Staff engagement has long been known to help produce improvements in HR measures such as workforce productivity and case studies have shown wider benefits.
Researchers at Aston Business School have been looking at the evidence from the 2009 NHS staff survey and evidence from the Care Quality Commission assessment of trust performance (the annual health check) to see if there is more systematic evidence of links between organisational performance and staff engagement in the NHS.
Their results demonstrate that trusts with high staff engagement scores are:
- more likely to be reported as providing a high quality service
- more likely to have higher ratings on higher overall performance
- less likely to have higher rates of sickness and absenteeism.
In terms of HR measures the impact was greatest on absenteeism. Trusts in the top 10 per cent for engagement scores has absenteeism rates that were 0.21 per cent below the average.
These links do not prove causation but do demonstrate strong statistical associations between staff engagement and overall performance.
The Department of Health has published a short summary of the Aston Business School research that can be downloaded from the Department of Health website.
The Department has also produced a four page staff engagement briefing which provides details of complling evidence of a link between employees' state of mind and their trust's clinical and financial performance. This briefing can also be downloaded from the Department of Health website.
Both these documents were showcased at the NHS Employers annual conference, Leading workforce thinking on 17 November 2010. A summary of the staff engagement session held at the conference can be found on our Leading workforce thinking pages.