Creating Engaged Workforce

Research report
January 2010

CREATING AN ENGAGED
WORKFORCE

CREATING AN ENGAGED
WORKFORCE
FINDINGS FROM THE KINGSTON EMPLOYEE
ENGAGEMENT CONSORTIUM PROJECT

This report has been written by:
Kerstin Alfes, Kingston Business School
Catherine Truss, Kingston Business School
Emma C. Soane, London School of Economics and Political Science
Chris Rees, Royal Holloway, University of London
Mark Gatenby, University of Surrey

Contents

Executive summary 2
1 Introduction 4
2 The research study 5
3 Employee engagement in the UK 6
Case Study: ServiceCo 8
4 Engagement across different organisational contexts 12
Engagement strategies across the public and private sectors 12
Case Study: LocalGov 13
Engagement levels across the public and private sectors 16
Case Study: GovDep 18
5 Engaging different employees 21
6 Strategies for engagement 23
Meaningfulness 23
Case Study: ScienceCo 25
Management and leadership approaches 28
Perceptions of line managers 28
Perceptions of senior managers and employee engagement 29
Case Study: PlasticCo 30
Employee voice, involvement and communication 34
HR policies and practices 36
Case Study: EnvironmentCo 38
7 Outcomes of engagement 42
For organisations 42
Individual performance 42
Innovative work behaviour 43
Intention to stay 43
Case Study: NorthTrust 45
For individuals 49
Well-being 49
Sustainability 49
Case Study: ConstructionCo 51
8 Conclusions and management implications 55
9 References 57
10 Appendix 58
Methodology 58
Participants 59
Data analysis 60

CREATING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE 1

Executive summary

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN THE UK • Respondents rate their line managers more positively
• We carried out research in eight organisations across the compared with their senior managers, with 56% indicating
UK resulting in a dataset of 5,291 questionnaires and that they have a good relationship with their line manager.
around 180 interviews. • Employee voice is a strong driver of engagement.
• Our measure of engagement incorporates three • Just 34% of employees are the ‘vocal-involved’, who
dimensions: emotional or affective engagement; intellectual perceive their work as meaningful and have opportunities
or cognitive engagement; and social engagement, each to voice their views, yet this category of workers is the
measured in terms of extent and frequency. most engaged.
• Overall, 8% of respondents in our sample are strongly • Most employees have negative views about their
engaged with their work, with the majority falling into an organisation’s HR policies and practices.
intermediate category. • HR practices do not impact directly on engagement;
• With respect to the frequency of engagement, 18% are the relationship is mediated by person–job fit and line
engaged on a daily basis. management style.
• Comparisons across the three dimensions reveal that levels
of social engagement are lowest. OUTCOMES OF ENGAGEMENT
• Employee engagement is associated with a range of
ENGAGEMENT ACROSS DIFFERENT positive outcomes at the individual and organisational
ORGANISATIONAL CONTExTS levels.
• Many organisations measure engagement and have • Engaged employees perform better.
specific engagement strategies across the public and • The majority of our respondents were rated ‘good’ in their
private sectors. last appraisal.
• Public sector employees are more strongly but less • Engaged employees are more innovative than others.
frequently engaged than in the private sector. • Engaged employees are more likely to want to stay with
• Public sector employees show higher levels of social and their employer.
intellectual engagement, whereas private sector employees • In our sample, 35% indicate that they would like to
are more engaged affectively. continue working for their employer for five or more years,
compared with 17% who want to leave within the next
ENGAGING DIFFERENT EMPLOYEES two years.
• Comparisons across employee groups reveal a variety of • Engaged employees enjoy greater levels of personal
interesting differences with respect to demographics and well-being.
job types. • Engaged employees perceive their workload to be more
• Women are more engaged than men. sustainable than others.
• Younger workers are less engaged than older workers. • One-third of employees are ‘fit-performers’, enjoying high
• Those on flexible contracts are more engaged. levels of personal well-being and performing well.
• Managers are more engaged than non-managers. • Our data indicate that excessively high levels of
engagement might lead to ill-health and burnout.
STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGEMENT
• Organisations can implement a range of workplace CASE STUDIES
strategies that impact upon levels of engagement. • In our two-year research project we analysed levels of
• Meaningfulness is the most important driver of engagement across eight different organisations, which are
engagement for all employee groups. included as case studies in this report.
• Two-thirds of all respondents in our study find meaning in • ServiceCo is a support services partner company with
their work. around 9,000 employees. An important factor influencing
• Senior management vision and communication is a key levels of engagement is the extent to which employees
driver of engagement, whereas senior management are given a platform to communicate their opinion
effectiveness is negatively related to employee engagement. about work-related topics. Further challenges include
• Positive perceptions of one’s line manager are strongly the integration of employees working remotely and the
linked with engagement. engagement of manual workers.

2 CREATING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE

• LocalGov is one of the largest local authorities in the MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS
UK, employing more than 50,000 employees. In 2006, • The main drivers for engagement in our study
LocalGov initiated a programme to empower employees are meaningful work, voice, senior management
and increase their levels of engagement, which runs very communication style and vision, supportive work
successfully. However, further improvements can be made environment, person–job fit and line management style.
in terms of communicating with employees, especially • Understanding your workforce engagement profile is the
during change initiatives. first step to determining how to drive up engagement levels.
• GovDep is a large government department that has been • Engagement is clearly associated, both in our report and
interested in employee engagement for several years. One in other studies, with high levels of performance, reduced
of the major strengths in this organisation is work–life intent to quit and raised levels of personal well-being. It
balance and the opportunities to work flexibly. An area for is therefore legitimate from a corporate perspective to
improvement is the way leadership capacity is developed prioritise improving levels of employee engagement.
within GovDep. • There is a clear need to help create meaning for employees
• ScienceCo is a public sector organisation, supplying in their work; this can be achieved intellectually by
scientific information in the UK. Changes in the economic articulating the links between individual jobs and the
climate prompted ScienceCo to launch a new initiative to broader organisational aims, and emotionally through
move from a very stable to a more dynamic workforce. sharing an understanding of deeper levels of the purpose
Employees at ScienceCo find their jobs highly meaningful; of the organisation.
however, senior management attitudes and behaviour • Employees need to be given opportunities to express
could be improved to further raise levels of engagement. their views and to know that their opinions will be taken
• PlasticCo is a leading plastics manufacturer with a seriously. This is an activity that needs to involve both
workforce of around 650 employees. Following the results senior and line managers. Our case studies provide some
from their engagement survey, PlasticCo undertook a examples of how organisations in the consortium have
major effort to change the culture and move towards a achieved this.
more open and integrative management style. • Senior managers have an important role to play in
• EnvironmentCo is a leading recycling and waste creating a vision for the organisation and sharing this
management company in the UK, employing almost with employees, and in being open, transparent and
12,500 people in the UK. A major strength within approachable.
EnvironmentCo is the clarity of objectives, as the vast • Engagement levels are affected by the working
majority of employees feels that they are clear about the environment. Where employees can see that they have
tasks they have to perform to achieve their goals. An support from others to help them do their job, there is a
important area for improvement are HR practices, as many sense of teamwork and they can safely express themselves,
respondents express their dissatisfaction, especially with then engagement will be higher.
training and development opportunities, and the career • Matching people to jobs is a critical driver of engagement.
and performance appraisal systems. This is one area where HR professionals can play an
• NorthTrust is an NHS foundation trust providing healthcare important role helping line managers design jobs
to a population of over 300,000 people. A consistently effectively, and develop selection processes that match
positive finding is that employees are generally satisfied individual skills to jobs.
working for the NHS. Future challenges for NorthTrust are • Line managers act as the interface between the
communication and leadership style. organisation and the employee, and can do much to
• ConstructionCo is an international consultancy and impact on engagement. Another key HR role is therefore
construction firm. The company benefits from its to pay close attention to the selection, development and
entrepreneurial culture and the fair and consistent performance management of line managers to ensure they
management style. An area for improvement is work–life maximise their potential to be engaging leaders.
balance as many employees feel compelled to work long
hours due to the sheer amount of work.


1 Introduction

The findings of the UK Government’s 2009 MacLeod Review based in the Centre for Research in Employment, Skills and
into employee engagement (MacLeod and Clarke 2009) have Society (CRESS) at Kingston University. Working with the
underlined the critical role played by an engaged workforce CIPD and the ten members of the consortium, we have
in both organisational success and individual well-being. undertaken a very thorough and detailed exploration of
The study corroborates the findings of the earlier report employee engagement, its antecedents and consequences,
commissioned by the CIPD into employee engagement in a variety of different settings. Through this research, we
(Gatenby et al 2009). This highlighted the relatively low levels have developed a new definition and conceptualisation of
of engagement in the UK workforce generally, together employee engagement that builds on prior academic studies
with evidence demonstrating the impact of engagement but extends them in important ways, and we have studied
on performance, quality, innovation, levels of absenteeism, the processes through which engagement levels can be
turnover and organisational advocacy. Engagement would raised or lowered through the actions taken by managers.
seem to be beneficial to both employers and employees, as
those with the highest levels of engagement also appear to
enjoy greater personal well-being.

However, despite these and other studies, it remains true
that, in theoretical, conceptual and empirical terms, we in
fact know relatively little about the concept of employee
engagement. Largely, this is because academic research has
lagged significantly behind the wealth of interest shown
by practitioners, HR professionals and consultants, who
have been much quicker to note the importance of this
relatively new concept. Consequently, many management
consultancies and survey firms have developed a definition of
employee engagement and associated measurement index,
while their academic colleagues have been much slower
off the mark and have thus far not agreed on a single,
theoretically derived and empirically validated definition
of engagement. In particular, we note one significant
discrepancy. Most consultancies and survey firms regard
engagement as something that is done to employees, in
other words, ‘a workplace approach designed to ensure that
employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and
values, motivated to contribute to organisational success,
and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of
well-being’ (MacLeod and Clarke 2009). In contrast, however
they may actually define engagement, academics tend to
agree that engagement is experienced by individuals, a state
of being that may be affected by management strategies
and approaches, but is not, in and of itself, such a strategy
(May et al 2004).

It is the latter view of engagement as a state experienced by
employees that has informed the work undertaken over the
past two years by the Employee Engagement Consortium


2 The research study

We took as our starting point the first report we wrote on Thus, an engaged employee is someone who thinks hard
engagement for the CIPD in 2006 (Truss et al 2006). In this about their work, feels positive when they do a good job and
study, we were able to survey the views of 2,000 working discusses work-related matters and improvements with those
adults from across the UK. This investigation yielded some around them.
important insights into engagement. However, we felt
that there were still some unanswered questions. Most This definition of engagement derives from the work of
particularly, although the measure of engagement we used earlier theorists and commentators such as Kahn (1990),
in that report was helpful (May et al 2004), we wanted to May et al (2004) and Schaufeli and Bakker (2004), all
develop this conceptualisation further, drawing on wider of whom regard engagement as a psychological state
academic studies and empirical evidence. We also wanted to experienced by employees in relation to their work,
explore, in more depth, how the engagement process works together with associated behaviours. Engagement therefore
across different sectors and types of organisation. has intellectual, emotional and behavioural dimensions.
Our definition of engagement draws specifically on the
The following year, in 2007, with support from the CIPD, we work of Kahn (1990) in its incorporation of the concept
founded the Kingston Employee Engagement Consortium of social engagement, and suggests that the willingness
project in collaboration with ten public and private sector of employees to discuss work-related improvements
members. We set out to answer the following five questions: with those around them is an important dimension of
1 What does engagement mean? engagement and which serves to differentiate engagement
from other, similar constructs such as job satisfaction,
2 How can engagement be managed?
organisational citizenship behaviour and ‘flow’. It is
3 What are the consequences of engagement for important to note that, following earlier theorists, our
organisations? concern is with an individual’s engagement with their
4 How does engagement relate to other individual specific job, rather than with their organisation as a whole.
characteristics? We would argue that these notions of organisational
5 How is engagement related to employee voice and commitment and advocacy are generally associated with
representation? high levels of engagement, but are distinct from it.

We define employee engagement as: ‘being positively Between 2007 and 2009, we collected data from eight
present during the performance of work organisations. Our preliminary findings were published by
by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing the CIPD in early 2009 (Gatenby et al 2009). In this, our final
positive emotions and meaningful connections to others.’ report, we extend our interim report and present the overall
findings from this research project in the form of eight
We see engagement as having three core facets: detailed case studies, together with an analysis of our entire
dataset. Overall, we report on the findings of a study that
• intellectual engagement, or thinking hard about the has involved 5,291 questionnaire respondents and around
job and how to do it better 180 interviews.
• affective engagement, or feeling positively about doing
a good job First, we explore differences in engagement across
• social engagement, or actively taking opportunities to organisational contexts and examine how different types
discuss work-related improvements with others at work. of employee (for example, men/women; managers/non-
managers) engage in their work. In the following section,
We also differentiate between the extent of engagement we explain the key drivers of engagement, before we
– the strength of feeling engaged – and the frequency of analyse the main outcomes of employee engagement at
engagement – that is, how often individuals experience an individual and organisational level. Finally, we introduce
engagement. This approach has been used in studies of our overarching model of engagement and highlight the
other psychological constructs such as burnout. management implications arising from our findings. In the
Appendix, we explain the methodology used in our study.


3 Employee engagement in the UK

We measured and analysed levels of engagement in a If we plot extent of engagement versus frequency, we find
number of different ways. Individuals were asked a series of that just 5% of the sample overall can be described as very
questions that were designed to evaluate how engaged they highly engaged (scoring a very high 4.51 or over on both
are with their work, each using a five-point response scale. extent and frequency). Conversely, just 4% report extremely
These questions combine to create three separate scales each low levels of engagement (scoring 2.99 or below on the
measuring social, affective and intellectual engagement. extent and frequency scales).
We measured these facets of engagement in terms of both
extent – that is how engaged the person is – and frequency Looked at in another way, the mean score for engagement
– that is how often they are engaged. We also analysed extent is 3.8 and for frequency 3.9 out of a possible 5.
our data in terms of the overall extent and frequency of Consequently, it would be true to say that the vast majority
engagement, combining the three scales into an aggregate of employees can be described as falling into an intermediate
measure of engagement. This means that we are able to talk category of engagement, which is largely what would be
about engagement from various angles. expected. This suggests that there is still considerable scope
for organisations to raise levels of engagement overall.
In terms of the overall extent of engagement, if we divide
our respondents into five categories corresponding to our We can break this down further by looking at the three
five-point response scale, we found that 8% of respondents facets of engagement (see Table 1).
are ‘strongly engaged’ with their work (that is, scoring 4.5 or
over on the scale out of a possible 5). A further 70% can be These findings comparing across the three facets of
described as ‘moderately’ or ‘somewhat’ engaged (scoring engagement provide an interesting insight into how
between 3.5 and 4.5 on the scale), and just 1% as very engagement operates in practice. Scores for social
weakly engaged, with the remaining 21% neither engaged engagement are the lowest, which was reflected within each
nor disengaged. of the organisations individually, both in terms of extent and
frequency. Levels of affective engagement are highest, with
Our study is the first that has explored the frequency intellectual engagement occupying an intermediate position.
with which people are engaged with their work, which The relatively low level of social engagement in terms of both
is an interesting addition to our understanding of how extent and frequency is of concern. Social engagement is a
engagement works in practice. We found that fewer than measure of how much people at work participate in constructive
one in five, 18%, are engaged on a daily basis. Fifty-nine dialogue with those around them about their work or how to
per cent report being engaged ‘once a week’, and 22% ‘a improve working methods or skills. This is closely linked with
few times a year’ or ‘once a month’, and just 1% report notions of organisational social capital, which suggests that one
‘never’ being engaged. These findings suggest that a of the most important resources at an organisation’s disposal
substantial majority of employees are not engaged with is the network of relationships both within the organisation
their work on a daily basis but, equally, only a very small and beyond. Where levels of social engagement are low, this
number are never engaged. may mean that organisations are not capitalising on the unique
strengths and knowledge of their workforce.

Table 1: Engagement extent and frequency (%)

Extent Frequency
strong daily/once a week
(over 4.0 out of 5) (over 4.0 out of 5)

Social engagement 38 29

Affective engagement 58 77

Intellectual engagement 41 65


However, overall, our findings broadly suggest that levels rather than focus on long working hours. It is perfectly
of engagement are moderate–high in the sample of possible to be engaged with one’s work during working
organisations participating in our research. Of course, our hours, but not work excessive overtime. Long working
sample is self-selected and chose to be members of the hours may be indicative of other factors, such as a culture
Employee Engagement Consortium, and so it is perhaps to of presenteeism in the workplace. Whereas engagement is
be expected that the overall level of engagement in these associated with positive benefits for the individual, such as
organisations would be higher than average. enhanced well-being, workaholism has been found to be
linked with negative health outcomes.
Nevertheless the findings are encouraging and compare
favourably with other studies into engagement levels. For The second reason that studies report differing levels of
example, Truss et al (2006) found that 35% of employees engagement is that different scales are used to record
are actively engaged, with 57% moderately engaged. employees’ views and the data are analysed and coded
Another study found that 29% of workers are engaged in different ways. Here, we use a standard approach
and 17% disengaged (Seijts and Crim 2006). A study by recommended for academic research, giving respondents five
the Corporate Leadership Council (2004) found that just possible responses to each question. This is one of the most
24% of staff are highly engaged. The conclusion from the common ways of recording and coding employees’ views.
MacLeod Review (2009) is that levels of engagement in the
UK workforce generally need to be raised. Although our These divergent approaches to conceptualising, measuring
findings are more positive, it is still the case that levels of and reporting on engagement can create a confusing
engagement could be higher. picture for managers wishing to understand engagement
and develop strategies for raising levels of engagement
Why do studies of engagement reveal such a different amongst their workforce. Everyone will form their own
picture? There are two main reasons for this. First, views as to how best to measure the engagement levels of
different studies use different questions to assess levels of their own employees based on what is important to them.
engagement, based on how engagement is defined and It is, however, interesting that whatever the measure of
operationalised. Measures of engagement that incorporate engagement used, the range of drivers and outcomes of
questions around employees’ understanding and awareness engagement tend to be quite similar across different studies,
of organisational strategic objectives, for example, will and the general conclusion is that the majority of employees
always yield a more negative response as many employees are moderately engaged with scope to raise levels of
lack this knowledge. However, it could be argued that this engagement overall.
does not reflect the psychological state of engagement per
se. Other studies, such as our report for the CIPD in 2006
KEY FINDINGS
(Truss et al – in this report we used the May et al (2004)
measure of employee engagement), include questions on • Eight per cent are strongly engaged with their work,
employees’ willingness to work overtime and take work with the majority falling into an intermediate category.
home with them. However, we did not include questions • Eighteen per cent are engaged ‘daily’.
such as these in this current measure, which is based on • Our measure of engagement incorporates three
work we have undertaken since 2006 on the topic of dimensions: emotional or affective engagement;
engagement that extends prior understanding. We wanted intellectual or cognitive engagement; and social
to include questions capturing the extent to which people engagement, each measured in terms of extent and
engage socially with their colleagues, feel positively about frequency.
their work and think hard about how to do their jobs better, • Levels of social engagement are lowest.


