chemicals); research and development of carbon emission reduction, carbon conversion, carbon capture, and carbon sequestration technologies; heat production and supply; cooling services; sales of coal and coal products; sales of chemical products (excluding licensed chemical products); and sales of special chemical products (excluding hazardous chemicals), etc.
Company Y is responsible for the planning, construction, and operation of Shaanxi Coal Group’s “Demonstration Project for High-Quality Coal Utilization in New Chemical Materials”. It undertakes the mission of promoting the transformation and upgrading of Shaanxi’s coal industry and driving the industrial agglomeration of high-end energy and chemical bases in northern Shaanxi. The 15 million tons/year high-quality coal utilization project represents the development direction of the coal chemical industry, featuring high comprehensive utilization efficiency of coal as a chemical raw material, and the prominent characteristics of high-end, diversified, and low-carbon products. It is a valuable exploration and attempt in the clean and efficient transformation of coal. Moreover, it is a concrete measure to actively promote the development of high-end energy and chemical industrial parks in northern Shaanxi towards refinement, materialization, and upstream-downstream integration, and strive to build a complete industrial chain for deep coal processing. This project is of great significance for advancing the implementation of the “dual carbon” goals and ensuring national energy security.
4.2. The Practice of Socially Responsible Human Resources Management in Company Y
The core of an enterprise’s SRHRM practice is to deeply integrate the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) into the entire human resource management process and achieve synergy between “social responsibility” and “human resource management” through system design, cultural cultivation, and employee interaction.
4.2.1. System Construction
In 2020, Company Y launched CSR-related investment initiatives. On one hand, it established a special team of 8 members, consisting of personnel from the human resources, production, and environmental protection departments. Over a period of 4 months, the team formulated core indicators such as safe operation and environmental compliance. In the first year, the total cost of the assessment system, including human resources and consulting expenses, amounted to 450,000 yuan. On the other hand, the company appointed 3 full-time CSR assessment supervisors. From 2021 to 2024, the assessment system entered the stage of refined upgrading, with an average annual investment of 500,000 to 600,000 yuan, and a total investment of more than 2.1 million yuan over four years. In 2023, two new indicators—“green production efficiency” and “carbon emission reduction contribution”—were added. In 2024, the company further invested in the development of a digital platform and established a CSR assessment data center, which includes dedicated monitoring modules for ethylene glycol production energy consumption and environmental protection data, enabling real-time connection of production energy consumption and environmental protection data. Affected by business expansion during the same period, the number of full-time CSR assessment supervisors increased to 12 by 2024, and the average annual labor cost increased by 1.2 million yuan from 2020 to 2024. In addition, in 2021, the company introduced intelligent monitoring equipment for workshops, such as VOCs detectors and energy consumption sensors, to ensure data collection at the grassroots level. The one-time investment for this equipment was 1.2 million yuan, with an additional annual investment of 150,000 yuan required for equipment maintenance and data calibration, which effectively reduced manual statistical errors.
4.2.2. Incentive Mechanism Investment
Company Y has established a comprehensive innovation incentive mechanism to encourage employees to propose innovative ideas and solutions. The company has set up a special innovation award fund and invests funds annually to reward valuable innovative proposals. For innovative suggestions put forward by employees, the company organizes a professional team to evaluate them. Once a proposal is adopted, the employee(s) will receive generous material rewards, including cash bonuses, promotion opportunities, and equity incentives. The total investment in incentives over five years exceeded 30 million yuan, and the investment in 2024 was 8 times that of 2020. Among the incentives, the proportion of green achievement sharing and CSR excess profit rewards increased from 0 to 66.7%, with a focus on the project’s contributions to energy conservation, consumption reduction, and carbon emission reduction (as shown in Figure 1).
