This paper takes a critical look at the concept of employee engagement. Despite having grown in popularity over the last twenty years, there is little scientific evidence to support some of the impressive claims made about engagement.
In a review of the literature, four main problems with engagement were highlighted; lack of an agreed definition, conceptual overlap with satisfaction and motivation, variability in engagement measures and a lack of robust evidence for the concept of engagement and its impact.
This paper provides a a summary of the evidence, together with advice and guidance on how organisations can get more from their investment in engagement activities.
About The Future Work Centre
Our mission is to make work better for everyone, now and in the future. We want to examine what evidence there is for the advice that people and organisations are offered about work. And we want to know whether that advice works. Put simply, we want to find out what works, in what way, and for whom.
We know that high-quality research about people and work is already being carried out in academia, but often it’s difficult to access or understand. This means organisations and the wider public fail to benefit from these powerful insights. We aim to bridge this gap.
We believe the science of occupational psychology, underpinned by evidence-based practice, has never been more relevant to individuals, organisations and society as a whole.
We’re working to achieve a number of important objectives:
- To work with organisations helping them make better decisions and investments about their employees.
- To help the public understand the value of occupational psychology, an evidence-based approach and how they can apply its lessons to their own experience of work.
- To engage and inspire the general public by openly sharing our research and actionable insights
- To campaign and lobby for change where the evidence supports this.
Claire Rahmatallah, Managing Director, The Future Work Centre LTD
