Environmental protection as a driver for employee satisfaction and retention : A quantitative study on the Swedish cosmetics industry

Sammanfattning: Date: 2020-06-09 Level: Bachelor Thesis in Business Administration, 15 ECTS Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University Authors: Ida Kvist (93/03/23), Anna Messerschmidt (95/06/14) Title: Environmental protection as a driver for employee satisfaction and retention Tutor: Ali Farashah Keywords: employee retention, employee satisfaction, cosmetics industry, CSR Research question: How are the employee satisfaction and retention within the cosmetics industry impacted by the company’s external CSR actions regarding environmental sustainability? Purpose: The relationship between CSR and internal stakeholders has often been neglected in previous studies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether a company’s CSR strategy can positively influence employee satisfaction and retention. Thereby, three different CSR dimensions are compared in order to draw comparisons based on the results. The cosmetics industry was chosen as a focus area as its products and packaging are a great concern regarding environmental pollution. Method: Because the turnover rate among retail employees is particularly high, a quantitative survey across salespeople and sales managers of the cosmetics industry was conducted. The data was analyzed with the use of IBM SPSS statistics. Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, environmental CSR has a significant influence on employee satisfaction. Yet, it showed no influence on employee retention. Furthermore, the findings suggest that internal CSR plays an important role in satisfying and retaining employees. Social CSR on the other hand showed a negative influence on employee satisfaction.