CASE STUDY:

ServiceCo

ServiceCo is a support services partner in the UK providing ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
business solutions for clients across the local government, The results of the survey suggest that employees at
transport, education, health and defence sectors. As a part ServiceCo generally have very high levels of engagement.
of a large European infrastructure and services group, the Nine per cent are very strongly engaged and 77% are
company employs around 10,500 employees and is present strongly engaged. Fourteen per cent have a moderate level
in over 200 locations within the UK. In 2008, ServiceCo had of employee engagement.
a turnover of £1.49 billion and a profit of £86.5 million.
‘I think on the whole most people would generally care
ServiceCo’s vision is about transforming the nature of about what they do and the company they work for. I think
services to the public. A strategy has been developed to in my experience and the people I know and I work with,
implement this vision, which focuses on being engaged it’s not just a salary, it’s not just a job, they do believe in
throughout all work processes. Hence, ServiceCo encourages the company and their division and the work that they do.’
employees to take every opportunity to ‘go the extra Development manager
mile’ for the customer. ServiceCo has been interested in
engagement for several years. The company launched its Overall engagement frequency is even higher among
first employee engagement survey in 2006 and has been employees at ServiceCo, with 19% being engaged on a daily
conducting engagement surveys once a year since then. The basis and 66% being engaged once a week. Fourteen per
surveys have been supported by action plans around the cent are engaged once a month and only 1% said they are
key issues arising. ServiceCo joined the Kingston University engaged only a few times a year. A director reflects upon the
Employee Engagement Consortium to get a more detailed high levels of engagement and at the same time points out
understanding of levels of engagement across different that it is important to continuously strive for higher levels.
groups of the diverse workforce.
‘ServiceCo does have an engaged workforce but you can
A total of 2,500 employees working for ServiceCo in the always engage more.’ Director
UK were encouraged to participate in the study. Those with
email access (1,500 employees) were invited to complete In the next sections we will consider three areas that are
an online questionnaire survey. A further 1,000 employees contributing to high levels of engagement in ServiceCo –
without Internet access were given a paper version of employee voice, supportive environment and commitment – and
the questionnaire. A total of 1,157 questionnaires were three areas where there is still some room for improvement –
returned, providing a response rate of 46%. Additionally, 33 engagement among manual workers, integration of workers
interviews with managers and employees were carried out. working remotely and well-being in some roles.

Figure 1: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at ServiceCo (%)

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Very weak/ Weak/ Moderate/ Strong/ Very strong/
Never A few times a year Once a month Once a week Daily

Overall engagement extent Overall engagement frequency


EMPLOYEE vOICE ‘Everybody is easy to get on with. Everybody works as a
One of the most important factors impacting upon the high team; we’re all trying to achieve common goals. From other
levels of employee engagement at ServiceCo is the extent organisations I’ve worked in there was what I call politicking
to which employees participate in meetings and decisions but there’s very little politicking within ServiceCo. Everybody
that are directly related to their job and are given a platform has got a common objective, common understanding and
to communicate their opinion about work-related topics. people work in different ways and you need to understand
Most employees feel highly involved in work-related matters, that but it’s very friendly, very approachable.’ Director
could give their opinion and are listened to by management.
‘I think there’s a real teamwork ethos on a number of the
‘I think that culture encourages upward communication, contracts.’ Director
because I think people are very approachable.’ Director
Most employees also feel very comfortable saying that they
‘We can always come up with something and it’s taken could ‘be themselves’ at work.
through and it’s dealt with. I certainly know on the projects
they have regular meetings with the side teams where ‘I’ve always found it a very, very comfortable working
anyone who comes up with any initiatives or ideas, they are environment with people I can actually get on with.’
always received and welcomed.’ Supply chain manager Manager

ServiceCo has implemented an innovation library as one ‘Within my department, we’re almost like a family, we look
initiative to foster engagement across the organisation. after each other, we’re very good at making sure everybody’s
The programme encourages employees to share success okay.’ Supply chain manager
stories and ideas for improvement and relies on innovation
champions who capture new ideas and feed them back ‘I think the energy and the commitment that you get from
into the innovation library. The innovation library is well individuals from being part of a team far outweighs the
received among office-based staff; however, as the following energy of the individuals as individual parts as it were.’
manager points out, ServiceCo could make even more use Manager
of this tool if operational roles could be informed about the
innovation library and encouraged to use it more frequently. COMMITMENT
Following the positive comments above it is not surprising to
‘We have got a best practice library with a lot of information. find that ServiceCo employees have high levels of commitment
I think office-based staff probably [use it] because they know to their department. Many employees indicate that they
about it. I would query if operatives knew that we had an experience a strong sense of belonging to their department and
innovation forum to put their ideas forward to.’ would be happy to spend the rest of their career there. The high
Marketing manager levels of commitment are closely associated with the good levels
of teamwork and clearly contribute to the organisation’s high
SUPPORTIvE ENvIRONMENT levels of engagement. Many employees are committed to do a
Another great strength at ServiceCo is the level of support good job and put a lot of effort into their work.
in the working environment. This refers to the level of
teamwork. As many employees at ServiceCo work in teams, ‘You go to any of our schools and you will find the cleaners
a supportive working environment is important as it enables are all very, very committed; if they can’t do something to
employees to feel comfortable at work and therefore the best of the quality that they want they get concerned
has a major impact on levels of engagement. Employees about it.’ Director
at ServiceCo are very satisfied with the support they get
from their colleagues in carrying out their jobs. They feel ‘Generally, we have a very committed workforce who will
that colleagues help each other out whenever someone stay here as long as there is a job to be done.’ Manager
is experiencing a problem, and that generally all team
members are committed to achieving common team goals.


Commitment levels with respect to ServiceCo as a whole are ‘[I would like] to learn more skills.’ Manual worker
slightly lower, but still on a satisfactory level. A good part
of the workforce feels emotionally attached to ServiceCo ‘To better me for the job the organisation should provide me
and are proud to work for the organisation. Therefore, with regular training in health and safety, new techniques of
many employees do recommend ServiceCo as a good place machinery and IT literacy.’ Manual worker
to work to friends and family. This is mainly attributed to
the development opportunities available and because they Further topics arose around the quality of the equipment,
consider ServiceCo a ‘very dynamic and exciting place to be’. the role of line managers and better work–life balance. As
Manager a result of the lower levels of engagement among manual
workers, ServiceCo has put an action plan in place to
Hence, related to the high commitment, employees show a improve the work experience of manual workers.
very good level of advocacy for their company.
EMPLOYEES WORKING REMOTELY
‘I think there are currently five people who are working in A second area for improvement, which is closely related to
ServiceCo that I have recommended.’ Director the previous topic, is about employees working remotely. As
ServiceCo is present in over 200 locations across the UK, many
‘People who work here will get people into the business, employees work in small teams at some distance from the
either friends or family even. I have a father and son team head office. In the survey, many remotely working employees
working for me within my team.’ Manager feel that they received little attention and information from
the head office. They indicate a strong preference to see their
MANUAL WORKERS managers more often to increase mutual understanding of
Although engagement levels at ServiceCo are generally very work objectives and work environment, raise awareness of
high, manual workers are significantly less engaged than other problems occurring on remote jobs, and discuss new ideas or
employee groups within the company. This finding is consistent areas for improvement.
with other companies employing manual workers and
ServiceCo are ready to address this within the coming months. ‘We’re out on a limb in the north of England and we very
Manual workers at ServiceCo indicated some major points of rarely have senior management come and visit so we don’t
dissatisfaction. When asked about what could be improved feel part of the whole with ServiceCo. It would be nice to see
in their working life, they expressed a need to improve more engagement from the senior management.’ Manager
communication between the workforce and management.
‘You do hear of people who don’t get communicated to and
‘[The one thing which would help improve my working feeling left out and I don’t know whether it’s the barriers
life is] better communications between employees and or it’s the managers or whether they’re not given the talks,
managers.’ Manual worker which may be the case. It’s especially in remote areas it could
be that there’s more work to do there.’ Manager
‘Communications with my line manager and project
manager are very good, communications with higher The implication of having employees working remotely and
management are less effective.’ Manual worker the difficulties in managing them are also recognised by
some top managers.
‘It would be nice for the senior management to meet the
staff.’ Manual worker ‘Communication is not a challenge but something we have
to work very hard at because we employ 8,500 people
‘Understanding by senior managers of how difficult the job within the group and many of those are part-timers that are
can be would improve my working life.’ Manual worker very remote from head office and quite remote from their
contract bases.’ Director
Manual workers at ServiceCo also indicated that they would
like to get involved more in decision-making and also would
like to get more training to improve the way they are working.


‘I encourage face-to-face meetings. I have two senior ‘I think people are willing to go the extra mile to put in the
managers that work for me and even though the teams bid, they can be very hectic and very time-consuming and
are quite remote they will meet with them on a face-to- a lengthy process and I think that when push comes to
face basis as regularly as possible, given the constraints of shove people are willing to help out, step in and do what’s
travelling of course.’ Director needed for the company and their team and for themselves.’
Manager
‘I just think it’s down to the simple kind of human need
for that kind of contact and it is more difficult if you are ‘The work–life balance sometimes goes wrong, particularly
managing remotely. It requires people to be more mature in around bids going in, you know they get very intense when
their attitude and more self-contained and not everybody is there are very significant bids going in, so the work–life
like that.’ Director balance probably goes the wrong way.’ Director

However, although individual top managers are aware of ‘We have gone through a period where we have been
these challenges and take necessary steps to integrate extremely stretched with the amount of bids that we’ve
remote workers by making efforts to meet them regularly, done and last year I think I’ve been involved with six, seven
ServiceCo would benefit from organisation-wide processes bids and some of these have been long days, long weeks,
considering the management of remote workers. long months. Not only that, in my area I’ve had one contract
that was not performing terribly well so we’ve been looking
WELL-bEING to improve the performance of that during the last year.’
In general, employees at ServiceCo experience high levels of Director
personal well-being. A large majority of staff feel that their
work is highly sustainable and they are therefore able to ‘When there’s a lot of bidding it’s really poor, you have no
continue working at their current pace. However, comparing life.’ Manager
the levels of well-being across different groups at ServiceCo
reveals that contract managers experience significantly higher ServiceCo should therefore monitor these roles more closely
levels of stress. They feel burned out more often and also have to ensure that contract managers can cope with work
a less favourable work–life balance. The reason for the high demands, and measures such as stress management training
workload is that on top of being involved in managing their courses and health initiatives should be considered where
own contract, especially the most experienced and hard- potential problems arise.
working contract managers are often drawn into bidding for
new contracts. Although employees generally like the team
effort and the atmosphere during bidding periods, which they
describe as motivating and exciting, the work–life balance
goes wrong when they are involved in too many bids during
the year.


Engagement across different
4 organisational contexts

Fifty years ago, the American political scientist Wallace Sayre of engagement based on the ‘say, stay and strive’ model.
(1958) argued that public and private organisations are Related survey questions focus on employee advocacy
‘fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects’. Since then, and whether employees are happy to remain with their
organisations have been transformed by new technologies, organisation for the foreseeable future. Many organisations
financial systems and management methods. In recent in the private sector are also incorporating measures of
years, public organisations have been encouraged to engagement into annual surveys. We have seen evidence
become more ‘business-like’ by adopting the management of this in small, medium and large companies and across
style and processes used in private organisations (Boyne different industries.
et al 1999). Research conducted by the CIPD has shown
that work practices, such as carefully planned recruitment Second, ‘engagement’ has been used within organisations
and selection, targeted training and equitable rewards, are as a more general term to describe workplace approaches
significant drivers for organisational success. These practices to improvement. For example, several private companies
are increasingly being implemented by managers in both the we studied used suggestion schemes under the banner of
public and private sectors. engagement. A local authority we studied is using an ambitious
programme of employee involvement to engage staff. Often,
As this report shows, employee engagement has emerged as engagement initiatives are linked to training and mentoring.
a useful way to measure the relationship between employee
and employer. In this section, we compare the engagement Our research suggests that there are no consistent or
levels of employees across the public and private sectors. distinctive differences between public and private sector
We draw on the evidence from three public organisations strategies around employee engagement. In some cases,
– an NHS trust, local authority and central government there are more similarities between sectors than within
agency – and five private sector organisations – including them. Particular initiatives depend on senior management
manufacturing and service industries. In particular, we style and corporate strategy, but also on the size of the
consider similarities in the experience of work and explore organisation, the type of workforce (for example skill level)
how organisational context may contribute to differences in and the type of work (for example work environment and
engagement levels. location). Furthermore, external assistance is often provided
by management consultancy and research organisations,
ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES ACROSS THE PUbLIC in which case, particular approaches in both the public and
AND PRIvATE SECTORS private sectors reflect the preferred method of the consulting
Our research reveals that organisations in many parts of the firm. Individual organisations have tended to give their
UK economy are actively pursuing strategies to raise levels of employee engagement strategies distinctive branding, but
employee engagement. The management initiatives we have the details and underlying initiatives are often very similar.
observed take many different forms, paralleling the diversity of One difference we did find was that public organisations are
organisational needs. As the MacLeod Review recommended, more likely to share and collaborate with the development of
organisations need to find their own definition and approach engagement methods. We found examples of groups being
contingent with organisational context (MacLeod and Clarke set up within local government, the NHS and the civil service,
2009). We have observed two broad trends across the public where managers are coming together to discuss employee
and private sectors (Boyne 2002). engagement and sharing ideas for improvement. This has
tended not to be the case in the private sector, where
First, we found that many organisations now regard competitive pressures mean companies are more likely to
measures of engagement as the most significant measure of pursue their own approach, often at considerable cost.
employee attitudes or experience. Based on either a single
question or several questions to make a composite measure,
engagement has been incorporated into annual employee
attitude surveys. For example, the NHS annual survey
includes questions such as ‘I am enthusiastic about my
job’, ‘time passes quickly when I am working’ and ‘I often
do more than is required’. The Civil Service has a measure


CASE STUDY:

LocalGov

With more than 50,000 employees, LocalGov is one Following the launch of the BEST programme, LocalGov
of the largest local authorities in the UK. Many local decided to join the Kingston University Employee
services are managed in ten geographic constituencies Engagement Consortium to further strengthen their
and decentralisation of duties is supposed to continue in knowledge about engagement and identify areas that could
the future. In collaboration with the community and local be further improved to strengthen levels of engagement
strategic partners, LocalGov has developed a strategic across the workforce.
vision for the city, which centres around ‘being a global city
with a local heart’. LocalGov has identified several areas of All employees working for LocalGov in the UK were invited
improvement to turn the vision into reality and works closely to participate in the engagement survey. A total of 1,198
with its partners to achieve this. questionnaires were returned, providing a response rate
of 2.4%. Additionally, 21 face-to-face interviews were
The council has undergone significant changes and conducted with different managers, including HR managers,
restructuring initiatives in the past. A major change involved team managers and service area managers.
the revision and alignment of pay structures in accordance
with new national guidelines following the Single Status ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
Agreement, which was signed between local government The results of the survey indicate that LocalGov generally
and trade unions in 1997 to streamline all pay scales into has an engaged workforce. Seventy-five per cent of the
one. Further changes will follow over the next few years. respondents indicate that they are strongly engaged and
7% are very strongly engaged. Seventeen per cent have a
In 2006, internal employee surveys indicated that employees moderate level with respect to the engagement extent. In
at LocalGov felt disempowered and were not very motivated. terms of engagement frequency, the results are similarly
As a response to these findings, LocalGov became interested positive, with 17% being engaged daily and 65% being
in the topic of employee engagement and decided to initiate engaged on a weekly basis.
the BEST (Belief – Excellence – Success – Trust) programme.
This council-wide initiative aimed at involving employees ‘Oh most of them would go the extra mile, there’s probably a
in change management and decision-making by running couple who wouldn’t but the majority of them would always
workshops and empowering teams. The central idea behind go the extra mile.’ Team manager
BEST is to give employees a voice and provide them with a
platform where they can give their opinion and share ideas ‘Eighty per cent [really care about job]. I know that for some
for improvement. The initiative is generally well received of them, if we’d have been high up on that list of closures,
from the employees; however, they also point out areas that it would have really affected them, particularly some of the
still need more development. older ones who just want to get to retirement now and enjoy
the job they’re doing and do it quite well.’ Team manager
‘The BEST team are really, really working hard to do it, because
things have come and gone before. So I think it is starting to The high levels of engagement in LocalGov are closely
embed itself. There’s still a huge amount of cynicism out there related to the nature of work and the ethos of being a local
and it’s so important to get it seen as something that’s integral government employee. As one manager puts it: ‘It’s the
as opposed to yet another thing we’ve got to tick the box on. nature of the work as well, if you’re dealing face to face with
But I think it’s moving that way but then you see I’m closer to it the public or you’re a social worker or a childcare worker, so
than other people.’ Policy manager there’s that element.’

‘If you’ve got enthusiastic leaders then it seems to work. Last In this case study we will consider which engagement-related
year we had a leader that wasn’t particularly enthusiastic aspects LocalGov is managing well – job-related skills and
and nothing seemed to be carried forward from that. I think flexible working opportunities – but also discuss which other
it is very indicative of who you’ve got doing the team leader engagement strategies could be implemented to further
role.’ Team manager raise levels of employee engagement among the workforce –
communication, appraisal process.


