Engagement: The Continuing Story

Our first research report (The Drivers of Employee Engagement, Robinson D, Hayday S and Perryman S, IES report 408, 2004) led to a definition of engagement, an engagement measure to be used within attitude surveys, and a diagnostic tool to identify the drivers of engagement.

This deeper investigation tests our engagement measure and drivers tool in different settings and sectors. Eight organisations in the private and public sectors participated in the research, allowing us to run attitude surveys with selected employee groups. This enabled us to validate our 12-statement measure and highlight the differences in drivers in different organisations and employee groups.

A key finding was that feeling valued and involved, while always important, is not necessarily the key driver; other likely candidates are job satisfaction and experiences of training and career development.