Earning the commitment of millennials, the secret weapon of Corporate Social Responsibility

The commitment of an employee to their employer has been researched extensively by academics over the last fifty years (Cantril, 1963; Mowday, Steers and Porter, 1979; Allen and Meyer, 1990; Singh, Gupta and Venugopal, 2008; Al-Yami, Galdas and Watson, 2018), the context for such research has generally been contextualised to 'baby boomers' who represented the workforce during this period. Millennial employees are soon expected to make up 60% of the workforce with the last baby boomers expected to retire this decade (Westerman and Yamamura, 2007). The needs and desires of millennials at work are different to baby boomers with millennials more concerned with organisations impact on the world and commitment to sustainability strategies (Leveson and Joiner, 2014). Organisational Commitment (OC) has also been noted to be in decline, with millennials not seeking or expecting a 'job for life' (Hammer, 2015). This paper therefore proposes that organisational Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) might be an important tool for organisations wishing to commit millennial employees.