Figure 2: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at LocalGov (%)

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20

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JOb-RELATED SKILLS FLExIbLE WORKING OPPORTUNITIES
One of the biggest strengths within LocalGov that clearly Flexible working opportunities have been linked to high
contributes to the level of engagement is a close match levels of engagement in many studies. LocalGov offers a
between the content of the individual roles and their variety of opportunities for their employees to work flexibly.
level of skills. Almost two-thirds of respondents feel As one HR manager explained, LocalGov tries to comply
that they possess the necessary skills to carry out their with all employee requests within the limits set by the need
job at the required standards. Employees appreciate the for service within the council. Flexi-time is the most popular
amount of training they are provided with, which they working arrangement employees apply for and about
feel is exceptionally high compared to other organisations, two-thirds of the respondents have the possibility to work
especially in a difficult economic climate. under a flexi-time arrangement. Other popular working
arrangements include homeworking, shorter working weeks,
‘Yes, most of them [are right for their job], they’re quite annualised or compressed hours and term-time contracts.
good. What we find though is that as technology moves on
we need to keep up to date you know and as new things ‘The head-office-based staff, we try and fit in with what
come out, in the IT world that’s very regular and so people people want. If they want to do a nine-day fortnight, we try
need to be acquiring skills. So for us training is quite a critical and arrange that.’ Head of service
thing.’ Service manager
‘I think generally we encourage flexible working. There’s
‘Training is offered, it must be one of the few organisations nothing about what I see that doesn’t realise that people
that still places a great emphasis on training its employees need to be flexible.’ Manager
because the first thing in a recession that goes is the training
budget, isn’t it?’ Head of service ‘Flexible working arrangements for people who need it,
they’re quite sympathetic to people’s needs.’ Manager
‘The training opportunities, I wouldn’t have got them
anywhere else.’ Head of unit


But also within the regular set of working hours, managers ‘I think a lot needs to be done on trust, working on trust.
have some discretion to give employees some flexibility if In fact we had a conversation about that this morning at
needed, which is also appreciated by the employees. one of the meetings we had, you know that there’s still
huge amounts to do to actually empower and build the
‘If ever my son is ill and I ring up and say “look we’re taking self-esteem of the staff, you know it’s a uphill battle really
him to the doctor,” I would never get a “well, that’s not and particularly when messages are coming out from the
acceptable.” I’ve always, always had a positive response in leadership about, you know, flex systems, getting rid of
that regard and I likewise would do the same with my staff.’ middle management, sloth, getting rid of sloth, you know,
Manager so I think there’s messages that are not about trust.’
Policy manager
‘If they want to take some of their time owed, time in lieu I
always try and help them, so I guess there’s flexibility there.’ APPRAISAL PROCESS
Manager Although HR practices and policies are perceived well within
LocalGov, the appraisal process is a concern throughout
COMMUNICATION the organisation. Almost half of the respondents indicate
There are many changes and restructuring initiatives that they are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with
going on at LocalGov. In general, employees feel that their appraisal process. One of the major concerns is
communication processes around these changes do not that objectives are often abstract and not broken down
always function optimally. For example, a major change had adequately to the individual level.
been reported in the media before the news of the change
had been given to the workforce, so that the staff got their ‘The council has very aspirational, abstract objectives which
information from a local newspaper. Employees indicate that I don’t really know what they mean. We’re going to have a
they often were not informed thoroughly about the details “greener city”, well what does that mean? They’re sound-
of the change and were only given information sporadically bites, they’re political sound-bites. From a practical point of
instead of on a regular basis. Also, employees perceive view, to convert that into something that’s meaningful to
communication as inconsistent across different teams the staff, that’s very difficult. So I think one big improvement
depending on the level of information and communication would be to have clearer meaningful objectives set by the
abilities of their respective line manager. council that can be more easily interpreted and adopted by,
you know, as this thing cascades down. So that’s a practical
‘We’ve all had a briefing that explained why the restructure problem I find.’ Manager
was taking place. The only problem is the length of time, I
mean we’re talking about April and this was October time Managers are unhappy with the appraisal process as well.
that this was communicated to us. And it’s a long time to They feel that it was too rigid and does not allow for enough
have in the back of your mind – “what’s going to happen, flexibility. They also respond that they do not have enough
what’s going to happen?”’ Team manager time to effectively conduct an appraisal with all team
members.
‘So you’d report back and I know some managers just didn’t
report back to their staff, didn’t tell them what was going on at ‘Performance management is not very successful because it’s
all and didn’t make any attempt to interpret it.’ Unit manager very prescriptive at the moment, although again it’s going
through a review at the moment so it may improve. But at
Consequently, communication processes around the the moment it’s very prescriptive, you have to have done x, y,
restructuring and downsizing of the workforce have a z by this time and if you haven’t there’s no leeway whereas
somewhat negative effect on the relationship between everybody develops at different levels, at different speeds
managers and employees. Trust between both has worsened and in different ways and if you could be more flexible in
considerably following the changes, which impacts levels of the way that you can develop the members of staff then it
engagement among the workforce. would be more effective.’ Team manager


ENGAGEMENT LEvELS ACROSS THE PUbLIC AND Although public organisations display higher levels of social
PRIvATE SECTORS engagement than their private sector counterparts, this
We now consider what our research can tell us about does not mean public organisations are all highly effective
differences in engagement levels across public and private at socially engaging their staff. We saw instances of low
organisations. Here we distinguish between engagement take-up of involvement initiatives among some employees
‘extent’ – the overall strength of experience – and engagement in both local and central government. In particular,
‘frequency’ – how often employees feel engaged at work. The managers reported that because of the permeability of some
results suggest that public sector employees are slightly more government workplaces, employees had become apathetic
engaged on the extent measure, with 72% being engaged to the influence of involvement initiatives. Organisations in
compared with 69% in the private sector. However, the the public sector have more formal procedures for decision-
difference is small. When looking at the frequency measure, making, and are less flexible and more risk-averse than their
there is a more pronounced difference, with private sector private sector counterparts. Conversely, private organisations
employees being engaged more often. Twenty per cent of are less likely to place significant emphasis on knowledge-
private sector employees say they are engaged every day, and idea-sharing but, in the pockets where this is occurring,
whereas 16% of public sector employees feel this way. We can it is often more successful due to the flexibility and control of
look into these findings in more detail by considering how the senior managers.
different dimensions of engagement – social, intellectual and
affective – compare between the two sectors. The findings for affective engagement suggest that private
sector employees are more strongly and more frequently
Our findings for social engagement suggest that employees emotionally connected to their work. This finding may
in public organisations experience a stronger connection stand in contrast to theoretical predictions of ‘public service
to work colleagues and with more frequency than those motivation’ – the idea that public sector employees are
in the private sector. For instance, public organisations are intrinsically motivated by a concern to serve public citizens.
more likely to have cross-department meetings to discuss For example, we might expect the prime motivation for
problems and potential solutions. Government organisations clinical staff working in the NHS to be the immediate
at both local and central levels are keen to get teams and health needs of patients under their care. While public
departments actively thinking about solving local problems sector employees do show a strong emotional attachment
through improvement initiatives such as ‘lean’. to their work, private employees appear to experience
a stronger connection. A possible explanation for this is
One possible reason for this is the inherent ‘openness’ and again the competitive pressure of private sector working
‘permeability’ of public organisations. In contrast to private environments. Rather than through a concern for service
organisations, where it is possible to create a relatively direct users, private sector employees must face constant pressures
organisational hierarchy in which senior managers enjoy to survive economically in the marketplace, which can place
considerable decision-making power, public organisations a psychological burden on them. We spoke to employees
must keep their boundaries open to the scrutiny of politicians who felt a persistent emotional pressure to take work home
and the public. We found that it is often the role of public because of work demands and the competitive culture of
managers to promote organisational communication and their organisation.
knowledge-sharing, frequently through the use of IT. Public
organisations are increasingly looking to consult and involve Our interviews with staff suggested that workloads are
their employees in a way that is enhancing the transparency of increasing in many areas of the public and private sectors,
organisational processes. Furthermore, the interdependence of with particular strain being placed on first-line managers.
many public organisations, such as civil service agencies, may The time-frame of our research has picked up the effects of
create a need for public organisations to collaborate more the economic recession on employee experiences. This has
than private organisations. Although there has been a move had a more immediate effect in the private sector over the
towards targets, league tables and public ‘choice’ throughout last few years but is likely to have increasing ramifications for
English public services in particular, there is significantly less public employees in the near future.
competition than in the private sector, where companies
compete for limited market share.


The results suggest, on average, that public sector employees
are more strongly and frequently intellectually engaged than
private sector employees. This measure varies widely in both
sectors depending on the type of work and the seniority of
staff. Senior managers are almost always more intellectually
engaged than junior staff. We found that employees in
manufacturing and administrative roles are often the least
engaged on the extent measure and that professional
groups, such as hospital physiotherapists or accountants,
tend to be more engaged.

This research has suggested that employee experiences
across public and private organisations are becoming
increasingly alike. There are few consistent differences
in engagement strategies and initiatives between the
two sectors, and survey evidence shows that the overall
engagement levels are comparable. If Wallace Sayre
could comment today, he might argue that public and
private organisations are becoming alike in all important
respects. Nevertheless, we have found some differences
in the dimensions of engagement. In particular, public
organisations are more likely to engage their staff socially
whereas private organisations provide an environment where
employees are more likely to be emotionally engaged.

In the next section, we explore the relationship between
individual factors, such as age, gender, job status and
contractual arrangements, and employee engagement.

KEY FINDINGS
• Many organisations measure engagement and have
specific engagement strategies across the public and
private sectors.
• Public sector employees are more strongly but less
frequently engaged than private sector employees.


CASE STUDY:

GovDep

GovDep is a large government department that covers GovDep joined the Kingston Business School Employee
several customer-facing business areas. This case study is Engagement Consortium to help develop new initiatives
based on one of the larger agencies within the department. around employee engagement as part of recent changes
The agency has offices in various locations across England, in the agency. The department already has a policy on
including the south-east, the midlands and the north. Core engagement and this research process is intended to feed
values of the agency include ensuring an accurate, rapid and into that work. The engagement research was conducted in
joined-up service based around customer need; improving two stages. First, a sample of 1,400 employees was invited
value for money for the taxpayer; and reducing levels of to complete an online questionnaire. From this sample,
service error. At the time of the survey, the agency employed 571 online questionnaires were returned, providing a total
over 16,000 people and their services are used by around response rate of 41%. Second, 20 face-to-face interviews
15 million customers in the UK. were conducted with a range of managerial staff.

The agency has recently undergone considerable change as a There are standardised management grades across the
result of a merger between two previously separate business agency, including: Executive Officer (EO), which is the first
units. This has led to a new management structure and management level responsible for teams of operational staff;
around 1,000 job cuts. Like many areas of the civil service, Higher Executive Officer (HEO), which is the next level up
there is an efficiency drive with overall reduction in financial from EO and has responsibility for groups of operations or
allocation for the next three years. decision-making teams; Senior Executive Officer (SEO), which
has responsibility for wider units of operation; and Grade 7,
The department has been interested in employee which is a middle management grade.
engagement for several years. This interest stems from
a drive to renew employment practices and processes as ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
part of a wider agenda of government modernisation. The The results of the survey suggest that GovDep has a generally
agency now conducts an annual staff survey that feeds engaged workforce. Seventy per cent are ‘highly’ or ‘very highly’
into improvement activities and has an increased focus engaged overall. Twenty-nine per cent are moderate or unsure,
on employee involvement initiatives. The majority of the while very few people had low levels of engagement. Findings
agency’s employees work in an office environment. There with respect to engagement frequency are similar. Almost 70%
is an emphasis on employee development, coaching and are engaged on a regular basis; however, 28% engage only
teamwork. There is also careful attention paid to diversity once a month. These results may in part reflect the uncertainty
and equal opportunities. Sickness absence rates have been at this time of change within the organisation. Early analysis of
relatively high in the agency over recent years and a new the data from GovDep uncovered two main areas of strength
performance standard for sickness has been put in place that contribute to engagement – work–life balance and a
with the aim to reduce sickness absence to fewer than 8.3 supportive social environment – and two areas that could benefit
average working days. from some attention to improve engagement – leadership
development and employee involvement uptake.

Figure 3: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at GovDep (%)

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WORK–LIFE bALANCE LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE
Work–life balance is a considerable strength in the MANAGEMENT
organisation. This was praised by many managers and scored An issue of concern at GovDep is the way leadership
highly in the employee survey. The flexi-time system is the capacity is developed. There is a feeling that often individuals
jewel in the crown of employee practices at GovDep. Staff are promoted into EO or HEO positions without having the
can accrue up to four days of flexi per month within the core set of management skills, particularly interpersonal and
core hours of 7am–7pm. Interviewees felt that this is a main mentoring skills.
attraction for staying at the organisation, particularly for
people with family responsibilities such as childcare: ‘Give them the managers’ skills to manage people and make
them people-focused, they need to be able to see that they
‘I think that’s one of the plusses really in the civil service, the can get more done by involving the staff…We do need
work–life balance. The flexi is something that I think most technical experts but not in management. Look at what
people would be lost without and that’s one of the things management training we’re actually giving to them, not this
that maybe they look for from other things really, the flexi e-learning as it goes on.’ HEO
and I mean I think it’s 37 hours a week we work, which is
not that bad really and with flexi, that you can have flexi, A common concern is the type of training people were
afternoons off, you know, a day off.’ EO given. GovDep makes use of ‘e-learning’ techniques for
training where individuals can take a course on topics such
Research participants report that the attention to work–life as coaching or appraisals from the comfort of their work
balance meant that individual workers could create a work desks. However, this is seen as an ineffective way to learn
pattern that was most appropriate to them. For example, new skills because it lacked people interaction and what
one manager said that some staff prefer a late start, so they people called a ‘learning environment’. One manager
work an 11am–7pm pattern, whereas others like getting in commented that you can put a sticker on your chair to show
at 7am every day. people that you are training, but this does not take you
out of the busy and distracting office environment. They
SUPPORTIvE SOCIAL ENvIRONMENT reflected that it was very difficult to learn management skills
Another main strength at GovDep is the level of social from the computer screen. The agency does provide other
support in the working environment. If employees are types of training, including face-to-face classroom training,
struggling with their workload, then their team members as part of an overall ‘blended learning’ approach.
and immediate line manager will pick this up and try
to provide them with the help needed to improve their A related problem is the lack of performance management
confidence. skills at some management levels and the ability of managers
to deal with underperformance. Although, as discussed
‘I mean most managers who I’ve worked for have been above, there are good levels of support within the office
supportive. I think the support you get with regards to, sort environment, there is a reluctance or lack of ability to make
of like, meeting targets and things…you know, I’ve worked difficult decisions and motivate consistent underperformers.
a lot in the outside industry and I think as an employer, I can
only think of one employer that was better than [GovDep].’ ‘So I don’t know whether or not even the team leaders have
HEO – operations succumbed to the personality of the team members within
the team and I suspect there’s a little bit of that because
Most interviewees feel that there is a strong sense of there seems to be a lot of…rather than leading the team,
teamwork in the organisation. However, there are some being part of the team, too many soft decisions are made to
signs of change in this respect due to the job cuts across keep the peace.’ HEO
the agency. With the threat that some people within teams
will lose their jobs or be relocated, individual team members Some feel that this is symptomatic of the wider culture
were behaving more competitively towards their colleagues within the agency of not dealing with poor performance.
and not helping them out as much as they would normally.


‘I think a small percentage of staff were moved and moved EMPLOYEE INvOLvEMENT
and moved, moved on, moved on, moved on where they A further challenge for GovDep is encouraging the take-up
should have addressed the problems. So they were moved of involvement and improvement initiatives. The majority of
on because they weren’t doing very well in their previous managers feel that there are many opportunities for staff to
role but then it still carried on? Yes, just being moved on.’ feed ideas to managers and share ideas among teams, most
HEO commonly through team meetings. However, the take-up
from staff, particularly at the lower levels, is not very strong.
As the words from the HEO above suggest, there is a Some managers feel that the type of work many operational
tendency at times to just move bad performers into other staff are undertaking means that they do not have time
roles, thereby making it another manager’s problem without away from their usual routines to take part in improvement.
tackling the underlying problems of the underperformance.
This is also seen to occur in performance appraisals in the ‘I think to a certain degree people are just busy churning out
past but was improving with the introduction of a new the work and there isn’t always the time to [come up with
appraisal system. ideas]. I think you try to do that and certainly in our team
we try to share ideas and have a regular team meeting with
‘What happened was that in previous years managers…it’s our manager, usually once every fortnight, where we all get
easier for the manager to give people a higher box marking together and we put any items we want on the agenda and
because it shuts them up really and therefore when this new often we have quite long discussions because we all have
system came in a few years ago people who were getting different ideas and we try to come to a consensus.’ EO
box ones and twos suddenly were down and the majority
had three.’ EO ‘I would say my people have got opportunities; like it doesn’t
stop, it’s continuous.’ HEO
It is important to note that the issue of leadership
development is not simply a problem with management ‘If you are asking me – do people naturally come up with
practice but is also an issue of how willing staff are to suggestions and ideas to improve things – it’s a simple “no”.
engage with development opportunities. In some areas, Team leaders do but the people on the teams don’t.’ HEO
managers suggested there was an apathetic reaction,
or even resistance, from staff towards taking on more One HEO talked about helping his or her staff with filling out
responsibility and developing leadership skills. a suggestion form with ideas for improvement. However,
there was some cynicism as to the extent to which these
‘Yet as a manager, trying to get my staff to take on improvement mechanisms really fed into the management
development opportunities is like pulling teeth, they just decision-making chain.
don’t want to do it, they just want to come in, do the job
and go home. So I actually find [GovDep] quite frustrating ‘[The suggestion form] was a practical thing that she could
with all the…I think they do too many staff surveys and do – [I said] “look, we can do it now, come on let’s get on
we…not being funny but I think we mollycoddle the staff a with it and get it done” – and so that was great because it
little bit.’ HEO made her feel involved and things. She probably hasn’t got
a hope in hell of changing it really but you never know, but
‘When you work in an organisation and you ask [almost one she’s feeling that she’s contributing.’ HEO
hundred] people “does anybody want to team lead” and
none of them says “yes”, that says a lot, doesn’t it?’ HEO A final opportunity for improvement is around cross-
functional working. Several senior managers feel that
there is scope for more learning across business units, both
within the agency and more widely across the government
department. For example, one manager had the ideas that
groups could meet every quarter based on geographical area
to discuss changes and ideas for improvement.


