Dr Maie Stein: Good for the environment, good for employees? Exploring the hidden connections between organisational environmental sustainability and employee wellbeing

Abstract

In response to growing legal, ethical, and strategic requirements, many organisations are taking steps to decrease their environmental impact by reducing waste and emissions, developing environmentally sustainable products and services, and integrating environmental considerations into organisational practices and decision-making processes.

Although these efforts primarily aim to ensure the wellbeing and long-term survival of humans in general, they may also have various direct and indirect implications for employee wellbeing. Moreover, employees’ engagement in pro-environmental and environmentally harmful behavior may not only influence their wellbeing in both positive and negative ways, but wellbeing may also contribute to employees effectively acting in environmentally friendly ways.

This talk explores the different ways in which organisational environmental sustainability and employee wellbeing are connected, and provides initial insights into how organisations may create synergies between environmental protection initiatives and workplace health promotion.

Bio

Dr Maie Stein is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Work and Organisational Psychology at Leipzig University, Germany. She completed her PhD at the University of Hamburg and worked as a research associate on various research projects on workplace health promotion. In her research program, she focuses on occupational health and wellbeing, proactive and adaptive employee behavior, and environmental sustainability in organisations. She is particularly interested in dynamic, reciprocal relationships between characteristics of the work context and employee experiences and behaviors. In her studies, she uses a variety of methodological approaches, such as longitudinal studies, experiments, and experience sampling methods.