WILEY Engaged: unleashing your organizations potential through employee engagement Hardcover – Import, 24 April 2012

As an HR consultant I read a lot of these type of books. I recommend this one for both HR professionals and line managers - because it looks at how to get the most out of your employees in today's business environment, with all its economic pressures, job insecurities and at a time when social media comments on everything you do before an employee briefing has even been considered.The book covers the whole gambit of employee engagement: from what it is, how to measure it, how to put action plans in place to improve it, even how to handle any resistance to your efforts, and all the way up to sustaining that culture of engagement. It's supported throughout by relevant case studies, check lists and models. It's a good balance of text book and how-to manual.I found it very useful and generally a good and interesting read, particularly the case studies - it's great to see that it can be done.

everything like promised!

During this period of turbulent markets and finacial uncertainty the subject of employee engagement is more relevant than ever. Based on years of practical experience and a rich cross-industry material, Holbeche and Matthews have created an insightful book, which should be a must read for any business leader independent of industry.

As well established, best practice theories of employee engagement this book offers an extremely thorough course in supporting and guiding staff to become genuinely engaged with their work and employer's processes. But its advice is undeliverable in the real world, which isn't surprising when you consider it's written by HR and public relations professionals - not the time starved, over burdened, under resourced middle managers the book is aimed at.As a compendium of best practice, the book is mostly brilliant (there's still some utterly bonkers advice in there, such as you hosting an evening storytelling event for your staff to inspire them the day before a big meeting - P190). It's clearly written and beautifully laid out (even if a number of the academic references are self referential), but you'd need to consultant to come in for six months to work with staff in order to apply the type of research and actions advised here. There's just not enough hours in the day job. You'd also need high level commitment to allow staff to take the hours out of their working day to complete the exercises, and allow you to offer the book recommended staff incentives of pay increases, changes in working hours or changes in workload. Something as a long-term staff manager I've never been able to offer.A nice best practice guide, but completely unusable unless you already work for a staff-focussed company, in which case you won't need staff engagement help!

The organisation I work for has recently carried out a employee engagement survey and when this book came up I thought it would be useful.The book begins by covering the basics of engagement and what it is, why it's important and what drives it. Then there is a lot about finding out how engaged staff are (how to carry out surveys etc.) and analysing the outcomes of an engagement survey. Then the book covers how to build a culture of engagement, the crucial role that managers play in employee engagement, engaging staff during tough times and then building growth with meaning.I've not really read books in this subject area before, so this is a new topic for me and I have not read other texts with which to compare this too. For me it gave me some insights into engagement and the key aspects to employee engagement. I enjoyed the case studies (although I would have liked more of these and some more detail) which gave some interesting ideas to think about. More ideas and concrete suggestions for encouraging engagement would have really completed this book.I learnt about engagement from this book and hope that my new understanding will help me as a manager in my organisation.