5 Engaging different employees

Through our data we were able to explore whether there ‘Yeah, too routine, they’ve been doing it for years. I would
are any differences between the engagement levels of be very surprised if you found they were satisfied, I’d say
various employee groups. First, we considered demographic they were not satisfied. The only thing that keeps them is
variables. probably the money. That’s not being cynical but the jobs are
quite well paid and that’s why a lot of them are still here.’
We found some interesting variations. For instance, we Manager, public sector, speaking of their direct reports
discovered that women are significantly more engaged
overall than men: while 74% of women report being ‘Working here? It’s very varied. I like that with the
moderately engaged and 9% strongly engaged, 68% department and it’s busy, you know, I mean I’m never going
of men are moderately engaged and 7% strongly to be bored, ever, which is great, I like that aspect of it.’
engaged. This reflects the findings of our previous report Manager, public sector, speaking of their own job
(Truss et al 2006).
Employees on flexible contracts emerge as being more
In terms of caring responsibilities, it was interesting to note engaged than others in terms of both extent and
that employees with dependent children report significantly frequency of engagement. Again, these findings broadly
higher levels of engagement than those without. Eighty per reflect those from our previous report (Truss et al 2006).
cent of people with children report being moderately or However, tensions can arise within flexible roles as people
strongly engaged, compared with 77% of others. sometimes struggle to manage a heavy workload within
restricted hours:
We also explore the link between age and engagement.
Younger people below the age of 25 are significantly ‘I filled out a job satisfaction survey this morning and I think
less engaged in terms of both extent and frequency of I would have scored – oh my god, why are you working at
engagement. This corroborates the findings of our earlier all?…ask me when everybody is back at work and I’m not
research (Truss et al 2006). covering for people. There are a few weeks when I think –
yup, I can cope with this, and there are other weeks when I
Next, we explored associations between working patterns think – oh my god, I’m glad I’m only job-share – but I think
and engagement. Full-time employees are significantly more that might be part of my problem...I try not to take work
engaged with their work than part-timers in terms of both home, I did it this week.’ Manager, public sector
extent of engagement and frequency. Those on permanent
contracts are similarly significantly more engaged (78%) Generally, however, we found that senior managers
than temporary workers (74%). The quote below illustrates appreciate the importance of work–life balance and flexibility
the destabilising impact that temporary contracts and and try to set a personal example for their staff:
continuous change can have on employees:
‘I think over the years I’ve toned the number of hours down.
‘[The frequent change] feeds people’s cynicism about when I think it’s important for people like myself to set an example
the organisation has changed like – we’ve done this before, there, and as I say, I try to influence others and I feel that if
we’ve had this, we’ve had that, we’ve had the other – and I they’re going…or they’re travelling, they’re coming to work
think it would help if it [the change programme] was sort of and they’re travelling at night, and I say, “oh no, you’re not
longer term.’ Manager, public sector doing that.”’ Senior manager, construction

Managers are significantly more engaged than non- Looking broadly at our data on individual differences
managers and, in general, we found that those in and engagement, it seems that there is a link between
professional or managerial roles are the most engaged. job type and engagement. Younger workers typically
While 88% of managers report being moderately or strongly have less interesting and involving work to do than their
engaged, this is true for 71% of others. The quote below older counterparts, which may explain their lower levels
illustrates the way that job content may impact on people’s of engagement overall. Similarly, managers may be
attitudes towards their work: more involved in decision-making processes within their
organisations and experience greater autonomy than non-


managers, which may explain why their engagement levels
are significantly higher. It is difficult to explain why women
are more engaged in their work than men. Further research
is needed to explore these issues in more depth. In the next
section, we consider which managerial strategies have the
most impact on levels of engagement.

KEY FINDINGS
• Women are more engaged than men.
• Younger workers are less engaged than older workers.
• Those on flexible contracts are more engaged.
• Managers are more engaged than non-managers.


6 Strategies for engagement

Previous research has identified a range of workplace ‘I am providing an essential service for several hundred
strategies that impact upon levels of engagement. We ran thousand people, in fact probably for half a million
statistical tests to find out whether we could see a similar people. So in that context, my job is very meaningful in
pattern across our organisations and analysed the associations terms of my customers, my client. I provide a meaningful
between meaningfulness, perceptions of managers, employee service to them. And I think it carries with it a social and
involvement, HR practices and engagement. environmental and corporate responsibility which makes it
meaningful as well.’ Manager, EnvironmentCo
MEANINGFULNESS
The extent to which employees find meaning in their work The above quotation shows that where people can see the
has a substantial impact on how they feel about their impact of their work on other people or society in general
working life in general. Employees who believe that their then their jobs are seen as more meaningful.
work is important and that they can make a difference have
much more positive perceptions about their work and their The nature of the organisation might facilitate this process
work environment. Previous studies have demonstrated and help employees find their jobs meaningful. Traditionally,
the positive impact of meaningfulness on employee public sector employees have been regarded as having
engagement (Cohen 2008, Kahn 1990, May et al 2004). a distinctive work ethos that stands in contrast to the
The data in our study largely confirm these findings by profit motive of private organisations. Our analysis shows
demonstrating that having a meaningful job is the most that individuals working for public sector organisations
important factor influencing levels of engagement. This is find greater meaning in their jobs, compared with their
true for all types of worker in all kinds of jobs. counterparts in the private sector.

Our study demonstrates that about two-thirds of all ‘Local authorities are not in the game that people are
respondents find meaning in their work, compared with 8% running off doing all sorts of things on their own. The work
who do not find their job personally meaningful. Employees has to have some meaning and some purpose, it can’t be
who are able to relate their tasks to a broader context and just somebody “Oh I fancy doing this task this week.”
feel that they can make a difference have higher levels of We’re in the wrong job for that kind of thing.’
motivation and are more likely to be engaged. Team manager, LocalGov

Figure 4: Meaningfulness (%)

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Very low Low Moderate High Very high


Moreover, meaningfulness is largely attached to the type of
work individuals are asked to carry out in an organisation.
Our analysis reveals that managers find it easier to see the
importance of their work compared with non-managers; and
professionals and senior line managers perceive their jobs to
be highly important, whereas process, plant and machine
operators and other low-skilled workers less frequently relate
to their jobs on a personal level.

Besides these contextual factors, managers are essential in
helping individuals find meaning in their work. One way to
facilitate this is through regular communication about the
organisation’s vision and future objectives. Creating a common
framework helps employees to see a bigger picture in their
daily work. Moreover, managers play a crucial role in designing
jobs in such a way that individuals are enabled to experience
positive feelings during their work. Job enrichment is just
one of the effective techniques that enable organisations to
create meaningful jobs, even for more routine tasks. However,
independently from the type of work, it is important to match
people to their jobs according to their qualifications and skill
levels to raise their level of engagement.

KEY FINDING
• Meaningfulness is the most important driver of
engagement for all employee groups.


CASE STUDY:

ScienceCo

As a public sector organisation, ScienceCo is an important As part of its changing careers initiative, the HR department
supplier of scientific information in the UK. More than 700 aims to develop a range of new HR practices and policies.
employees are employed at ScienceCo, a large proportion of Employee engagement provides the company with a
whom are scientists researching topics such as sustainable framework to integrate these policies and evaluate their
use of natural resources, impact of environmental change effect on ScienceCo employees. The participants in our
and spatial modelling. ScienceCo is partially funded by the study were 798 employees working for ScienceCo. All
Government but also receives income through commissioned employees were invited to complete an online questionnaire
research from the private and public sectors. ScienceCo is survey. From this sample, 240 questionnaires were returned,
currently undergoing a period of considerable change. For providing a total response rate of 30%. Additionally,
the previous decades, ScienceCo had experienced a very two face-to-face interviews were conducted with senior
stable workforce that effectively met its needs. Typically, managers working for ScienceCo.
employees would join the company as graduates and stay
with ScienceCo for a long time. Turnover rates were very low ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
and many employees were given opportunities for training The overall results reveal that employees at ScienceCo
that meant they were able to meet business needs whenever demonstrate particularly high levels of engagement.
ScienceCo had to move into a different area of research. Seventy-seven per cent of all respondents are strongly
engaged overall and an additional 8% report being very
Changes in the economic climate and demands from strongly engaged. The values for the frequency dimensions
major stakeholders prompted the HR department within are slightly lower, with 65% indicating that they are engaged
ScienceCo to launch new initiatives that encouraged a once a week and 6% on a daily basis. However, 26% say
different career pattern to move towards a more dynamic they are engaged once a month only.
workforce. Instead of hiring employees for a lifetime,
ScienceCo now aims to attract an increasing number of Employees score very high on affective engagement, with
graduates and postgraduates who want to be part of the 40% indicating that they are very frequently engaged on this
organisation for three to five years, then go away to work dimension.
for a different organisation and then maybe come back
when they have developed other skills: ‘The career path that ‘On the scientific side it is very much the case that they live
we are describing for the future is more come to us, learn and breathe it, so it’s not just a job, it’s a major part of life.’
some things, gain some skills, go somewhere else, move on Manager
and maybe rejoin us later in your career as a senior leading
scientist.’ HR manager

Figure 5: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at ScienceCo (%)

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40

30

20

10

0




‘I think the scientists are absorbed in what they’re doing and HR PRACTICES
greatly dislike anything that stops them being absorbed in An important area of improvement within ScienceCo is the
it.’ Manager sophistication of HR practices and policies. A considerable
number of respondents indicate that they are dissatisfied
Levels of intellectual engagement are also very convincing. with HR practices and policies and the majority group is
The majority of participants (66%) feel ‘strongly’ engaged moderate on this aspect. When analysing each HR practice
on this measure and most employees think about ways to separately, our study finds that employees are highly satisfied
improve their job at least on a weekly basis. with their training and development opportunities and also
feel that they have a high level of job security. However,
In the following sections we will consider factors that are employees rate career management and opportunities for
associated with engagement. We will point out a major promotions more negatively and are especially dissatisfied
strength at ScienceCo, meaningfulness of work, but also with the appraisal system. They also feel that the rewards
talk about important aspects that could be improved to raise they receive are not related to their performance at work.
engagement levels with the organisation, HR practices and
attitudes towards managers. Furthermore, we analyse two Although our research study overall indicates that HR
challenges at ScienceCo: person–job fit and organisational practices are not directly associated with engagement,
advocacy. Challenges are aspects related to engagement, HR practices influence levels of engagement indirectly via
where employees currently score very highly, but that are management behaviour and a supportive work environment.
likely to be subject to change in the near future. Improving the above-mentioned practices could therefore
help to further increase engagement levels at ScienceCo.
MEANINGFULNESS
A major strength within ScienceCo is the value employees ATTITUDES TOWARDS MANAGERS
place on their work. Almost four-fifths of the respondents The relationship between management and employees is a
indicate that they find their work meaningful. A lot of this very important aspect of an individual’s working experience
comes down to the nature of the job many employees carry and it directly impacts upon engagement levels across
out at ScienceCo. A large proportion of the workforce is the workforce. Assessing employees’ perceptions of their
employed as scientists who do research on environmental line and senior management is a good indicator of this
subjects, and many find that the work they do in their jobs is relationship. To get a detailed picture of the dynamics
worthwhile. A vast majority of respondents also indicate that underlying the relations between managers and employees,
their job activities are personally meaningful and significant we measured three different scales. The line management
to them. These results are reflected in the interviews, with scale encompassed questions concerning communication,
managers pointing out that for some employees work is fair and respectful relationships and whether line managers
their hobby. listened to employees’ ideas and suggestions. Additionally,
two separate sets of questions were asked for perceptions
‘You know for many of our employees, if they weren’t being of the senior management: first, communication and vision,
paid to do their work here it would be their hobby. They are that is, how employees rate communication from their
absolutely involved in the study of their respective subjects. senior managers and feel that they are listened to; second,
It’s their life.’ Manager overall effectiveness, that is, the degree to which employees
feel that their senior managers have an effective and fair
‘We are an organisation that’s involved in environmental management style.
research and anyone who is working for us is passionate
about the life of the planet and the state of the planet. They At ScienceCo, 69% of respondents perceive their line
are keen to pursue whatever end necessary to advance the management in a positive or very positive way. In contrast
cause.’ Manager only 5% express negative or very negative perceptions of
their line managers, and 26% are unsure about how to rate
their line management. The scores drop significantly when
respondents were asked to rate their senior management
and a considerable portion of the respondents, one-third,


Figure 6: Attitudes towards managers at ScienceCo (%)

Senior management
3 26 51 17 3
communication and vision

Senior management
effectiveness 3 26 49 20 2

1

Line management 4 26 54 15

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Very negative Negative Neither/Nor Positive Very positive

judge senior management communication and overall ORGANISATIONAL ADvOCACY
effectiveness negatively. The vast majority of respondents Employees at ScienceCo demonstrate very high levels of
are unsure about their senior management and only about organisational advocacy. Almost 90% of respondents would
a fifth feel positive about the way senior management recommend ScienceCo as a good place to work to family
communicate and work. The results indicate that there and friends. This compares with a small minority who would
is room for improvement regarding senior management not want to recommend ScienceCo to friends and family.
behaviour and visibility, which might also help to further Following from this positive finding it is not surprising that
increase engagement levels at ScienceCo. many employees have been working at ScienceCo for a very
long time and turnover rates are generally very low.
PERSON–JOb FIT
A major strength within ScienceCo is the extent to which ‘It is a low turnover rate. We’ve looked at this fairly recently
employees feel that their skills are a good match with their and certainly over the past 10 or 15 years the turnover
jobs. Person–job fit has been identified in previous research rate has been in the order of 4% or 5%. This last year, it’s
as one of the important factors impacting upon levels of actually been 2%.’ Manager
engagement. At ScienceCo almost 85% of respondents
feel that their job is right for them compared with only 2% ‘We certainly have a very large number of over-50-year-old
who indicate a low fit between the job they were asked to employees. That follows on from a lot of recruitment in the
carry out and their skills. More than four-fifths say that their mid to late 1970s, and many of those employees are still
abilities fit well with the demands of their jobs and a similar with us.’ Manager
number of respondents feel that their personality is a good
match for their job. As can be seen from these findings, employees at ScienceCo
demonstrate exceptionally high levels of loyalty, which clearly
This excellent feedback from ScienceCo employees is likely contribute to the positive engagement levels. However, similar
to change due to the changes in career management to the positive findings on person–job fit, changes are likely to
approach described above. The decision to move towards occur with respect to high tenure and low turnover rates with
a more dynamic workforce has major implications for the ScienceCo introducing its dynamic workforce concept.
organisation, which have to be managed and evaluated
carefully. We would like to thank Jasleen Lonial for her help in
collecting the data upon which this case study is based.


MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP APPROACHES respondents rate their line management positively, compared
There is considerable evidence from prior research that with 15% who have a more negative view of their line
perceptions of managerial processes impact on engagement managers. Our study further reveals that positive perceptions
(De Mello e Souza Wildermuth and Pauken 2008). of line managers were associated significantly with extent
Evidence suggests that employees’ level of engagement of employee engagement. This result indicates that line
and other work responses are affected by their perceptions managers may have a significant role to play in raising levels
of management style. For example, opportunities for of engagement.
upward feedback increase engagement through greater
participation, which, in turn, relates to greater understanding ‘My perception of what’s actually wrong with this
of wider organisational issues as well as personal organisation is that we have a lot of very good people who
involvement (Robinson et al 2004). The belief that managers are not good people managers. The problem this creates is
are interested in employee well-being is also relevant since that people at the bottom, who probably have most of the
perceived reciprocation of effort is an important motivator of ideas, can’t communicate those upwards because the people
engagement and related behaviours. Effective leadership also in the middle over-filter or don’t bother at all.’
encompasses individual-level feedback, which can increase Accountant, PlasticCo
both engagement and performance (Alimo-Metcalfe and
Alban-Metcalfe 2006). Relating to the quotation above, we identified several
aspects of the line manager’s role that can enhance
In our study, we asked employees to rate their line and employee engagement. Starting with recruitment and
senior managers. For senior management, we focused on selection, line managers need to ensure that the right people
effectiveness and asked respondents to rate the degree to are placed in jobs that are appropriate for their skills and
which employees feel that their senior managers have an abilities. Line managers need to communicate goals and
effective and fair management style. Questions about line objectives clearly, so that employees can focus their effort
managers focused on communication, fairness and trust. and engagement on specific tasks. These objectives can
encompass helping employees to see how their role fits with,
PERCEPTIONS OF LINE MANAGERS and contributes to, the bigger picture of the organisational
Line managers have a critical role to play since they are the strategy. Finally, there needs to be a clear cycle of reciprocity
interface between employees and senior managers. This is where effort, engagement and reward are mutually positive
particularly important in large organisations where there is and reinforcing. This cycle should include opportunities for
typically little contact between the senior management team development and promotion so employees can see their
and employees. Our data show that 56% of our future trajectory within their organisation.

