Sustainable Development: The UN Millennium Development Goals, the UN Global Compact, and the Common Good

16.: Employee Engagement through Social and Environmental Responsibility

311 16 | Employee Engagement through Social and Environmental Responsibility Ante Glavas employee Social and environmental Responsibility Studies in the last decade of the work force in the united States painted a very bleak picture. only 29 percent of the workforce was engaged ,1 and an estimated $300 billion was lost per year in the united States due to decrease in productivity from disengaged employees2 — and these studies were conducted at a time when the job market was better than it is today. Furthermore, work is not one of the top eight reasons that make people happy in the united States.3 Yet work is becoming even more central to the lives of many employees.4 employees are living lives that are becoming faster and more efficient but doing work that does not fulfill them, with little time left to find fulfillment outside of work. This is an issue not only for employees but also for employers. A disengaged workforce is a huge loss in profitability. on the other hand, employees seek increased meaning in their work,5 which is why engaging in social and environmental responsibility activities can be appealing to them. As such, the impact of companies committed to the ideals of the un Global compact might have a positive influence on the engagement, productivity, and well-being of employees. While most of the discourse in social responsibility and 312 Ante Glavas sustainability is conducted at a macro level,6 it is important for organizations to understand how and why employees are affected by working for the greater good. Doing so has important implications in three areas: 1. Moving beyond being solely a ceo agenda: by understanding the mechanisms that best motivate employees to engage in social and environmental responsibility, organizations can craft strategies that engage employees organization-wide. 2. Profitability: the engagement, intrinsic motivation, and satisfaction of employees lead to better performance, increased creativity, and greater retention rates. 3. Well-being: creating a more humane work environment is in and of itself a goal of the un Global compact. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to outline how employees are affected by working for companies that aspire toward the ideals of the un Global compact (unGc) and its ten principles. I begin by briefly outlining the business case, then explain some of the potential underlying mechanisms, and conclude with directions for implementation. BuSIneSS cASe An argument can be made that for many companies, the business case for social and environmental responsibility is not important. While we in academia are spending time trying to prove the business case, companies are moving ahead; what organizations need is more help on the how of implementing ideals of the unGc. It is as if academia and business sometimes live in two parallel universes.7 Furthermore, the business case has been extremely difficult to prove, with inconclusive evidence.8 There are too many variables that influence financial performance, which makes it difficult to tease out the impact on the bottom line of social and environmental responsibility. Perhaps that is why there has been so much focus on cost-savings; it is easy to measure the impact on the bottom line of “turning off light bulbs.” however, a more robust and straightforward case can be made for the impact on individual employee variables. Doing so would not only provide a powerful business case but also free up the time of scholars and employee Social and environmental Responsibility 313 managers to focus on the challenging questions of implementation and how to engage employees. Although more work is needed to create a compelling business case with robust metrics, there are encouraging studies that show the positive impact of social and environmental responsibility on the following employee variables: • Performance9 • engagement10 • Retention11 • creative involvement12 • commitment13 • Attractiveness to prospective employees14 • Identification with the organization15 • organizational citizenship behaviors16 • employee relationships17 unDeRSTAnDInG The unDeRLYInG MechAnISMS Before exploring the underlying mechanisms, it is important to take a humbling step backward and assess what we do know about employee workplace performance and attitudes. A possible conclusion is that our current management models of employees might not be as good as we think they are. Granted, both business practice and academia have come a long way in the last century in terms of understanding what drives employee behaviors and outcomes; however, humphrey, nahrgang , and Morgeson, in a meta-analysis of all of the studies on work design to date, found that...