4.2.3. Training and Resource Support Costs
Company Y has also achieved remarkable results in terms of investment in training and resource support. In terms of specialized training, a total of 180 training sessions on topics such as safety emergency response, environmental protection
Figure 1. Distribution of incentive fund investment, 2020-2024.
technology, and green production have been conducted, covering 25,000 employees. Training costs include expenses for lectures by industry experts and the procurement of VR safety training equipment, with a total investment of 5.2 million yuan. In 2024, customized training was provided for the ethylene glycol project team, with an investment of 400,000 yuan per session, and experts from the Process Engineering Research Institute and the ethylene glycol industry were invited to participate. With the improvement of the training system, the average score of employees in the CSR knowledge assessment increased from 62 points in 2020 to 91 points in 2024, and the mastery rate of safe operation standards reached 99%. In terms of special project investment, a total of 10 million yuan was invested in upgrading safety protection equipment from 2020 to 2024, covering explosion-proof reactors, ethylene glycol storage tank safety monitoring systems, and research and development of carbon capture technology. This investment accounts for 9.2% of the total project investment, fully meeting the safety and environmental protection needs corresponding to the 1.8 million tons/year production capacity. In terms of support for technological transformation projects, among the 40 technological transformation projects promoted in 2024, 22 energy-saving and environmental protection projects received an additional R&D subsidy of 3.5 million yuan. The proportion of subsidies in the total investment in technological transformation increased from 15.6% to 16.5%, with a focus on supporting projects closely related to the core business, such as “Energy-Saving Optimization of Ethylene Glycol Circulating Water System” and “Resource Utilization of Ethylene Glycol Production Waste Gas”. This provides strong support for the project to achieve stable operation with an annual load rate of 104%.
4.2.4. Optimization of Salary and Welfare System
Company Y has established a scientific and reasonable responsibility-based compensation and welfare system. In formulating salaries, the company adopts a method that combines job value evaluation with competency assessment to ensure the fairness and competitiveness of salaries. At the same time, compensation is linked to employee performance, skill improvement, and the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility. Company Y continuously improves its salary and welfare system to ensure that salaries are competitive, fair, and reasonable. Since 2021, the average salary has increased at an annual rate of 5%. In addition to the basic salary increase, the company has also added a number of welfare programs. In terms of health and welfare, the company arranges annual physical examinations for ordinary employees and those in occupational health-related positions, with all expenses borne by the company. It also organizes annual trips for employees, mainly including middle and senior management personnel, outstanding individuals, gold medal sales managers of the previous year, and loyal employees with more than ten years of service, as well as other employees with outstanding performance. Furthermore, Company Y provides benefits such as housing support, commuting subsidies, and children’s education assistance. It has established a shared service center to optimize employee services, organizes cultural and sports activities to enhance team cohesion, put sports venues and gyms into use within five years, holds dating events for young employees, and distributes condolences to employees in need. The company also encourages employees to participate in various volunteer activities.
4.3. Company Y Employee Performance
4.3.1. Production Efficiency
Production efficiency is a direct reflection of the core competitiveness of chemical enterprises. Over the past five years, through equipment upgrades, process optimization, and adjustments to performance incentives, Company Y’s production indicators have shown the characteristics of “year-on-year growth with accelerated growth in the later period”. From 2020 to 2021, the indicators increased by 2 - 3 percentage points annually, mainly driven by the optimization of traditional production management. In 2022, affected by the disruption of raw material supply and the decline in employee attendance due to the epidemic, the annual output achievement rate decreased compared with 2021. However, the first-pass rate of products still maintained a 2% increase, reflecting the stability of the quality management and control system. In 2023, “green process application” was included in the production performance bonus items to promote the transformation of energy-saving equipment, leading to a 4-percentage-point year-on-year increase in equipment utilization rate. In 2024, the second phase of the project was put into production, and differentiated incentives of “production-based salary” were added. As a result, the annual output achievement rate and equipment utilization rate reached new highs in the past five years (as shown in Figure 2).
4.3.2. Safety Performance
As the lifeline of chemical enterprises, safety performance is a core area for the implementation of Company Y’s SRHRM practices. Over the past five years, through adjustments to indicator weights, upgrades to the training system, and optimization of the hidden danger investigation mechanism, the company’s safety management has transformed from “post-accident rectification” to “pre-accident prevention”. From 2020 to 2021, the safety indicators only focused on the “accident rate” and “training participation rate”, and the training was mainly theoretical teaching, resulting in employees’ insufficient practical safety capabilities and a relatively high safety accident rate. In 2022, in response to the requirements of the “Special Rectification Action for Safety Production in the Chemical Industry”, the indicator of “hidden danger investigation completion rate” was added, and the proportion of practical safety training was increased to 30%. Consequently, the safety accident rate decreased year-on-year, and the safety management compliance rate increased by 10 percentage points. In 2023, the company introduced a policy where employees who identify major hidden dangers can receive bonuses or other benefits, leading to an 8-percentage-point year-on-year increase in the hidden danger investigation completion rate. In 2024, the “safety joint responsibility system” was incorporated into the assessment. If a safety accident occurs in a team, the team leader’s performance will be downgraded. As a result, the safety accident rate was reduced to 1.2%, the safety training participation rate reached 95% (covering all front-line operation employees), and the safety management compliance rate was close to 90% (as shown in Figure 3).