Figure 7: Management perceptions (%)

Line management 4 11 29 46 10

Senior management
8 20 40 29 3
effectiveness

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Very negative Negative Neither/Nor Positive Very positive


PERCEPTIONS OF SENIOR MANAGERS AND perceptions of managers alongside a generally much more
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT positive perspective could encourage employees to work
Respondents in our study rate senior management lower harder, become more engaged and see a range of benefits of
than their line managers. Only about a third believe that their doing so. These employees might seek managerial positions
senior managers are effective leaders and the majority, 40%, themselves, and such ambitions can be positive for the
are unsure about how to evaluate their senior managers. individuals as well as the wider organisation. However, the
Questions included items such as ‘senior managers treat general recommendation is that positive attitudes towards
employees with respect’, and ‘senior managers are fair in managers are important to achieve, and more likely to have
their treatment of me’. considerable and broad benefits than the specific influences
that some negative perceptions might have. We would not
In the questionnaire surveys across the eight organisations we wish to suggest that senior managers should actively seek
included the open-ended question: ‘What is the one thing out negative views from their employees! In contrast with
which would improve your working life?’ Many employees the findings on senior management effectiveness, our scale
commented about their senior managers. Example comments capturing communication between senior managers and
are listed below: employees, visibility and senior managers’ vision for their
organisation is positively related to engagement; in fact, this
• more open and effective communications from senior emerged as the third most significant driver of high levels of
management engagement.
• improve information-sharing within the organisation,
especially from senior management to lower levels Senior managers have a significant role in creating an optimal
within the organisation working environment and helping line managers to achieve
• better communications all round would be a vast this for their employees. Two critical components are the
improvement on how things are at present, especially design of jobs and the organisation of work. As noted above,
between line workers and senior management. people need to be in the right jobs with appropriate targets to
channel their engagement. The corollary is that the jobs must
The evidence from earlier studies reviewed above, as well be designed to ensure that they have appropriate breadth and
as our own research, shows that positive perceptions of line depth. Where jobs are limited, such as production line tasks,
managers have a positive impact on engagement. Our data then jobs can be enriched through additional responsibilities.
regarding perceptions of senior managers and, specifically, Such job enrichment leads to a range of positive outcomes
their effectiveness, reveal a different pattern. We found that such as enhanced performance, reduced turnover and
perceptions of senior managers’ effectiveness are negatively increased engagement (Parker et al 2006).
associated with engagement. That is, low ratings of senior
managers’ effectiveness are associated with high levels of
employee engagement. At first glance, this might appear to
be a counterintuitive result. Certainly, it does not fit with our KEY FINDINGS
general pattern of positive relationships between perceptions • Senior management effectiveness is negatively related
of work and engagement. Yet, there are some similar to employee engagement.
findings in other studies. For example, some research has • Senior management vision and communication is a key
suggested that a moderate level of dissatisfaction could be driver of engagement.
a powerful motivator (Frese 2008). It is possible that a small • Positive perceptions of line managers are strongly
degree of negative responses to work could have a role in linked with engagement.
driving need for change. In this case, having some negative


CASE STUDY:

PlasticCo

PlasticCo is a leading plastics manufacturer producing Considering the challenges in the manufacturing setting and
blow-moulded plastic bottles for the UK food and drink traditional management approach at the company, it was a
industry. The company grew in the 1990s from the merger bold move from the senior managers to attempt to change
between several medium-sized manufacturing businesses. towards a more participative approach. One of the first steps
The company operates from eight sites across the UK and the managing director took was to create an ‘Employee
has a turnover in excess of £100 million. It currently has Engagement Steering Group’ involving key managers from
a workforce of around 650 employees and is part of a across the organisation. A leadership and development
multinational packaging group of companies. manager was also appointed with the specific role of
increasing the engagement of the workforce. The incumbent
The leadership style at PlasticCo has traditionally been to this role described the company as being at a crossroads:
described as ‘top–down’ with an autocratic approach ‘we either go on as before, or we take some risks, involve
to problem-solving. However, recent changes in senior and let go gradually.’ She also stressed that the change is
management have led to a new strategic direction for ‘not about driving employees to work harder, but about
the company. A new managing director was appointed providing the conditions under which they will work smarter
in 2007, bringing a more participative vision. With full and to offer their opinions, ideas and solutions to problems
board support, a business case was made for a three-year that they encounter.’
transition towards an involvement-orientated culture. At the
heart of this approach are people development, teamwork, Demonstrating the new participative approach, all PlasticCo
communication and a more open leadership style. The employees were included in the employee engagement
new management team made clear that the company was questionnaire conducted for this project. A total of 650
profitable and performing well and that the change was questionnaires were distributed and 484 were returned,
part of a new strategy of continuous improvement towards providing a high response rate of 75%. Thirty-four
greater performance. PlasticCo joined the Kingston Business interviews were also conducted with managers from various
School Employee Engagement Consortium at the start of departments and levels. Finally, two focus groups were held
this transition to help assess the levels of engagement in the with 11 shop-floor workers across the sites. Employees were
company and identify potential avenues for improvement. given paid time on their shift to complete the questionnaire,
and help was offered to employees for whom English was
The majority of PlasticCo employees work within the not a first language.
bottle-producing factories operating the blow-moulding
machinery. There are head office functions such as ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
personnel, managerial and administrative roles outside of The results of the survey suggest that at the start of the
the factory, but these are relatively small in number. The change process the company had a generally ‘high’ level
factory work setting presents many challenges for managers of engagement in the workforce, with 60% of employees
trying to increase employee engagement. Many of the jobs in this category. However, only 7% of employees were
require a relatively low level of skill and are repetitive, with ‘very’ engaged and 3% had a ‘low’ level of engagement.
tasks including transporting materials around the factory This outcome was not a huge surprise for the senior
and operating particular parts of the machinery. Employees management team but gave a measure of the work that
generally have few qualifications. A further challenge is the was needed to create a highly engaged workforce. Levels
shift pattern on which the factory process is based. Around of engagement frequency were slightly higher. Forty-nine
80% of factory employees work a strict 12-hour shift per cent of the respondents indicated that they are engaged
pattern, with four days on followed by four days off. Shifts once a week and another 26% are engaged on a daily basis.
either run through the day (8am–8pm) or night (8pm–8am). In contrast, 7% said they are rarely engaged.
The production process runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,
including all bank holidays and Christmas Day. Employees
have to adjust their home lives to the system and adapt to
unsociable working hours. A further potential challenge is
the factory working environment, which is noisy and hot.


Figure 8: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at PlasticCo (%)

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40

30

20

10

0



Analysis of the data from PlasticCo uncovered three main ‘Very little at the moment, very little I would think. As far
areas that need addressing to improve engagement – as people actively talking about [ways to improve their job]
decision-making, people management and organisational instead of talking about the weather or the traffic or the
advocacy. newspaper or TV, do they then say “how can I do my job
better?” I doubt it.’ Senior manager
DECISION-MAKING
A common problem identified by managers across the Perhaps the biggest opportunity for the future at PlasticCo
organisation was that problem-solving tended to be was the survey finding that employees really care about their
‘reactive’ rather than ‘proactive’. In practice, this meant there work and want to do a good job. However, because in the
was little effort to come up with ideas for improvement, but past they were given little opportunity to contribute to the
rather issues were resolved only when problems arose. A improvement of work processes, their interest had gradually
plant manager summarised this: declined:

‘I think it’s probably more based around problems rather ‘I do realise working in places that you are just a number...
than them sitting around and asking how am I going to if they didn’t need you, you wouldn’t be here. I do feel as
improve my job? It’s very much if there’s an issue – how can well, when I’m in my job I give it 110% but I used to give it
we improve it? So I think it’s more reactive problem-solving.’ 130%.’ Shift manager
Plant manager
To respond to these considerable barriers to engagement,
This problem linked into how decisions were made more the recently established employee engagement steering
generally in the factories. Control and responsibility tended group introduced a number of measures to increase
to be concentrated with a few managers who made changes employee involvement and a more participative decision-
on an ad hoc basis. There was very little encouragement making process. First, an initiative was set up that would
from managers for shift workers to become involved in allow all employees to feed back their views and ideas
decision-making. With little chance of influencing decisions, directly to the managing director. In break periods, the
workers tended to ignore issues unless they were told managing director invited the employees from each team
directly by managers about them. This problem was picked and shift to meet with him and ‘challenge’ him. This was
up by one senior manager who reflected on the level of a strong signal of change to the workforce and produced
involvement in the factories: some early enthusiasm from employees. A second initiative
also showing new commitment to listening to employee


views was being involved in the Kingston Business School To attempt to overcome the problems of people
Employee Engagement Consortium and survey. After management, senior managers at PlasticCo introduced some
receiving the results, the leadership and development new initiatives for managers to think about their style and
manager visited all factory sites to report back the results start to develop new ways of working. Management groups
direct to staff. A third initiative in the area of decision- were set up to identify areas of skills shortage and staff
making was to set up cross-functional problem-solving development needs. Formal HR practices, such as appraisals
groups that would meet periodically to discuss ideas for and training, were discussed as important avenues for the
improvement. future.

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT STYLE Following the results from the engagement survey,
The management style at PlasticCo was traditionally left to PlasticCo made a conscious effort to improve relationships
the proclivities of individual managers. In most factories, the between employees and managers within the company. A
leadership style was described as performance-focused and, performance review process was introduced to encourage
in some, the culture was seen as ‘hard-nosed’, to quote one employees to talk to their line managers about their day-
manager. In essence, little attention had been paid to people to-day targets, personal objectives and development plans
management in the past. Before the strategic redirection, as well as their career aspirations. A new task set for line
there were few HR practices in place. Training was limited managers was to engage with their team members to find
and there was little emphasis on teamwork. out each individual’s motivator and to ensure that they
stayed committed to PlasticCo.
When comparing the employee engagement levels against
the performance of the factories, there is generally a positive Many of the line managers that were interviewed for the
correlation between engagement and performance. It is research said how they thrive on the challenge of their work:
interesting to note that factories tend to perform well or
badly across all employee attitudes. The most surprising ‘I enjoy the role. I think there’s a challenge of something
result comes from one factory that is performing very well different every day. There are things that you get frustrated
by many measures, including productivity, efficiency and with but I enjoy it. I’m still motivated for it, I’m determined
unplanned downtime. However, workers in the factory are for the site to get better so for me personally I find it quite a
amongst the least engaged from the employee sample. challenging role and an enjoyable role.’ Plant manager
This clearly contradicts the idea that engagement and
high performance are always related. An important piece An important consideration for shaping people management
of information that may help to explain this is that the in PlasticCo is to be realistic about the scope for new ways of
factory was recently reconfigured with new machinery that working. The nature of manufacturing work often leads to
increased automation of the production process. While highly automated, repetitive tasks and a clear performance
management saw this as an excellent investment, shift focus on efficiency and productivity. For example, some of
workers were less satisfied with the change because they the lowest-skilled job roles are seen as too restrictive to be
saw this as another snub of them and their interests. They able to foster job satisfaction and engagement by managers.
felt that all management attention was put into improving Conversely, we might argue that because there is a highly
the production process with no investment in the people. mechanised work environment, it is more important for
It only reduced the opportunities to contribute to the managers to make a concerted effort to consider their
improvement of the production process. The plant manager team’s needs because these do not flow naturally from work
admitted: processes. A key challenge for the senior management team
is to explore how people management and development can
‘All the sites were very much driven on running better, become a key focus for first-line managers at PlasticCo.
running lean, running light, we’re all very focused on that
and I think maybe sometimes we forget the people side of
things.’ Plant manager


ORGANISATIONAL ADvOCACY EvOLUTION OF A NEW CULTURE
A final area that needs careful attention at PlasticCo is There have been some recent changes at PlasticCo with
the findings of very low levels of employee advocacy for the aim of improving communication and advocacy. An
the organisation. Most employees said they would not experienced learning and development professional has been
recommend the company as an employer to their friends and hired and promoted to director within 12 months. Moreover,
family. Improving decision-making and people management a new HR strategy has been implemented focusing on the
style will be two clear avenues for improving advocacy. key aspects of attraction, development, retention, and
Another suggestion is to put more effort into celebrating reward and recognition.
what the organisation already does well. One such area
mentioned during interviews was opportunities for career One group of employees had taken responsibility for a two-
development and promotion within the business. There was day recruitment event that they ran without the involvement
recognition that, if employees wanted to stand out and of HR or senior managers and that had been a huge
work hard, their efforts would be recognised and there were success. This gave shift workers the chance to talk about
opportunities for promotion: what they liked about their jobs and promote this to the
public. A company magazine had also been introduced to
‘I started 15 years ago driving a forklift. So I can see that it’s communicate news and celebrate success in the organisation
a very encouraging business for people, developing people – feeding into a more positive work climate.
and I’m a prime example. I’ve obviously got through various
roles within our business to get to a senior management Much emphasis has been put on leadership development.
position.’ Senior manager A programme has been initiated to identify and develop
high-performing leaders across the business. All these
changes contributed to the evolution of a new culture within
PlasticCo and first results from the company’s management
survey indicate an increase in levels of engagement across
PlasticCo’s workforce.


EMPLOYEE vOICE, INvOLvEMENT AND Fundamental to the concept of employee engagement is
COMMUNICATION the idea that all employees can make a contribution to the
In terms of the key levers that managers can activate to successful functioning and continuous improvement of
raise levels of engagement, our research indicates the organisational processes. Clearly, employee involvement
importance of providing meaningful work, as well as mechanisms are central to this endeavour. Our study
leadership. The third key driver that emerges in our study considered the extent to which employees participate in
is effective employee voice, in other words, opportunities decisions that directly affect their job and attend meetings
for employees to input into decisions affecting their work where they can make suggestions related to their work. As
and their organisations, and to be properly consulted and our data reveal, about two-fifths feel that they are highly or
communicated with over workplace issues that affect very highly involved in decisions that affect their job; however,
them. Our data suggest that employee involvement and the majority of respondents only feel moderately involved. A
management communication have a positive association considerable number, one-fifth, indicate that they do not get
with both the extent and frequency of engagement. involved in work-related matters on a regular basis.

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in We can further illustrate these data by three particular
various forms of employee voice, and it is often argued that case studies – PlasticCo, ConstructionCo and NorthTrust
employee involvement and communication are linked with – all of which have made efforts to improve the extent
benefits such as lower absenteeism, fewer exits and higher of communication and involvement but face different
levels of commitment, efficiency and performance. Research challenges in ensuring that these efforts are reflected in
suggests that so-called high-involvement work practices can heightened levels of engagement.
develop the positive beliefs and attitudes associated with
employee engagement and that these practices can generate At PlasticCo shift workers have historically had little
the kinds of discretionary behaviours that lead to enhanced encouragement from managers to become involved in
performance (Konrad 2006). Work by the Institute of decision-making, and problem-solving has tended to be
Employment Studies also points to a ‘sense of feeling valued reactive rather than proactive. However, a management
and involved’ as a major driver of engagement (Robinson team traditionally perceived as having an autocratic and
et al 2004). Similarly, while Purcell et al (2003) found a hard-nosed leadership style is now committed to developing
number of factors to be strongly associated with high levels a more participative organisational culture. The results
of employee engagement, the one thing all of these factors suggest there are a significant number of employees who
had in common was that they were connected with an feel moderately involved, but there are also a good number
employee’s involvement in a practice related to their work. who are unsure, or feel that they are not particularly involved

Figure 9: Involvement (%)

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0



in managerial processes. The factory work setting, shift However, there were issues raised about communication
patterns and lack of training opportunities present severe at NorthTrust. A number of matrons said that they feel
challenges. Given the initiatives that are being put in place, it senior managers sometimes send out a negative message,
is likely that engagement levels will rise over coming months. particularly around infection control and targets, while
others think key operational issues are not effectively
ConstructionCo is a relatively young company with a strong communicated:
entrepreneurial culture, and this context feeds into positive
employee experiences, creating a dynamic and intellectually ‘My biggest beef with [NorthTrust] is the lack of downward
challenging work climate. There are several ways in which flow of information. I hear from a lot of other managers
ConstructionCo is attempting to involve employees. around the Trust…[saying] we get a team briefing and we
These include: annual communication, ‘Good to Great’ get [NorthTrust] News, but the actual nitty-gritty of what
workshops, a regularly updated intranet, staff surveys, team is going on doesn’t always filter down.’ Middle manager,
meetings and suggestion schemes. Some employees are NorthTrust
very positive about these, but others see the situation as
letting ‘a thousand flowers bloom’ with little clarity over In summary, involvement initiatives have been met with a
which initiatives are most important or useful. Linked to mixed response by employees. Across the organisation, there
this, an area that is acknowledged as needing attention is is concern with the kind of messages that senior managers
the extent of collaborative idea-sharing. The company is are sending to staff as these are sometimes perceived
forward-looking, but sometimes this means that teams and as being negative. The trust is already in the process of
departments do not share knowledge and ideas about how creating a new post of Director of Communications. Their
things are working and how they might be improved. As one main role will be to redesign communication channels,
manager noted: encompassing top–down communications, news, electronic
communication, idea-sharing, continuous improvement
‘There’s a real apathy for collaboration, for sharing, for and emergency planning. This is a very positive initiative
knowledge transfer. It’s a shame because that’s what the in response to employee feedback that is likely to yield
business is about.’ Senior manager, ConstructionCo significant benefits in terms of raising levels of engagement.

So there are various involvement initiatives in the It is also notable that at both of the unionised organisations
organisation for staff to interact with managers but, in (PlasticCo and NorthTrust), employees generally feel that
some respects, these are not strategically coherent or widely the union is successful in representing employee interests
understood. and this is also associated with higher levels of engagement.
Clearly, the goal of improving and increasing employee
At NorthTrust, the HR department has developed a wide engagement is not without its challenges, given wider macro-
range of practices and policies designed to widen the environmental pressures facing many organisations. Success
involvement of employees, including a ‘lean programme’ may require organisations to avoid adopting a ‘piecemeal’,
set up to make improvements in outpatients, non-elective ad hoc approach and instead focus on the development
admissions and emergency care. Interviewees report that of a more strategic and holistic approach, which aims not
the major benefit of this programme is not necessarily only to establish clear employee involvement mechanisms,
the economic or process efficiency gains but, instead, the but also to build a culture that promotes active listening,
investment in people by giving them the opportunity to involvement, consultation and participation. Moreover, our
think about their work more carefully and produce ideas for research reaffirms the contention well established in the
improvement: literature that genuine employee engagement depends upon
long-established principles, namely that employees feel the
‘Lean has given people a lot. There are a lot of positives that organisational climate is based upon fairness and justice, that
have come out of Lean. I think people who have gone working managers treat employees with respect and that effective
on Lean projects have loved it, and they’ve come back really voice mechanisms exist for the expression of both individual
enthused.’ Clinical business manager, NorthTrust and collective concerns.


