Exchanging ideas to create the well-being advantage

In my last post I talked about the blend of reward and recognition that really works for employees. Shortly afterwards I came across some survey results reported by Personnel Today which indicated the areas that HR Directors will be prioritising in the coming year.  The study of 2,033 employers, by recruitment firm Manpower, found that increasing workforce productivity was the top HR priority for 2008, moving it up the agenda from fourth place in 2007.

I guess this isn’t that surprising given the uncertain nature of the economy and also the current climate where getting more results for less money has become a mantra – a way of working life even. But it worries me because it raises the question of how sustainable this approach is ever likely to be. Last week I was talking about the importance of making workplaces motivating and energising in relation to attracting and retaining the best staff. Another way of looking at this is that you can design sustainable success and competitive advantage into your business. But if you keep increasing the pressure in an effort to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of the workforce it won’t be long before the wheels come off.

Sometimes you have to take a step back to look for the right source of competitive advantage. By getting the balance of challenge and support right and creating a culture of well-being you can, in fact, still improve productivity. This might sound woolly or unrealistic or just a crazy way to come at the problem, but the research backs it up. Work by Harter, Schmidt and Hayes has shown that well-being and engagement are very definitely associated with improving productivity.

Data from nearly 8,000 separate business units in 36 companies were analysed and the results clearly showed that engagement/well-being was linked to business unit performance – predicting not just productivity but also customer satisfaction, profitability, employee turnover and sickness absence levels. Using a sample of business units this large offers conclusive evidence that if you provide a sense of well-being and engagement to staff the positive outcomes will follow.

Another survey reported by Personnel Today in the same article informs us that 75% of the136 HR directors recently surveyed by Northgate HR also reported that employee productivity was the top HR concern. But workforce morale and reward & recognition strategies were not very far behind. Based on the Harter et al research evidence it seems that employers could make significant progress on all of these fronts just by getting well-being right – but I wonder what proportion the HR Directors responding to these surveys have actually invested in business-wide well-being improvement programmes?

For anyone who wants to seek out the research, the reference is below:

Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, (2002). Business unit level outcomes between employee satisfaction, employee engagement and business outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 268-279.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 8:42 am and is filed under Engagement, Productivity, reward and recognition, Well-being. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.