Thesis on Employee Engagement

[Lennart de Lange]

Hi all,

First of all, I am very happy to find some much interesting and useful information here on thsi network and on David Zinger's website!

I am a 21-year old student and soon I will be doing my graduation assignment (thesis) on employee engagement at NIKE European Headquarters in the Netherlands. This is where I am now doing my internship, but in about a month I will start doing my own research.

As I would like to get into the topic as good as possible, I was wondering if you all have some suggestions for me. I am looking for useful websites and books that will help me getting started with EE. For my graduation, I will have to do a research (for instance: a survey) and write a plan with solutions and reomendations on how the company can increase the engagement of its employees. If you have any idea, please let me know! (As I am completely new on thsi topic, I am looking for good books about employee engagement in general in particular.)

I am very much looking forward to seeing your suggestions!

Thanks in advance.

Lennart

[Ben Simonton]

I suggest that you read "Breaking the Mould" by Peter Hunter. You can go to his website (same name) and find very practical and useful info.

Best regards, Ben
http://www.bensimonton.com/articles.html

[Maren Showkeir]

Hello Lennart:

I would suggest you review the research on employee engagement done by the Gallup organization. They have done milliions of interviews on this topic, and a wonderful book that boils down some of this research is 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter.

Good luck on your thesis!

[Lennart de Lange]

Hi Ben and Maren,

Thanks for you usefyl tips! I am currenlty reading "First, break all the rules". Great book as I am already really into it already after reading the first chapters. Just ordered the other book "12: The Elements of Great Managing".

Regards,
Lennart

[Pete Sitter]

Read Closing the Engagement Gap A book published by Towers Perin It summarizes five years of global research on the topic and outlines a five factors important to improving engagement.

[Nina Nguyen]

Hi Lennart,

Congratulations. I think that if I were to do a thesis now, I would definitely choose EE as the topic.
Just a general note: in my knowledge, it is important to keep in mind that there is no agreement on the definition and measure of EE, both in the consulting world and the academic world. Almost everything you read in EE contains the agenda of the consulting company that is selling their EE model. And that's not at all a bad thing, we just have to be clear that we are reading something from Gallup, for example, and they are not necessarily talking about the same EE concept as what you found in Hewitt, Towers Perrin, or in the academic literature.

The other thing is that while books are a good place to start, they are not peer-reviewed. In doing an academic thesis, you might want to give more weight to articles published in quality, peer-reviewed journals. I have a lot of articles on EE that I'm very happy to share with you. I find it a bit hard to nominate just a couple, as I divide them up into: academic articles, general business articles, and articles published by individual consulting companies, such as Gallup and the likes.

So let me know, and I'm happy to upload them here for you.

Kind regards,
Nina

[Lennart de Lange]

Hi Nina,

Thanks for your reply. I completely agree. I keep on reading about new consulting companies that have a new revolutionary measure for EE. I also came to realize that EE is an extremely broad topic and that I will have to focus on one of the components of EE for my thesis (for instance, related to First Break All the Rules, a thesis topic could be: developing manager to increase EE).

To be honest, I would be very happy to receive your articles. I generally prefer reading articles rather than books as I can read more different perspectives in a shorter period of time. Especially the academic articles are interesting for me. Nevertheless, any other type that could be of use is more than welcome :)

What would be the fastest and easiest method for you to share them?

Thanks and kind regards,

Lennart

[Maureen Vandergeest]

Lennart
I recently was given a book entitled "ENGAGED! How leaders build organizations where employees love to come to work" by Peter Barron Stark and Jane Flaherty. Good luck