How sustainability builds employee engagement

Engaged employees create sustainable companies – according to Unilever CEO Paul Polman and ESMT Berlin professor CB Bhattacharya. At the same time companies that champion sustainability practices build employee engagement.

A recent Gallup poll revealed that “The world has an employee engagement crisis, with serious and potentially lasting repercussions for the global economy.” With so many organizations focused on employee engagement, why do only 13% of employees worldwide say they are engaged?

One of the reasons is to do with purpose. It has become an axiom of management thinkers that providing purpose is a key to creating an engaged and productive workforce. We would all like our working lives to have a higher purpose that goes beyond turning up to work and earning an income, and this is where sustainability comes in. Companies that focus on sustainability practices can resolve the tension people feel between their personal values and their work by providing a higher purpose.

Unilever, with an employee rating of 87%, is one organization that has got this message and is bucking the trend. In a recent article ESMT professor CB Bhattacharya and Unilever CEO Paul Polman draw on the Unilever experience to show how the key to creating a vibrant and sustainable company is to find ways to get all employees—from top executives to assembly line workers—personally engaged in day-to-day corporate sustainability efforts.