Looking at our sample overall, statistical tests revealed
that the two most important drivers of engagement KEY FINDINGS
are meaningfulness of work and employee voice. • Employee voice is a strong driver of engagement.
Meaningfulness is measured by a set of items including, • Just 34% of employees are the vocal-involved,
for instance, ‘the work I do on this job is worthwhile’ and who perceive their work as meaningful and have
‘the work I do on this job is very important to me.’ Voice is opportunities to voice their views, yet this category of
similarly measured by a series of items including, ‘I develop workers is the most engaged.
and make recommendations concerning issues that affect
my workgroup’, and ‘I get involved in issues that affect
the quality of work life here in my group’. Statistical tests HR POLICIES AND PRACTICES
showed that these two factors are the major drivers for all There is good evidence in previous research that HR policies
types of employees, for example in terms of age, gender and and practices play a critical role in shaping the relationship
job role. between employers and employees (Gould-Williams 2007).
Our analysis reveals that only about a quarter of employees
Plotting meaningfulness versus voice provides an insight into are satisfied with the HR practices in their organisation. The
the proportion of employees who have positive perceptions majority of all respondents, 38%, are neither satisfied nor
of these two important factors. We found that only one- dissatisfied and a considerable number, 35%, indicate their
third of our sample, 34%, fall into the category of the ‘vocal- dissatisfaction with HR practices.
involved’, those who find their work meaningful and feel
they can express their views openly. The vocal-involved are Respondents indicate several areas for improvement, such
those who are in the setting most conducive to high levels as performance appraisal systems, training and development
of engagement. It is positive, however, to note the very small opportunities and career management systems.
numbers falling into the other categories, with the exception
of the 51% of ‘fence-sitters’, who clearly have the potential ‘We get PDP [professional development plan] once a year
to be converted into the vocal-involved or lapse into the and that’s meant to be a face-to-face but this year I got sent
other categories. an email – this is your PDP.’ Manager, EnvironmentCo

Figure 10: Meaningfulness vs voice (%)

High

Vocal-uninvolved Vocal-involved
(1) (34)
Voice

Fence-sitters
(51)

Silent-uninvolved Silent-involved
(4) (10)

Low

Low High
Meaningfulness


Figure 11: Satisfaction with HR policies and practices (%)

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Very dissatisfied Dissatisfied Moderate Satisfied Very satisfied

‘I haven’t had any formal sort of training as such, I’ve not In contrast to what we expected, we do not find a
had any management training, I haven’t had any training at direct association between HR policies and practices and
all, whatsoever, [...] so I’m just assuming that what I’m doing employee engagement. Rather, our analysis reveals that
is right and hopefully it is.’ Engineering manager, PlasticCo the relationship between HR practices and engagement
is indirect. HR practices impact on two key factors: the
Previous studies have demonstrated that individuals’ behaviour of line managers and person–job fit, or the match
perceptions of HR practices positively impact upon employee between individuals and their jobs. It is these two factors
outcomes, such as organisational commitment and job that have the most important impact on engagement and
satisfaction (Conway and Monks 2009, Kinnie et al 2005). not HR practices in and of themselves.
We therefore aimed to assess whether HR practices are also a
significant predictor of employee engagement by analysing the
relationship between both variables through statistical tests. KEY FINDINGS
• Most employees have negative views about their
organisation’s HR policies and practices.
• HR practices do not impact directly on engagement;
the relationship is mediated by person–job fit and line
management style.


CASE STUDY:

EnvironmentCo

EnvironmentCo is a leading recycling and waste choice. EnvironmentCo decided to join the Kingston Business
management company in the UK and part of a global School Employee Engagement Consortium to find out more
environmental services company that consists of four about the workforce’s levels of engagement and get detailed
divisions, encompassing water, energy, waste management information about which aspects to improve in order to raise
and transport. The company employs almost 12,500 people engagement levels within the company.
and 2008 revenues were above £1.2 billion. In the UK,
EnvironmentCo provides integrated waste management The participants in the engagement survey were 2,217
and environmental services to local authorities and industry, employees working for EnvironmentCo. The research
including refuse collection, recycling, hazardous and non- consisted of two main stages. First, 757 employees
hazardous waste treatment, disposal, energy recovery, street with email access were invited to complete an online
cleansing and landscaping and landfill contracts. questionnaire survey. A further 1,460 employees without
Internet access were given a paper version of the
EnvironmentCo places a strong emphasis on operating questionnaire. From this sample, 1,029 questionnaires were
in a responsible and sustainable manner. The company returned, providing a total response rate of 46%. Second,
is committed to the preservation and protection of the 20 face-to-face interviews were conducted with a range of
environment through the provision of professional waste managerial staff.
and recycling management services to communities
and businesses. The access to top-quality research and ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
international innovation and expertise allows EnvironmentCo The overall result of the study is very positive. Seventy-five
to promote innovative recycling and recovery solutions per cent of employees at EnvironmentCo are strongly or
to its clients and champion innovative waste treatment very strongly engaged. About 24% are moderately engaged
technologies. and only 1% of respondents indicate that they are weakly
engaged. Levels of engagement frequency are even higher,
EnvironmentCo has set itself the objective of becoming an with 78% indicating that they are engaged on a regular
employer of choice within the UK. To achieve this objective, basis, 19% even on a daily basis.
EnvironmentCo has been reappraising a range of practices
and policies within the company. EnvironmentCo also made Employees at EnvironmentCo especially show very high levels
a substantial effort to change its culture towards a more of affective engagement, which reflects that respondents
flexible and open working style. Engaging employees was generally care about doing a good job.
seen as a major step towards becoming an employer of

Figure 12: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at EnvironmentCo (%)

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0




‘Everybody is working hard because they care about the EMPLOYEE vOICE
company, you know they all want to make sure that they A second strong point at EnvironmentCo is the extent to
save the company money and it stays a successful company.’ which employees are given opportunities to get involved in
Manager discussions about work-related matters and communicate
their opinion about aspects of their job. Almost two-thirds
‘I’d say 90% of our workforce is conscientious; they want to of the respondents in our study feel highly or even very
drive the business forward.’ Senior manager highly involved in work-related matters. The management
style at EnvironmentCo is described as open, democratic and
In the following sections we will explain which aspects honest, where employees can talk to their managers about
contribute to the high levels of engagement at issues that affected their work.
EnvironmentCo – clarity of objectives, employee voice,
corporate social responsibility – and also give some advice ‘The management style is one of creating a communicative
as to which areas could be improved to further raise levels culture, ie communication downstream and upstream.’
of engagement among EnvironmentCo employees – HR Director
practices and systems and processes within EnvironmentCo.
‘Most managers sit there with their door open and it’s a
CLARITY OF ObJECTIvES fairly open management style and most of them have come
Clarity of objectives has been shown in previous research to up through the ranks as well, so most of them have come
be an important factor impacting upon levels of engagement. from either a driving or from an admin type role anyway so
At EnvironmentCo, the vast majority of employees feel that they know what everybody is doing.’ Manager
they know what is expected of them and are clear about the
tasks they had to perform to achieve their goals. ‘I think it’s quite an open management style. I think it’s quite
direct but I would say reasonably diplomatic.’ Manager
‘Our people are competent, able to work within teams,
understanding [...] the company’s strategic objectives.’ To further encourage employees to get involved with their
Senior manager job, EnvironmentCo has implemented a suggestion scheme to
foster ideas across the organisation. Every quarter employees
‘It’s really key that employees understand what the business are encouraged to put down their ideas on a specific topic,
objectives are, what the company objectives are and the such as health and safety, customer service or efficiency.
reasons why. I think if they understand that and someone At the end of each quarter, three ideas get picked out and
sits and explains that to them then they will absolutely work the winners are given vouchers as rewards for their ideas.
for us without a shadow of a doubt.’ Senior manager Managers in our study complimented employees for the
number of valuable ideas they put into the suggestion scheme.
An impressive number of interviewees talk about
EnvironmentCo’s strategic objectives in the next few years, ‘We’re really getting a lot of suggestions. We had a recent
which reflects the fact that strategic goals and objectives conference and we had over 100 suggestions in one day
had been communicated very well at management level. from the assembled group, which is fantastic.’
Occasionally, employees indicate that they would prefer to Senior manager
receive more information about EnvironmentCo’s future
direction. ‘One which was a really simple idea but great was that all
the drivers should have a name badge so that when they are
‘Improved information-sharing within the organisation talking to their customer the customer sees their name, gets
[would make my working life easier], especially from senior familiar with the driver, they are the point of contact at the
management to lower levels within the organisation. Too much end of the day.’ Senior manager
information isn’t accessible, eg Strategy 2012.’ Employee

However, overall clarity of objectives is a major strength at
EnvironmentCo, which clearly contributes to the high levels
of engagement.


CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIbILITY HR PRACTICES
A third important strength in EnvironmentCo is its One area for improvement at EnvironmentCo is the
commitment to being a socially responsible member of development of more sophisticated HR policies and practices.
society. EnvironmentCo’s aim to protect the environment A considerable number of respondents (19%) in our study
by investing in innovative and state-of-the-art techniques is are dissatisfied with HR.
highly appreciated by many employees. Fifty-one per cent
of respondents believe that EnvironmentCo is a socially At EnvironmentCo, employees specifically express their
responsible member of society, compared with only 9% who dissatisfaction with training and development opportunities,
disagree with this statement. and the career and performance appraisal systems.

‘I would say the values and what we aspire to do are ‘The training for HR, for managers, is horrendous. I’ve never
laudable in the environmental space. I would say definitely had any training on it. You just learn the processes and the
yes.’ Manager policies, you just go on the intranet and have a look and we
sort of make it up as you go along.’ Manager
‘I think everything that I hear from the highest level is that
that is our intention and that we will make every effort to ‘Everybody talks about training and likes to be trained and
reduce our impact on the environment and it seems to be a we’ve got a very good training department. [...] But I think
consistent message.’ Manager it’s underutilised and the reason for that is that the training
culture from the top is weak.’ Manager
Many respondents indicate that working for a socially
responsible company is important to them and some ‘The career management is really about who knows who at
respondents indicate that they cannot imagine themselves the moment. There’s no real formal structure to the career
working for a company that they would consider irresponsible. management.’ Senior manager

‘We are in a world that is getting smaller, diminishing resources, On the positive side, several respondents indicate that HR
increasing population. At most we all have a social conscience practices have been identified as a weakness within the
and how we are affecting the environment, other people and company by the HR department already and appreciate that
so forth. So it is the most important thing. And if you have got the HR department is currently working on new policies and
children you are going to worry about that.’ Director processes across several HR areas.

‘Yes, corporate social responsibility is important for ‘We have a performance development plan process and
me because I consider myself to be fairly socially and that’s management levels. We’re in the middle of changing
environmentally responsible anyway.’ Manager the process at the moment because we’re investing in
an intranet-based system because we’ve found with the
‘I would be very uncomfortable working for a company that manual-based in such a big organisation, it’s really hard for
I thought was unethical or didn’t think was responsible.’ us to track the output.’ Manager
Manager
‘The performance appraisal system is embryonic. It had an
initiative a few years ago and went badly wrong, but the
current HR director is relaunching it.’ Senior manager


SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES
Another challenge for EnvironmentCo is the systems and
processes in place across the company. Several interviewees
commented that the systems and processes within
EnvironmentCo are not developed to a level appropriate to a
business of EnvironmentCo’s size. This is a major frustration,
especially for managers, which impacts upon levels of
engagement.

‘Reporting mechanisms have been very poor, very, very poor
because we work on different systems.’ Manager

‘Because we’ve got all sorts of systems out there, the
company runs on about 25 different systems, each different
division has got a different system.’ Manager

‘You’ve just got a system that’s very laborious, the system
that we’ve inherited to use is not as efficient as other
systems might be so we’ve had to adapt that but resource is
really tight.’ Senior manager

Interviewees especially feel that the intranet needs much
more development, as communication and collaboration
opportunities are missed. Collaboration and talking to peers
about ways to improve a job is part of our conceptualisation
of social engagement and interviewees indicated that one
means of increasing levels of social engagement would be
providing a more sophisticated intranet.

‘The current intranet is terrible, just a place where people
put documents and we want to turn it around, we want to
make it a tool for online collaboration, so that people can
have electronic forums...blogs, we want the CEO to do a
blog every week.’ Director

‘One of the big communication opportunities we’re missing
is the intranet. Our intranet is just poor, it’s static.’ Manager


7 Outcomes of engagement

Employee engagement has been associated with a range of include job skills (that is, the extent to which employees have
positive outcomes at the individual and organisational levels, the knowledge and ability to carry out their job); social skills
for example, engaged employees are more likely to perform (for example leadership and interpersonal skills); willingness
better and are less likely to seek a new job elsewhere. In this to take on extra work; and the rating they received in their
section, we consider how all the factors in our model impact most recent performance appraisal.
on a range of outcomes at both levels, including individual
performance, intention to leave and individual well-being. We first asked people whether they feel that they have the
right skills to carry out their work effectively. Fifty per cent
FOR ORGANISATIONS feel their job skills are very good and an encouraging 22%
We consider three important outcomes of engagement: feel they are excellent. For social skills, the scores are just
performance, innovative work behaviour – or the extent to slightly lower, with 41% feeling they are very good and
which people innovate in their jobs – and intent to quit. 22% excellent. On both scales, very few employees rate
themselves as having a poor or fair skill level.
INDIvIDUAL PERFORMANCE
The process of engagement that we have seen so far involves We also asked employees whether they are willing to take
a positive cycle of perceptions of work, satisfaction with on extra work and go beyond the call of duty. Fifty-nine
work, involvement in and engagement with work. These per cent indicate that they were willing to take on extra work
behaviours and the psychological processes that underpin on a regular basis. We then asked people to let us know the
them lead to enhanced performance. Engaged employees rating they received in their last performance appraisal.
perform better than their less engaged counterparts because Forty-three per cent of all employees received a good
they are more involved with their work, they think more performance appraisal, 36% were rated very good and
about their work, which helps them to develop better another 9% excellent. In contrast, 12% received a poor or
solutions, and they are socially connected with their work. fair rating in their last performance appraisal.
There is also considerable empirical evidence for a positive
association between engagement and performance, and our These performance data are positive across the whole
study fits well with prior evidence. sample; however, we can find some statistically significant
differences across employee groups.
Although individual performance would ideally be measured
by asking someone else, such as a line manager, about an Although these data are not objective measures of
individual’s performance, this is not possible in a survey performance, they provide a barometer of employees’
of this nature, so we asked employees to self-rate their understanding of their own performance in relation to that
perceptions of a range of performance measures. These of their peers.

Figure 13: Levels of self-rated job skills and social skills (%)

Social skills 6 32 41 20

Job skills 2 25 50 22

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Poor Fair Good Very good Excellent


Figure 14: Rating of the last performance appraisal (%) Figure 15: Innovative work behaviour (%)

50 50

40 40

30 30

20 20

10 10

0 0

Poor Fair Good Never A few times a year Once a month

Very good Excellent Once a week Daily

INNOvATIvE WORK bEHAvIOUR INTENTION TO STAY
For a subset of our organisations, we analysed whether A third important outcome of engagement is the intent to
higher levels of engagement lead to innovative work remain with the organisation. Intent to stay is important
behaviour. Across the three organisations included in our for organisations since it ensures that human capital is
subsample, a quarter of respondents say that they never maintained, morale is good and recruitment costs are
engage in innovative work behaviour, such as creating new reduced. Conversely, people’s intention to leave is a close
ideas for difficult issues or generating original solutions proxy for actual leaving behaviour and gives a good
for problems. The vast majority of our respondents, 38%, indication of how employees generally feel about their work
indicate that they develop innovative ideas a few times a year, and their working environment.
whereas only 15% show innovative work behaviour on a
weekly or daily basis. ‘I have been in the company for almost 20 years. I never
thought about working for another company. I love working
Although respondents certainly rate their innovative with EnvironmentCo. EnvironmentCo has been very good
work behaviour much lower compared with their in-role to me. I try to repay the trust they put in me. Whenever I
performance, we ran statistical tests to determine whether have been approached by any other company I’m just not
engaged employees are more likely to engage in innovative interested. I am happy with EnvironmentCo, I’m delighted
work behaviour than their less engaged counterparts. Our with what I am doing, and I work with fantastic colleagues.
data show a strong association between engagement and My boss is great with me; my CEO is great so I am absolutely
innovative work behaviour. Engaged employees are more delighted.’ Senior manager, EnvironmentCo
likely to search out new methods, techniques or instruments,
make important company members enthusiastic for Similar to the senior manager of EnvironmentCo, many of
innovative ideas, and transform innovative ideas into useful our interviewees express a high level of satisfaction and
applications. However, more research is needed in the future loyalty to their companies. In our study, more than a third,
to explore these relationships in more depth and analyse 36%, say they would like to stay with their respective
the different behaviours of engaged versus non-engaged organisation for at least five years, compared with 17% who
employees when it comes to being innovative and creating want to leave their organisation within the next two years.
new ideas. The majority of employees, 40%, do not indicate how long
they want to continue working for their current employer.


Figure 16: Intention to stay (%)

9
8
40 7

36

Less than one year One or two years Three or four years Five or more years Unsure

The data from our study show that engaged employees organisations in our sample use recognition schemes to give
are significantly more likely to want to stay with their employees public acknowledgement of their achievements.
organisation compared with those who are less engaged. Another opportunity for increasing engagement and
These data, combined with our other data on engagement, productivity is the use of suggestion schemes. One of the
suggest that it is not the case that people who are not organisations in this consortium has recently started an
engaged and quit would be no loss to the organisation. initiative that involves team discussions of suggestions
Rather, most people have the potential to be engaged, but whereby the most popular suggestion is acted upon and
the working environment must be right for engagement to changes are made within two months, and then another
be initiated and sustained. suggestion will be selected and put into practice. Another
way that retention can be enhanced is through the design
For those intending to leave their company, the main reasons of work. Line and senior managers have a responsibility
given are listed in Table 3. to ensure that jobs are suitable, support is available and
employees are enabled to craft meaningful roles, as
These data show that there are two main reasons for discussed earlier in this report.
wanting a new job. The first is to achieve higher pay in a
similar job elsewhere. The second is to find a more satisfying
job in a different organisation. Pay is, of course, a perennial
KEY FINDINGS
issue and one that goes beyond the scope of this report. • Engaged employees perform better and are more likely
However, while pay rises are not typically feasible, other to want to stay with their employer.
forms of reward are possible and these alternatives can be • Engaged employees are more innovative than others.
successful in raising engagement. For example, some of the

Table 3: Main reasons for wanting to leave organisation

Reason %

Better pay/benefits elsewhere 21

Job satisfaction 17

Opportunities for promotion 16

To find a different job within the organisation 13

To find another similar job in a different organisation 13

To do a different type of work 13


CASE STUDY:

NorthTrust

NorthTrust is an NHS foundation trust based in the north involvement policy. The HR department in the trust has
of England. It is a large public organisation providing acute developed a wide range of practices and policies to support
healthcare to a population of over 300,000 people. The the diverse needs of the workforce. These are described by the
immediate catchment covers some 33 square miles, which is HR team as initiatives that ‘value staff’. In addition to policy
largely an urban area. It has foundation trust status, which documents relating to partnership and involvement, they
means it has increased independence from government include schemes such as ‘Employee of the Month’, ‘Team of
regulation and can reinvest any surpluses back into the Year’, long service awards, staff suggestion scheme/zone,
improving service delivery. Annual income is in the region of health walks, cycle scheme, pamper days, flexible working,
£225 million. nursery and childcare vouchers, and gym discounts.

