Levels of employee engagement are up to 58% in 2010 at RSA Insurance Group, according to an internal survey conducted by Gallup.

This is up from 45% in 2009 and 33% in 2008.

During a session ‘Reinventing leadership to drive a culture of engagement’ at the 2010 CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition, Kate Brown, organisational effectiveness at RSA, shared how the insurance firm has raised engagement levels, including rewarding superior performance, role modeling, and developing talent and skills.

RSA also turned 300 in 2010 and reinforced engagement levels through a series of group-wide competitions for its 20,000 employees across 34 countries, including a photo competition involving an RSA frisbee.

Brown said: “We cannot have a group-wide engagement strategy, it must be locally owned. The issues in Argentina and China are clearly different than in the UK or Ireland.”

The birthday celebrations have included staff members volunteering 37,000 hours and fundraising £750,000. RSA also nominated 250 brand champions whose responsibility is to reach all employees across the firm, and each employee was given a brand journal offering guidance about the business.

“We were able to make a new difference for some truly worthy causes and the whole 300 celebrations created a real buzz and emotional connection for people to our brand,” said Brown.

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