When I got into work the other morning I found a glossy purple leaflet on my desk bearing news of a disturbing development. It said the Financial Times was souping up the way it measured how “engaged” its staff were and was switching from an annual employee survey to shorter, quarterly ones. We were all about to be sent an email link for the first one, “which should take a maximum of 15 minutes to complete”. Normally, nothing would make me feel less engaged than an employee engagement survey, especially one that brazenly admits it will take 15 minutes to finish. But I was just back from a holiday and feeling pliant. So I clicked on the link and started to explain, on a scale of zero to 10, how much I liked working at the FT. Since I am generally pleased to be paid to do a job I like, in an office full of amiable, clever people, I romped through the first few questions, dishing out generous marks on whether I would recommend the FT as a place to work,........

Questions 1. What is meant by the term ‘employee engagement’ and why is it important to measure it?
2. What different methods are there for assessing employee engagement?
3. Does employee engagement improve performance or do better businesses produce more engaged employees?
4. What can organisations do to improve levels of employee engagement?