Well-Being and Employee Engagement

This chapter explains how the important ideas of employee engagement and PWB can be drawn together to provide a powerful combination to benefit employees and organizations alike. Around the world there is currently a great deal of interest in the concepts of employee engagement and employee well-being. The statistics of engagement are interesting and show that improving employee engagement leads to a range of positive outcomes for organizations — they also show that in many organizations the levels of engagement are actually quite low. On a global basis just 21 percent of the employees surveyed around the world are engaged in their work (Towers Perrin, 2007), meaning they’re willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed, 38 percent are partly or fully disengaged. The relatively low levels of engagement appear to stretch across very different societies and economies. For example, in mainland China, 33 percent of people are reported to be partly or fully disengaged (Towers Perrin, 2007). Engagement levels in the Western economies also appear to be relatively low, with fewer than 20 percent of employees in the United Kingdom reported to be fully engaged and over 40 percent either disengaged or at least “disenchanted” (Towers Perrin, 2007).