Leaders’ Perception of the Connection between Sustainability and Employee Engagement

Abstract: Todays’ organizations are facing low levels of employee engagement, with a tendency to decrease evenfurther. Sustainability has been found to positively affect employee engagement as it providesemployees with a higher purpose in their work. Therefore, this research study reveals leaders’perception on the contribution of sustainability towards employee engagement, with a focus onmultinational organizations in the Öresund region. This qualitative study combines Herzberg´s “Two-Factor Theory” and transformational leadership to analyze the research findings with a theoreticalframework. The results display that sustainability has a significant influence on the level of employeeengagement and various activities of organizations and leaders contribute towards this. The researchalso underlines that there is a potential for organizations to implement further strategies in this regardand thereby not only strengthen the satisfaction and loyalty of their current workforce, but also gain acompetitive advantage in the future for attracting new talents.