Employee Engagement
At Robertson Cooper we talk about ‘full engagement’ rather than simply referring to ‘employee engagement’. This is because we have taken a close look at the nature of engagement itself and its relationship with well-being – the result has been a broadening of the concept that makes it more tangible and practical for organisations to work with.
Traditionally employee engagement has been defined quite narrowly – focusing on behaviours relating to discretionary effort, organisational citizenship (going the extra mile) and commitment. However, our latest thinking which has directly fed the government’s recent review of employee engagement, also includes positive psychological well-being. This is because when people feel good and have a strong sense of purpose you have the platform on which to build a fully engaged workforce.
We have demonstrated this relationship between well-being, engagement and productivity using data from our measurement tool, ASSET, which measures all three. As the diagram below shows, two particular aspects of well-being emerge as clear drivers of engagement – these should be a key focus of attempts to achieve employee engagement across your workforce.
Often, when managers are asked to improve employee engagement it can be difficult to know what levers to pull. By understanding how the various aspects of workplace well-being (e.g. autonomy, work-life balance, working relationships etc..) drive engagement the process of creating and improving it becomes much clearer and more tangible.
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