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Chapter 4: Enablers of Engagement – What has to happen to make engagement work
●● global accident and occupational illness rates fell by 61 per cent against a target
of 30 per cent. 119
35 Somerset County Council invested £510,000 in a stress management programme
which led to:
●● Sickness absence levels dropping from 10.75 days per employee per year to
7.2 between 2002 & 2005, amounting to a total saving on sickness absence of
£4.2 million.
●● Improved recruitment and reduced staff turnover in key areas. 120
Managers have a very important role in ensuring that work is designed
efficiently and effectively
36 Research makes clear it is very difficult for employees to remain fully engaged over
the long term if work is poorly designed and essentially very frustrating. This
perhaps requires more effort to ensure that work is well designed, adopting, where
appropriate, Lean methodologies to solve individual issues and/or taking more of a
systems approach which emphasises how all the component parts of the overall
operation fit together.
37 Pfizer also reminded us that field-based employees experience different
employment challenges to those who work together on one site. Mark Mitcheson,
Talent and Organisation Capability Lead at Pfizer said, “the actions that field
managers take to heighten the engagement of their teams add measurable value”.
119
Business in the Community (2009) Business Action on Health: Healthy People = Healthy Profits on-line at:
www.bitc.org.uk/document.rmid=9097 (accessed 1 July 2009); and BiTC (2007) Organisational case studies
– AstraZeneca [Online] http://www.bitc.org.uk/resources/case_studies/afe_1167_astraz.html (accessed
30 June 2009)
120
Robertson I., Cooper C. Case Study: Somerset County Council – The Business Case for managing pressure and
stress at work [Online] http://www.robertsoncooper.co.uk/Pages/Resources/Case-Studies.aspx (accessed
1 July 2009)
91