Performance link with engagement grows

Employee%20Engagement%20coverThis article is brought to you by our sponsor Towers Perrin.

Engagement is the extra discretionary effort an employee is prepared to make at work and the need to create an engaged, motivated workforce has long been a basic pillar of the HR function. Until recently, the link between employee engagement and the company balance sheet was largely intuitive, so a leap of faith has been required to believe that improved employee engagement could lead to a rise in profitability.

However, this link between employee engagement and performance at work in the private sector is becoming more proven. Solid research points to the strong belief by highly engaged employees that they personally have a great influence on costs, revenues and the quality of customer service. Towers Perrin is developing an employee engagement ‘linkage’ methodology to provide managers with powerful metrics to show the financial impact of improving the level of employee engagement and unlocking the discretionary effort given willingly by highly engaged staff.

A recent Towers Perrin survey shows that just 12% of employees in the UK are highly engaged, 22% are actively disengaged and the remaining 66% describe themselves as moderately engaged. Public and private sectors match closely. There is therefore a huge performance dividend to be earned by raising the levels of engagement – engaged employees make a much bigger impact on quality, customer service, efficiency and costs than disengaged ones.

Towers Perrin has also strengthened its employee engagement capabilities with the acquisition of ISR, a global employee research and consulting firm. The transaction combines ISR’s employee research capabilities with Towers Perrin’s existing consulting and research capabilities to provide clients with services that help them optimise the value of their workforce and workforce investments.

Jim Crawley, principal, Towers Perrin

The views and opinions in this article are those of our sponsor, Towers Perrin, and do not necessarily reflect those of www.employeebenefits.co.uk.

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