Corporate Sustainability as a Source for Employee Engagement Among Millennials

Abstract

Corporate sustainability has emerged to be one of the most influential forces shaping today’s business world. At the same time, having employees that are engaged is a huge benefit to an organization, but globally only a minority of employees identify themselves as engaged. This Master’s thesis connects these two topics with Millennials as a focus group. The objective of the thesis is to establish whether corporate sustainability plays any role on Millennials’ employee engagement, and to distinguish factors that have an impact on this relationship. Consequently, this distinction is helpful in better utilizing corporate sustainability as a potential source for engagement.

In order to answer the research questions, the study was carried out as an exploratory study that uses qualitative data collected through interviews. Nine Millennials representing various industries and positions were interviewed on corporate sustainability and the impact it has on their perceived level of engagement. The collected data was then analysed via content analysis.

The findings of the study indicate that corporate sustainability can enhance employee engagement via value alignment, meaningfulness, organizational pride, and sense of safety. General awareness of organizational sustainability and sustainability practices tends to be greater among those employees whose engagement is affected by sustainability in comparison to those whose is not. Personal values and perceptions of sustainability authenticity did not play a role in this regard. In order to turn sustainability into a greater source of engagement leadership support and easiness to participate are called for. Furthermore, internal sustainability was distinguished as a precondition for sustainability to have any further impact on engagement.

This study contributes to extending the limited research on sustainability at the individual level of analysis. Moreover, it provides practical insights on the prerequisites of using corporate sustainability as a tool to enhance employee engagement among Millennials.