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Figure 2. Analysis chart of production efficiency indicators, 2020-2024.
Figure 3. Analysis chart of safety performance indicators, 2020-2024.
4.3.3. Ability and Attitude
Ability and attitude are core dimensions for evaluating employees’ long-term development potential and team collaboration value, including indicators of competency and work attitude. From 2020 to 2021, the work attitude indicators relied solely on the subjective judgment of superiors, with no specific behavioral standards, leading to widespread controversy regarding fairness. In 2022, the company adopted a three-dimensional evaluation method and established industry-specific behavioral indicators, significantly improving the objectivity of scoring. In 2024, the indicators were further optimized, and the “green production collaboration” scenario was added, which greatly reduced scoring errors. In 2020, the competency indicators only focused on single skills, and only required certificates for five key positions, such as safety officers and trainers. In 2021, the number of training hours was increased, leading to a rise in per capita training hours. From 2022 to 2023, “green skills” were included in the assessment, and green operation training was increased simultaneously. In 2024, the company focused on “dual compliance with intelligent + green skills” and established a “training-qualification-promotion” linkage mechanism to urge employees to proactively improve their capabilities, achieving both “quality and efficiency” in indicators. It can be seen that the starting level of the work attitude index was slightly lower than that of the competency index, but it surpassed the competency index after 2022 and the gap continued to widen. In 2024, the work attitude index was 2 points higher than the competency index, reflecting that the company’s efforts in “soft power cultivation” have gradually become more prominent, forming a positive pattern of coordinated growth between work attitude and competency (as shown in Table 1).
Table 1. Analysis chart of ability and attitude indicators, 2020-2024.
|
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
Average Score of Competency |
72 |
75 |
78 |
83 |
90 |
Average Score of Work Attitude |
70 |
73 |
78 |
85 |
92 |
5. Conclusion
The practices of Company Y fully demonstrate that although the investment of chemical enterprises in SRHRM may increase certain management costs in the short term, in the long run, by improving employees’ skill levels, enhancing employee stability, and stimulating employees’ innovation capabilities, it can significantly promote the improvement of employee performance and create greater value for the enterprise. SRHRM is not merely a form of corporate social responsibility; it is also a key path to enhance an enterprise’s core competitiveness and achieve sustainable development. Chemical enterprises should deeply integrate the concept of social responsibility into their human resource strategic planning, abandon the traditional concept of treating employees as mere costs, and instead regard the safety, development, and rights protection of employees as core indicators of corporate development. They should attach great importance to SRHRM from a strategic perspective.
6. Research Limitations and Future Prospects
First of all, this study only focuses on Company Y, an energy and chemical enterprise. Although it can deeply explore the details of its SRHRM practice, the results may be affected by the enterprise’s own resources and industry characteristics, and it is difficult to directly generalize to other industries or small and medium-sized chemical enterprises. Subsequently, chemical enterprises of different sizes and different subdivisions can be selected to conduct multiple case studies, comparatively analyze the industry commonality and enterprise differences of SRHRM practices, and refine a more universal management model.
Secondly, the research data spans from 2020 to 2024, which does not involve future scenarios of the combination of SRHRM with digital and intelligent technologies, and does not cover emerging management trends. In the future, the application of AI, big data and other technologies in SRHRM can be explored, such as real-time tracking of employee CSR participation through digital platforms, intelligent matching of training content, and research on the role of technology empowerment in improving SRHRM efficiency and performance.
Finally, although the relationship between SRHRM and employee performance has been analyzed, the impact of external factors on performance has not been completely ruled out. For example, the decline in Company Y’s annual production rate in 2022 may be affected by the supply of raw materials due to the epidemic, and other variables need to be further considered. In the future, long-term tracking of Company Y and similar companies for more than 10 years can be carried out, and other variables can be considered for control analysis to more accurately reveal the causal relationship between SRHRM and employee performance, and provide a more reliable basis for corporate long-term strategic decisions.