The trust is also a teaching hospital and a tertiary centre The engagement research was conducted in two stages.
providing specialist services to a wider population of around First, a stratified sample of 2,000 employees was invited
1.5 million people. The population served by the trust to complete an online questionnaire. A further 100
includes some of the most socially deprived communities in without Internet access were sent a paper version of the
the UK, with high rates of heart disease and cancer creating questionnaire. From this sample, 381 online questionnaires
considerable demand for hospital-based care. The trust is and 39 paper copies were returned, providing a total
one of the largest employers in the area with 4,500 staff. It response rate of 20%. The second part of the research
has been accredited with Investor in People recognition for was conducting 20 face-to-face interviews with a range of
all workplace policies and practices. clinical and managerial staff – including clinical business
managers, general support, matrons and consultants. Further
The hospital has a bed complement of 860 inpatient and insights were gained through site visits and secondary
105 day case beds. In 2007, the trust handled over 76,500 documentation.
episodes of inpatient and day cases, over 280,000 outpatient
attendances and nearly 87,000 emergency visits. The trust’s Three occupational groups made up the bulk of survey
services are organised into 15 clinical business units, grouped respondents – administrative and clerical, registered allied
by three main divisions: medicine and emergency, surgery health professionals and registered nurses. There are a
and support services. wide range of administrative jobs in the NHS, including
medical records staff, call handlers, clerks, patient liaison
The vision of the trust is ‘to provide high-quality, patient- administrators and receptionists. They serve important roles
centred healthcare and proactively enhance the Trust’s local, in organising appointments and maintaining patient records.
national and international reputation’. The central aim of Allied health professionals include people working within
the HR strategy is for the trust to be an employer of choice a variety of health treatment areas such as physiotherapy,
for the area. Recent trends have included an increased dietetics, orthopaedics and radiography. Practitioners within
workload of around 9% during 2007–08, perhaps reflecting these roles are registered with a professional body that
an increase in patients choosing to be treated at the hospital regulates professional conduct and development. Registered
under new NHS arrangements. The organisation has recently nurses are responsible for various roles around patient care.
invested £2 million in ward-based nursing and made a They may specialise in a specific medical area or serve a more
financial surplus of £1.1 million in 2007–08 to be reinvested general role.
in the following financial year. The trust has also recently
begun an ambitious £7.5 million reconfiguration of radiology ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
facilities. In terms of service performance, the trust has The overall results of the survey are positive, with 85%
delivered the 18-week waiting list targets and cancer targets being ‘highly’ or ‘very highly’ engaged. Thirteen per cent
set by the Department of Health. are moderate and only 1% have a low level of engagement.
Levels of engagement frequency are similarly positive.
NorthTrust joined the Kingston Business School Employee Eighty-three per cent of respondents indicate that they are
Engagement Consortium as an opportunity to learn from engaged on a daily or weekly basis, and only about 2%
other organisations and feed the results into other HR engage less than once every month. We will consider three
initiatives, such as the annual staff survey and employee areas that are contributing to high levels of engagement in


NorthTrust – involvement initiatives, satisfied workforce and Despite the warm reviews by most staff, a few point to the
clarity of objectives – and three areas that are less successful danger of this kind of initiative. There is the possibility that
in this context – recruitment and retention in some roles, changes to work processes can be made too hastily without
leadership style and communication. proper consideration for the implication of making the
changes. The process-mapping exercise and planning stage
INvOLvEMENT INITIATIvES do not always pick up important scenarios that occur in the
Certain involvement initiatives the trust initiated or joined are day-to-day operation of work:
positively received by employee groups. The main example
given here is the ‘Lean programme’, which was set up to ‘[Changes to work processes] are very frustrating and
make improvements in outpatients, non-elective admissions sometimes confusing because things can change from
and emergency care. One matron summed up this initiative: week to week. One week, it’s a good idea, but usually what
happens is someone comes up and says “that’s a great idea”
‘One sign of successful involvement in the trust is the “Lean so we introduce it, we haven’t got time to get it tested and
programme”. This is an initiative organised by an external when it’s introduced, of course, there’s a fundamental flaw
consultant that seeks to remove redundant work processes and somebody picks that up and so you have to change it
and increase the “flow” in organisational systems. Many again or you scrap it.’ Matron
respondents reported how this was a rewarding experience.
We have facilitators...and then we invite a selection of The engagement survey results show that there are pockets
people – clinicians, junior doctors, senior nurses, junior of employees, such as those participating in Lean, who
nurses, porters – a cross-section...they would map out the feel very involved in organisational decision-making and
current processes step by step...so by the end of that week improvement. However, there are also other areas where
we will have a plan of improvement to implement. I think it’s people are less positive. The senior HR team is disappointed
been beneficial.’ Matron with this finding because they feel they have put a lot of
work into organisational involvement through outputs such
Other interviewees reported that the major benefit of this as the staff involvement policy, staff involvement group and
programme is not necessarily the economic or process partnership forum. They plan to respond to this finding by
efficiency gains but, instead, the investment in people by making efforts to ensure involvement initiatives are spread
giving them the opportunity to think about their work more more widely throughout the trust.
carefully and produce ideas for improvement.

Figure 17: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at NorthTrust (%)

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SATISFIED WORKFORCE ‘Targets are a good idea – aspiration, you work towards it
A consistently positive finding across NorthTrust is that and achieve an end. But some of the targets aren’t realistic.
employees are satisfied working for the NHS. Employees are ...If you can’t actually achieve them with the resources
slightly more satisfied with aspects supporting their job, such you’ve got all you’re doing is putting pressure on people for
as pay and benefits, rather than core work tasks, but both no reason.’ Consultant
are positive. Employees are also very positive and satisfied
with NorthTrust as a hospital and place of health care. Many RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION
said they would be happy to let their close family and friends Recruitment and retention of staff is an issue in some areas
be treated in the trust’s services. of the trust. Generally, across the organisation there is a
feeling that employee skills match their roles well. However,
‘Health service jobs are good – everyone thinks we’re poor there are a few areas characterised by high employee
nurses but no, we’re not poor, nurses are paid very well turnover and low attendance. More specifically, there are
and managers are paid very well too. We can afford a good some administrative roles within the trust that appear to
standard of living I think. All in all it’s a satisfying career in have a challenging work situation due to low pay, lack of
the health service.’ Clinical business manager training, demanding work and little social support. The
recruitment process in the NHS is seen as bureaucratic by
Employees also score very highly on the extent to which they managers wanting to fill roles quickly. Yet this is difficult to
care about their jobs. Even groups that are less engaged in overcome in the health sector due to prudent regulations
other aspects are engaged on an emotional level. This ‘public and legal checks such as the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB)
sector ethos’ is often found in public sector organisations. and Right to Work:

‘It’s a satisfying career because the one thing is that you’re ‘The recruitment process takes a very long time because of
doing something for the public, aren’t you? You’re doing the standard procedures and things like CRB checks, which
something that makes a difference and that’s probably why I add a further bureaucratic burden.’ Middle manager
like my job.’ Clinical business manager
Linked to the problem of retaining people in some roles,
CLARITY OF ObJECTIvES another challenge in NorthTrust is developing teamwork in
An important component of employee engagement is clarity some areas. This is identified as a particular problem for larger
in what individuals and teams are trying to achieve at work. departments, where team relationships are less personal.
This is particularly important for the intellectual aspects of
engagement. In NorthTrust employees are confident that ‘Some roles don’t get an opportunity for social engagement
they know what they are trying to achieve and how this because they are working independently away from
contributes to organisational performance. Sixty-seven colleagues and managers. They are then not given
per cent of respondents feel that they know what they have opportunities to interact at meetings either.’
to do to complete their work tasks and how this contributes General manager
to performance. NHS trusts have strict performance targets
set by central government’s Department of Health. These It was also an issue in other areas; for example, some
relate to issues such as waiting times and infection control. receptionists are required to be fixed to a particular desk
Meeting targets is one of highest priorities for NHS staff – with no other employees in the same work area. This can be
from senior executives to consultants to nurses. Discussion of a very isolating experience.
targets featured heavily during the engagement research:
LEADERSHIP STYLE
‘The problem is of course that you can’t go back, and no There is a huge amount of change going on in the NHS and
one would want to go back [to pre-target days]. To be fair this is impacting NorthTrust in important ways. For example,
to the Government they’ll say “well surely you don’t want to there are implications for leadership style within the
go back to the days when people in accident and emergency organisation due to frequent changes in the management
spent, you know, in extreme cases 24 hours waiting to be structure:
seen”, and we clearly don’t want that.’ Matron


‘Yeah I mean the management have actually changed a lot COMMUNICATION
over the last year and we’ve got a new general manager... Style of communication is also perceived to be very
and his style will determine a lot of our workload and the important for senior managers. The allied health
priorities that we’ve got.’ Clinical business manager professionals (for example physiotherapists, occupational
therapists, radiographers) are traditionally seen to be very
The style of management will affect how important priorities good at communicating with their staff as part of their
such as meeting targets are approached and controlled. professional culture.
With the NHS focus on targets and high-profile issues of
ward infection control, some managers pointed out that However, more generally across the organisation, there is
poor performance had to be dealt with strongly, as there concern with the kind of message that senior managers are
were severe health consequences for patients. Disciplinary sending to staff. For example, if the end-of-year message
action would undoubtedly affect the perception of support to staff from the chief executive is perceived to have an
in the work environment, but this was an unavoidable overriding negativity this does not go down very well with
consequence of the priorities of the hospital. nursing staff because they feel they have worked very
hard all year. Other senior managers are noted for being
‘Sometimes people are wrong and, if you’re wrong, you’re autocratic and distrusting of middle manager capabilities and
wrong, so you can’t say that’s a blame culture. That’s like, this again impacts on the way they communicate to staff.
you know, you didn’t deliver what you should have delivered
so therefore your role isn’t suitable for you, so that’s To overcome these issues, the trust has created a new
acceptable.’ Clinical business manager post for Director of Communications. Their main role
will be to redesign communication channels in the trust,
The trust has to take action in relation to complaints, serious encompassing top–down communications, news, electronic
untoward incidents and infection control issues. communication, idea-sharing, continuous improvement and
emergency planning.


FOR INDIvIDUALS ‘There seem to be people suffering with stress and I think
The recent interest in positive organisational behaviour has that maybe we’re pushing people so hard that sometimes
included an emphasis on positive outcomes for individuals we don’t recognise it.’ Manager, EnvironmentCo
(Bakker and Schaufeli 2008). In the following two sections,
we will therefore consider how engagement might lead to ‘There was one bloke when I first joined and he was
positive results at an individual level, such as higher well- staying until like 11:00 at night and he was here at 9:00 in
being and sustainability. the morning. So I think there is actually quite a lot within
the rest of the company as well, there’s quite a culture of
WELL-bEING working long hours.’ Manager, ConstructionCo
There is good evidence that high levels of engagement are
negatively related to burnout and positively associated with Looking at our dataset as a whole, we compared levels of
well-being (Bakker et al 2008, Schaufeli and Bakker 2004). Our individual well-being with performance to find out how
data confirms these findings by demonstrating that engaged many employees experience both high levels of well-being
employees show higher levels of well-being. This means that and perform highly. It was gratifying to discover that only
engaged individuals are more likely to enjoy their work activities, a tiny number, 1%, fall into the category of ‘unfit non-
are able to cope with work-related problems and are less performers’. However, one-third, 32%, can be described as
likely to lose sleep over work-related issues. Three-fifths of our ‘fit performers’, while the majority, 59%, are ‘fence-sitters’.
respondents indicate that they have high levels of well-being
and a further 7% said that their level of well-being is very high, SUSTAINAbILITY
compared with only 4% who express low levels of well-being. Highly engaged employees are more likely to feel that their
workload is manageable and that they can cope with their
These are very positive findings that confirm that engagement current workload. Sensing that work is sustainable in the
has positive outcomes for individuals themselves. However, longer term is important from an individual’s perspective,
especially in our more recent case studies, managers express as unsustainable work is detrimental to the health and
warnings that levels of well-being might decrease with the safety of the workforce. In our study, almost three-fifths of
mounting pressures due to the current economic climate. respondents consider their work highly sustainable; however,
about a third are unsure about whether they could continue
‘I do think we possibly have a bit of an issue with work to work at their current pace in the future and almost 10%
pressures and a long hours culture but I think there’s a little clearly indicate that their workload is not sustainable.
bit of pressure for people to work hard, work smart and
work fast and I think it does sometimes get a bit challenging Although our study revealed that engagement generally
for people and I think everybody can understand the reasons leads to higher sustainability, our qualitative and quantitative
for it.’ Manager, ServiceCo data also demonstrate that this relationship does not

Figure 18: Levels of well-being (%)

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Figure 19: Individual performance vs well-being (%)

High

Fit non-performers (6) Fit performers (32)
Well-being

Fence-sitters (59)

Unfit non-performers (1) Unfit performers (2)

Low
Low High
Performers

hold for very high levels of engagement. Employees at Similar to this quote from a manager in ServiceCo, other
the extreme ends of engagement show lower levels of interviewees told us about incidents from their working
sustainability. Constantly thinking about work, taking experience where people have become too engaged. This has
extra work home on a regular basis and not switching off had serious effects on their health, but also impacted on their
from work at any time during the day has a serious impact personal life and their ability to concentrate and focus, which
on individuals and might lead to ill-health and burnout in turn affected their productivity. Managers have a critical
symptoms, as these individuals are more likely to become role to play in ensuring that the engagement levels of their
‘workaholics’ with the associated risks. team members are sustainable. Additionally, it is important to
prevent organisational cultures from developing that reward
‘I had a guy who used to be full-on and he had a heart attack, working long hours and encourage 24/7 availability.
one of my sales managers, lovely guy, quite young, 31. When
he was in hospital, he starts emailing, “I spent the weekend in
KEY FINDINGS
hospital, they’ve done all these tests on me, I’m just on down
for an ECG, but I thought I’d just copy an email to you, I hope • Engaged employees enjoy greater levels of personal
well-being.
you’re alright”...I was virtually the same. When I was in hospital
last year, they didn’t have an Internet connection, so I asked my • Engaged employees perceive their workload to be
wife to bring my laptop. She would bring it to the hospital, I more sustainable than others.
sent her back home so she could upload and send the emails, • One-third of employees are ‘fit-performers’, enjoying
collect the new ones and bring it back.’ Manager, ServiceCo high levels of personal well-being and performing well.

Figure 20: Sustainability (%)

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CASE STUDY:

ConstructionCo

ConstructionCo is an international consultancy and has in place a progressive set of HR practices and a team
construction firm. Founded in 1990, the organisation with responsibility for facilitating employee engagement.
has experienced rapid growth to a turnover in excess of Participation in the Kingston Business School Employee
£500 million in 2007. The firm has been responsible for Engagement Consortium was therefore to feed into
several high-profile construction projects in the UK, Asia existing initiatives rather than to kick-start a redirection.
and the Middle East. The company employs close to 2,900 Further sources of information include an annual staff
people and operates in 28 countries around the world. survey, Investors in People feedback and Sunday Times Best
Companies feedback. The employee engagement survey
The company offers services that span the entire property was distributed to employees working in the UK. An online
lifecycle, including planning and building, maintenance questionnaire was distributed to 346 employees and was
and facilities management, waste management and ICT returned by 180, providing a response of 52%. Twenty
consultancy. Senior management have set ambitious growth interviews were also conducted with a range of managerial
targets to have a £1 billion turnover by 2012. Around 63% staff.
of current turnover comes from consultancy and 37% from
construction. The workforce is currently 70% male and has a ENGAGEMENT LEvELS
relatively young age composition. The results from the survey are very positive, with 77% of
employees being ‘highly’ engaged and 12% ‘very highly’
The company is particularly proud of its relationships with engaged. Less than 1% fall into low engagement categories.
clients and suppliers; over 70% of contracts come from Levels of engagement frequency are even higher. Almost
returning clients. The company has also established a good 90% of all respondents are engaged on at least a weekly
reputation for employee experience. It has been listed in the basis and only 2% are engaged only once a year. The
‘Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For’, been named in general results clearly suggest that ConstructionCo is a very
the top 50 in Building magazine’s ‘Good Employers Guide’ engaging company to work for.
and holds Investor in People recognition across the UK
business. What do these results mean for engagement initiatives
within the organisation? During one research meeting the
ConstructionCo has a simple vision: ‘to be the best at what employee engagement manager reflected, ‘Maybe this
we do’. Feeding into the vision are a number of core values, means I am out of a job! There is nothing for me to do.’
which include – respecting people, listening to views of We will consider whether this is the case by looking at three
all staff, delivering with trust, honesty and integrity, and things the organisation is currently doing well – creating an
promoting positive collaboration. The company already entrepreneurial culture, fair and consistent management

Figure 21: Extent and frequency of employee engagement at ConstructionCo (%)

