Employee Engagement: The 5 Elements of Wellbeing (Gallup)

Ask this question 5 times: Are you well?

Rath and Harter. Tom Rath and Jim Harter are releasing Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements in early May. This is an advance review of the book and the companion website set up by Gallup.

The 5 Elements. Rath and Harter examine five elements of wellbeing:

1. Career wellbeing
2. Social wellbeing
3. Financail wellbeing
4. Physical wellbeing
5. Community wellbeing

In addition they discuss measuring what makes life worthwhile and offer tools and resources ranging from daily wellbeing to increasing wellbeing in organizations – the role of managers and leaders.

Great data nuggets. The book is full of nuggets and practical perspectives. There is a mix of new material and material that people who have read other Gallup publication would be familiar with. Here are just a few of the nuggets you will can digest:

• Only 20% of people like what they do each day.
• Actively disengaged employees are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression over the next year
• When you use your strengths you are more engaged and more likely to feel energized for 40 hours a week instead of feeling burned out after just 20 hours of work.
• Managers can contribute in very strong positive or negative ways to an employees career wellbeing.
• We need 6 hours of socila time to have a thriving day
• Even 20 minutes of exercise during the day can boos t your mood for the rest of the day.

The role of leaders and managers. Leaders and managers who care about their employees have a significant impact on both employee engagement and wellbeing. they see the growth of their employees as an end in itself not just a means to an end. They know there is now way an employee will love an organization that doesn’t have a heart. Overall what is best for the employee is also best for the organization. Caring leaders and managers know that caring is not a feeling or noun it is a verb that requires they demonstrate continual caring for the people who report to them.

The Wellbeing website. In addition to the excellent book, purchasing the book gives you access to the wellbeing website. To visit the wellbeing website, click here. You will be able to do a full self-assessment and create an action plan to promote your own wellbeing.

Summer project to a well fall foundation. The book is due out on May 4th., 2010. I encourage you to purchase the book and make wellbeing your summer project.  If you put the ideas into practice I bet you’ll have a wonderful career, social, financial, physical, and community wellbeing foundation by September 2010. This will be good for you and the people around you.

Well? What are you waiting for?

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2270 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com