Employees, sustainability and motivation: Increasing employee engagement by addressing sustainability and corporate social responsibility

An increasing number of academic studies indicate that we as humans are exploiting the planet earth to an extent that is no longer bearable. Put differently, we are actively destroying our very own basis of existence, especially considering the generations to come. It is therefore becoming increasingly significant for companies to develop more social and environmentally friendly ways to produce and distribute their products and services. Moreover, this is reinforced by the rising public awareness of sustainability issues. Apart from this, demographic changes make it increasingly difficult to attract and hire enough qualified employees. Besides, many employees all over the world lack a deeper meaning in what they are doing and consequently job-related motivation and engagement is alarmingly low. Such an issue is signally relevant in particular for the hospitality industry, since hospitality jobs are considered to demand a high performance but are rather poorly paid, while at the same time the industry operates with a high labour intensity, which leads to a substantially high staff turnover rate. The combination of the problems mentioned may in fact have a comprehensive solution. The approach is to actively involve employees in sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues and in this way lead employees to the perception of their jobs as being meaningful. Consequentially, increased engagement is expected, which in turn is positively related to business performance and profitability. This research proposes an employee-focused process model that companies can exploit as a guideline towards greater sustainability, CSR and engagement.