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practices and high levels of organisational advocacy – and that can form the bedrock on which to build more
three areas where the organisation is not doing so well – entrepreneurial, client-focused activities.
sharing ideas for improvement, work–life balance and staff
perceptions of senior managers. ‘I think the sort of fundamentals upon which we should rely
with engaging people are basic things like – are people very
ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE clear about what their job is, what’s expected of them, how
ConstructionCo is a relatively young company and is they are to be measured, trusting their line manager, all of
growing rapidly. The organisation has an entrepreneurial those issues, I think, whilst they might be fairly boring, and
culture based on a record of successful performance. This we have been talking about them for years, actually they are
context feeds into positive employee experiences and at the true drivers of engagement.’ Senior HR manager
the workplace level this creates a dynamic and intellectually
challenging work climate. Despite the core focus on traditional management concerns,
ConstructionCo does have a set of what might be called
‘[ConstructionCo] has a very entrepreneurial feel about it so ‘progressive’ HR practices. These include the employee
there is always that intellectual challenge.’ Middle manager referral scheme mentioned earlier, a graduate training
programme and a mentoring process. However, in each of
The organisational culture also creates a buzz of excitement these initiatives fairness and equity in their implementation
and opportunity for staff. With recent growth, many new are stressed throughout. This in turn flows into the kind of
starters have been employed through staff recommendations trusting relationship with clients that is so important in the
from their network of personal contacts. This means that consultancy sector.
staff can make a real contribution to the growth of the
organisation and shape the type of workforce they are ‘You save money, you save grief, you save people’s emotion,
growing into. Survey results suggest that employee–job fit you save risk, you save all of these things if you treat your
and staff quality are high as a result. The entrepreneurial employees fairly.’ Senior HR manager
culture is based on the drive and ambition of staff and the
willingness to succeed. This is supported by letting people There is one main caveat with the management approach
take responsibility and ownership of their own performance, at ConstructionCo. The relative informality of management
development and career. At the same time, it should processes, coupled with a flat management structure, has
be recognised that not all employees will, or should, be the potential to create some uncertainty of job role and
highly driven as this can create an overly individualistic and responsibility.
competitive culture. Instead, there needs to be a balance of
drive and enterprise on one hand, and stability and cohesion ‘We don’t have formulated, formal, typed job descriptions…
on the other. [and these] sort of issues actually cause us, now we are a
large company, quite a headache in terms of making sure
‘We have this thing about managing your own career, so the that we know what people are doing and that they’re
way you manage your own career is that you actually have working in accordance and being measured accordingly.’
to communicate with your line manager what it is you want Senior HR manager
to do.’ Senior manager
Over the coming year, ConstructionCo will need to
In general, the entrepreneurial culture in the company is a pay careful attention to job design and the creation of
great strength and asset towards engaging staff. management responsibilities that are unambiguous and,
more fundamentally, still carry the underlying tenets of
FAIR AND CONSISTENT MANAGEMENT fairness and consistency.
The words ‘fairness’ and ‘consistency’ feature repeatedly in
the HR strategy for ConstructionCo. The HR team does not ORGANISATIONAL ADvOCACY
have a secret formula or elaborate programme of initiatives Following the positive commentary above, it is not surprising
for managing people. Instead, they feel it is important that organisational advocacy is high at ConstructionCo.
to focus on the traditional core aspects of management This feeds from the consistent approach to people


management and the flexibility and opportunity inherent ‘Some departments have a great team spirit but in others it’s
in the entrepreneurial culture. Questionnaire responses like, if someone wants to organise a ten pin bowling night,
suggested that employees are very proud to work for the you know something local, down the pub, a quiz night, all
firm. Employees have an emotional connection to their work the ideas have been floated but people don’t seem willing to
and find their tasks intellectually stimulating. do it and it’s a great shame because it really does bond the
team, creates friendships, new relationships, if people are
‘I think the majority of people passionately care about what willing to do it but they just don’t seem willing.’
they do in our business. They wouldn’t go the extra mile Senior manager
quite as often as they do if they didn’t passionately care
about what they do…that’s what I would call emotional To overcome this issue, the HR department was leading by
attachment.’ Senior manager example by starting a reorganisation of the HR function to
explore how idea-sharing could be improved.
‘You’ve got to remember what a great company it is, what
great people there are within the organisation, what it has WORK–LIFE bALANCE
achieved, it’s been excellent.’ Middle manager Employee work–life balance is a challenging HR
consideration at ConstructionCo. In the engagement
The high-profile nature of some of the company’s projects survey this was generally perceived to be good, but many
reinforces the pride and willingness of employees to employees had a more moderate view. Many staff feel
broadcast the benefits of their company. Everyone wants to compelled to work long hours due to the sheer amount of
work for a successful and reputable organisation; it is clear work going on. The highly interactive nature of relationships
that ConstructionCo employees feel their company is both of with clients is a source of increased pressure. Furthermore,
these things and they are proud to call it their own. with such ambitious growth targets for the company, this
problem is likely to increase in the future.
SHARING IDEAS
One surprising area that needs attention in ConstructionCo ‘What came out of last year’s staff survey was that people
is the extent of collaborative idea-sharing. The company is wanted more work–life balance and that they perceived that
forward-looking but sometimes this means that teams and there was a long-hours culture.’ HR manager
departments do not share knowledge and ideas about how
things are working and how they might be improved. As one The HR team is aware of this problem and is trying to tackle
manager noted: it through the staff appraisal process. Managers are being
encouraged to consult with their staff about what would
‘We probably don’t talk about improvements enough, is make their work–life balance better. However, this is likely
the honest answer. Part of our culture is about inwardly to be one of the downsides of a fast-moving organisation
challenging but inevitably sometimes it’s easier to do the job during business growth.
the way you did it last time.’ Senior manager
Following the engagement survey, the HR team at
There are various involvement initiatives in the organisation ConstructionCo decided to address the low work–life
for staff to interact with managers but they are not balance amongst the workforce. Two days’ extra leave were
strategically coherent or widely understood. For example, added to staff holiday allowances, and health checks, a
some employees said there was a suggestion scheme dental plan and employee assistance programme have been
in place, but others said that it has been discontinued. introduced to help ensure employees do not burn out.
Confusion like this could benefit from some attention.
Although employees felt they worked in a supportive
environment, there was some mismatch in expectation over
social activities outside work.


PERCEPTIONS OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT
A final issue that could be improved in ConstructionCo is the
impression employees have of senior managers, particularly
in terms of their visibility and quality of communication. This
issue was somewhat frustrating for the senior management
team because they felt they had put a huge amount of
effort into improving this over recent years.

‘We have a bi-annual manager conference…we have a
newsletter called HR Matters, which is something that goes
out with the payslips…. We put different posters up on a
weekly basis…we have the most amazing intranet…we
have [ConstructionCo] Matters, which is a quarterly glossy
magazine that goes out to all employees.’
Senior HR manager

Surveys often find that employees’ views of senior managers
are less favourable than their perceptions of immediate line
managers. However, in ConstructionCo, senior managers
are vitally important for setting the strategic direction. The
management structure is relatively flat and, therefore, in
theory there should be less distance between non-managers
and senior managers. The senior management team will
be responding to this following a management conference
in the coming year. They are also planning to increase the
emphasis on activities such as directors’ surgeries – where
staff are given the opportunity to meet senior managers;
and by offering staff training and e-learning so that non-
managers can appreciate the role of managers while also
learning important leadership skills.

Going back to the reflection of the employee engagement
manager at ConstructionCo, the company is already doing
many things well and currently has an elevated level of
engagement. However, there are areas of weakness that need
attention. Careful attention is needed to shape engagement
initiatives around the future growth of the company.


Conclusions and management
8 implications

In our research, we have collected data from over 5,200 However, it is positive to note that the proportion of engaged
employees across eight different organisations. The picture employees overall is somewhat higher than has been
that has emerged about engagement is rich and complex. found in previous surveys. In part, this may be due to the
Extent of engagement is higher in the public sector self-selected nature of our sample of organisations, which
compared with the private, but private sector employees are joined the Kingston Engagement Consortium project out of
more frequently engaged. Women are more engaged than an interest in engagement and where it might reasonably
men, whereas younger workers are less engaged than older be supposed that engagement strategies would be further
workers, and those on flexible contracts are more engaged advanced than in other organisational settings. Despite this,
than others, reflecting the findings of our earlier report (Truss we did find quite wide variations in levels of engagement
et al 2006). Those with managerial responsibilities emerge as and in strategies and approaches to manage engagement,
being more engaged than other employees. as emerges strongly from our case studies. These show that
engagement can be managed effectively in different ways,
For all these different employee groups, we have run and that although there are some general prescriptions
statistical tests to uncover what the key drivers of of best practice relevant to everyone, the nuances and
engagement are. It has emerged very strongly from this implementation will vary from setting to setting.
analysis that two factors are more important than any
others in driving up levels of engagement for all groups: Our engagement journey has led to some fascinating
meaningfulness of work and employee voice. The way in insights into employee engagement over the past three
which senior managers communicate with employees is years. We are about to embark upon a new phase, where we
the third most important driver. Other important factors set about trying to answer some of the questions that have
are person–job fit, supportive work environment and arisen out of the consortium project that we still feel remain
management style. unanswered, using different methodologies and different
approaches to tap into engagement at an even deeper level.
DRIvERS OF ENGAGEMENT
• meaningfulness of work Our management recommendations are:
• voice, being able to feed your views upwards
• senior management communication and vision • Understanding your workforce engagement profile is the
• supportive work environment first step to determining how to drive up engagement
• person–job fit levels.
• line management style • Engagement is clearly associated, both in our report and
in other studies, with high levels of performance, reduced
Taken together, these factors create a virtuous cycle of intent to quit and raised levels of personal well-being. It
engagement processes that employers can reinterpret in is therefore legitimate from a corporate perspective to
ways that fit with their own organisational context and prioritise improving levels of employee engagement.
circumstances. We note in our study that around one-third of • There is a clear need to help create meaning for employees
respondents, 34%, can be classified as the ‘vocal-involved’, in their work; this can be achieved intellectually by
working in jobs they find meaningful and able to express their articulating the links between individual jobs and the
views. Since these are the two key drivers of engagement, it is broader organisational aims, and emotionally through
concerning that this figure is so low, and suggests that there is sharing an understanding of deeper levels of the purpose
much that employers can do to create a more engaging work of the organisation.
environment for their staff. Similarly, 32% can be described • Employees need to be given opportunities to express
as ‘fit performers’, enjoying high levels of personal well-being their views and to know that their opinions will be taken
and performing to a high standard. Employers would generally seriously. This is an activity that needs to involve both
wish to raise this proportion of their workforce and putting in senior and line managers. Our case studies provide some
place a range of engagement initiatives would help to address examples of how organisations in the consortium have
this problem. achieved this.


• Senior managers have an important role to play in • Matching people to jobs is a critical driver of engagement.
creating a vision for the organisation and sharing this This is one area where HR professionals can play an
with employees, and in being open, transparent and important role helping line managers design jobs
approachable. effectively, and develop selection processes that match
• Engagement levels are affected by the working individual skills to jobs.
environment. Where employees can see that they have • Line managers act as the interface between the
support from others to help them do their job, there is a organisation and the employee, and can do much to
sense of teamwork and they can safely express themselves, impact on engagement. Another key HR role is therefore
then engagement will be higher. to pay close attention to the selection, development and
performance management of line managers to ensure they
maximise their potential to be engaging leaders.

Figure 22: Employee engagement model

Meaningfulness
of work

Supportive
Person–job work
fit environment

Engagement

Senior
Voice, being management
able to feed your communication
views upwards and vision

Line
management


9 References

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10 Appendix

METHODOLOGY For each of the organisations, online and/or paper versions
The data collection for this research has been carried out of the questionnaire were created by the Kingston Business
over two years and the data reported come from a variety School research team. They were distributed to our contact
of sources, such as research evidence, questionnaire surveys, person at the respective organisation (usually the head of HR
face-to-face interviews and focus groups. or the head of engagement), who organised the distribution
of the survey to the staff. Employees were encouraged to
Early stages of the project included reviewing the academic participate in the engagement survey and asked to complete
and practitioner literature and developing research questions. the questionnaires within two weeks. The online version of
A research strategy was devised for conducting a series of the survey was created on SurveyMonkey, a software tool
in-depth case studies, each involving a questionnaire survey that facilitates the development and administration of online
and a number of face-to-face interviews. A rigorous process of surveys. The data from SurveyMonkey were copied into the
questionnaire development was undertaken using the academic statistical software package, SPSS, by the research team at
literature, previous research by Kingston University and a pilot Kingston University. The hard-copy questionnaires were sent
study. Focus groups were also used in some organisations. back to the research team at Kingston University, where the
data were entered manually into SPSS for analysis.
In addition to the CIPD, ten organisations joined as members
of the Kingston Employee Engagement Consortium, which The items in the questionnaire were derived from three
has operated as a research and networking group over the sources:
two-year period. Out of the ten member organisations,
seven participated in the research and data collection, and a • the previous CIPD employee attitude survey, Working Life:
partial dataset was collected from an additional organisation Employee attitudes and engagement 2006 (Truss et al
in collaboration with a master’s student at Kingston 2006)
University. The identity of participating organisations is • Kingston Job Engagement Inventory (KJEI)©, which was
confidential, but they are generally well-known names from developed by the research team and validated through a
the following sectors: pilot study involving 200 respondents
• academic research, sourced by the Kingston Business
• government department • manufacturing School research team.
• NHS • environmental services
• local government • construction Two types of item were used in the survey. The first
• government agency • consultancy. requested information about the individual respondent,
such as age, gender and education. The second type of item
The first set of case studies was conducted during 2008; asked respondents how they think or feel about an issue.
the first taking place in March, the second in April, the Each of these items followed the same format using a ‘Likert
third in June and the fourth in October. The questionnaire scale’. This gives respondents the opportunity to choose one
was standardised across the case studies to allow reliable outcome from a range of five. For example:
comparative analysis. Depending on the type of workforce
being surveyed, the questionnaire was completed online Please tell us the extent to which you agree or disagree with
or in paper format. An interview schedule of work-related the following statement:
questions was also developed to guide the interview process
in each organisation. An interim report on the preliminary My line manager is an effective leader
findings from the first case studies was published with the
CIPD in 2009 (Gatenby et al 2009). Strongly disagree
Disagree
These findings, along with further questions that they raised, Neither agree nor disagree
fed into phase two of the research. During 2009, phase two Agree
of our research was conducted, involving the second set of Strongly agree
case studies, the first taking place in January, the second in
March, the third in August and the fourth in September.


Each response was scored in the following way: and take the average score for each person, that is, the total
score for that person divided by the total number of items.
Response Score For example, if we want to measure a particular factor using
Strongly disagree 1 two questions, a participant might respond ‘strongly agree’
Disagree 2 to one question (a) and ‘agree’ to another (b). This gives
Neither agree nor disagree 3 them a score for the factor of 5 + 4 = 9. Their average score
Agree 4 is the sum of the scores divided by the number of items (2),
Strongly agree 5 so 9/2 = 4.5. The 4.5 value is that person’s scale score. This
process is used to create composite scales that have a scale
The score was stored in the database to be used for analysis. score for each individual respondent.

A number of the factors that were measured in the PARTICIPANTS
questionnaire, for example employee engagement, are not Across the eight organisations, 5,291 employees participated
easily assessed using only one item. A more effective way to in the engagement survey. Table 4 shows a breakdown of
measure employee engagement is to use a set of items the sample by a range of sociodemographic criteria.

Table 4: Sample information
%
Gender
Male 58
Female 42
Working status
Full-time 92
Part-time 8
Age
Less than 25 6
25–34 21
35–44 29
45–54 29
55 and over 15
Ethnicity
White 90
Mixed 2
Asian or Asian British 2
Black or Black British 3
Chinese 1
Other ethnic group 2
Management role
Managing employees 43
Not managing employees 57


Union membership
Union member 42
Non-union member 58
Working hours
Less than 37.5 31
37.5–46 49
47–50 13
More than 50 7
Educational qualifications
No qualifications 8
Other job-related qualifications 6
GCSE or equivalent 21
A-levels or equivalent 13
Other higher education below degree level 16
Degree or equivalent and above 36
Organisation
PlasticCo 9
ConstructionCo 3
NorthTrust 8
GovDep 11
LocalGov 23
ServiceCo 22
EnvironmentCo 20
ScienceCo 4

DATA ANALYSIS Statistical testing enables researchers to examine for real,
Mean comparisons or statistically significant, differences between groups. As
Mean comparisons are used to segment a dataset so that a guide, please note that results for different sub-groups
differences between subgroups can be examined, for example generally need to differ by a certain number of percentage
the mean levels of engagement for men as compared with points for the difference to be statistically significant,
women. Comparisons can then be made to see whether although this will depend on the size of the sub-group
there are important differences, such as whether women sample and the percentage finding itself. The tests were
are significantly more highly engaged than men. The data performed with a 5% significance level, which means that
for mean comparisons were examined to see whether the 95% of the time when we find a significant difference there
differences between each group were statistically significant. is an actual difference in the population. Where differences
Differences in results for any two groups can be: between two groups are reported, this is because we found
them to be significant in this way.
• real differences that are unlikely to have occurred by chance
• differences that have occurred by chance
• small or no differences at all.


CORRELATION ANALYSIS These variables were examined in relation to engagement
Correlation analyses were used to examine the strength and with work. Engagement was measured using the Kingston
direction of association between two variables. For example, Job Engagement Inventory, which has three components:
age and engagement are significantly and positively
associated – engagement increases with age. • social engagement
• affective engagement
REGRESSION ANALYSIS • intellectual engagement.
Another form of analysis that was used is regression analysis.
This enables us to explore the relationship between two sets In this report, these components were aggregated into an
of variables: input or predictor variables, and outcome or overall measure of engagement. Moreover, our measure
dependent variables. We wanted to know which variables of engagement also included two dimensions, extent and
best predict outcomes such as engagement and performance. frequency.

The predictor variables are nine of the scales that assessed Next, analysis focused on the relationship between the
perceptions of work and work environment: nine organisational and management scales, and employee
engagement (the input variables) and five dependent, or
• employees’ satisfaction with HR policies and practices outcome, variables:
• senior managers’ style of communication
• senior managers’ effectiveness • individual performance
• line managers’ respect for and treatment of employees • innovative work behaviour
• having opportunities to get involved in matters that affect • intention to quit
individuals’ work • work sustainability
• feeling that the job is personally meaningful • employee well-being.
• having clear objectives
• getting the right support from colleagues and supervisors Regression analysis examines the likelihood of association
• feeling of being in the right job. between variables, that is, the degree to which the relationship
is likely to have occurred by chance. A significant relationship
The nine scales were chosen because they have been is one that is highly unlikely to have occurred by chance and
identified in previous research as the key factors associated is therefore important. Regression also shows the direction of
with engagement. Each scale is itself representative of association between variables. A positive association is when
several issues. For example, managers’ respect for and a high score on one variable is associated with a high score
treatment of employees encompasses whether a manager on the second variable, for example high levels of perceived
listens to ideas and suggestions, whether they make meaningfulness of work being associated with high levels of
employees feel valued and whether they communicate engagement with work. A negative association is when a high
effectively. The breadth of each scale needs to be considered score on one variable is associated with a low score on the
when looking at the results of the regression analyses. other variable, for example high levels of perceived engagement
with work being associated with lack of intention to leave an
organisation. In sum, regression equations show which of the
input variables best predict the value of the dependent variable.


Issued: January 2010 Reference: 5097 © Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2010

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