Bridging Research and Practice: Boosting Employee Engagement for Corporate Sustainability Goals

1. Executive Summary: For his Leadership Project, Richard worked on a white paper and client-specific report on best practices for increasing employee engagement for corporate ESG goals for UCLA’s IoES Corporate Partners Program. This work helps bridge the gap between academic research and corporate sustainability practices. To complete this project, Richard worked under the tutelage of the IoES Corporate Partners Program Manager and collaborated with another researcher. The corporate client for this project, Concentrix, is a publicly traded, multinational business services company with more than 270,000 employees worldwide. Richard’s research included an extensive review of existing literature on best practices for employee sustainability engagement, discussions with Concentrix staff and leadership teams, and interviews with other leaders in the field.

2. Importance: This project is important for advancing understanding of how to best increase employee engagement with corporate ESG goals and sustainability initiatives. I chose this project because I’m passionate about getting more businesses to adopt climate-friendly behaviors.

3. Impact and Reach: The measurable output of this effort will be two written reports. The first report will be a synthesis of information for a general audience, and the second report will be a memo with specific recommendations for improving the internal sustainability program at Concentrix and boosting employee usage of their internal tracking app. Success will be measured by the quality of the reports we produce and the value of the recommendations to our client, and whether our recommendations have a positive impact on their ESG programming.

4. Collaborations: I will be working along with another researcher under the tutelage of IoES Corporate Partners Program Manager, Jennie Dean. This project will also entail close communications and contact with the client to gather information and conduct employee interviews.

5. Your Role Well Defined: I am working as the lead researcher and coordinating interviews and other research-gathering activities with the client and other external contacts. Report writing responsibilities will be split between myself and my collaborating partner.