Employees are now more engaged in their organisation’s activities, goals and health and wellbeing benefits – perhaps as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic – research suggests.
A snapshot – and a well-focused – poll carried out by specialist advisory firm Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing suggests that more than half (52%) of employers believe that employee engagement within their organisation had either improved slightly (36%) or significantly (16%) during one of the most difficult business environments in living memory.
The poll of nearly 200 senior HR professionals found that fewer than one in three employers (29%) thought that engagement had worsened during the same period.
Almost half of all employers questioned (47%) had seen no evidence of increased financial worries among their workforce since the beginning of the pandemic.
Steve Herbert, head of benefits strategy at Howden, said that employee engagement is often a “very difficult area to measure accurately, yet is a pivotal factor in maintaining and indeed improving output and productivity for employers in all sectors”.
He said: “It is particularly pleasing that engagement levels appear to have improved over the last few months, and that can only be a positive for UK employers as they face the dual challenges and uncertainties of a continuing pandemic and a new trading relationship with the European Union.”
