Sustainability and Employee Engagement: An Empirical Review

Employee engagement is key in every organization. When an employee is not well engaged it creates a lack of commitment, no valuable connection to organizational goals and the stakeholders. This affects sustainability in an organization. Sustainability has become a trend in the workplace today. More organizations are embracing the need for inclusion of sustainable strategies in the organization’s culture. Its inclusion or exclusion affects employees’ engagement. When all the stakeholders adapt and embrace Sustainability in our everyday lives, we have a better world to live in. Through various journal analysis this paper examined environmental, economic and social strategies of sustainability and how they affect employee engagement. It also seeks to address the question of whether all organizations should be geared toward sustainability in the workplace or whether it’s reserved for a few organizations. Social exchange theory, employee engagement theory and Triple Bottom line Framework were used to explain the variables in the study. The methodology used was a desktop review. The desktop review found that environmental, social and economic strategies of sustainability are key to enhancing employee engagement. With the progression of sustainability in the workplace, more people will be more sociable and live in environmentally friendly spaces, while being more productive in the organization. This causes a deep-rooted culture of sustainable values and high-level employee engagement. A few challenges were noted, among them finance and training of managers in implementing the practices. Finally, the review had some recommendations for practice and more research in Sustainability and Employee Engagement based on the gaps identified.