Flourish at Work Assessment

What is the Flourish at Work Assessment Tool?

Our Flourish at Work assessment gives individuals a measure of the extent to which they are flourishing in their current role. It was developed by extensive interviewing of people who love what they do and feel that they are flourishing, followed by all the clever academic statistics needed to make the tool itself valid.

This means that running our assessment for individuals will directly affect overall engagement and it does that by offering practical options that allow people to take control of the changes they make.

Why Did We Develop the Tool?

Everyone seems to be measuring employee engagement but people disagree about what it is. AND, what's the point of just measuring it (i.e. companies often take a high level survey and then see the results and go, 'oh let's get a better coffee machine then' and this doesn't make a long term difference, why not give individuals the power to change their own levels of engagement. A lot of it is, after all, about perception.

Where Did the Concept of Flourishing at Work come from?

It came about as a result of a method of research called 'grounded theory' where you extensively interview people and distil the results from coding transcripts of what they say. 12 people were recruited and interviewed using a semi-structured format based on whether they felt that they were currently flourishing and thriving in their roles. Six themes emerged from analysis of this interview data and came together in a model based on prevalence and complexity of discussion. Factors that enabled or inhibited these themes also emerged as sub-themes.

How Did we Turn it into an Assessment?

The questions came directly from the theory and then we tested them with over three hundred people and analysed the data to show that the overall result linked to other measures of employee engagement and overall life satisfaction.

Our research shows that truly flourishing involves a unique combination of 6 feelings, Valuable, Autonomous, Challenged, Passionate, Safe and Connected. This tool measures the extent to which you are experiencing the things that bring about those feelings. We are continuing to research how the 6 different factors (feelings) interrelate.

What Does the Assessment Measure?

It measures that it's an individual experience (state) which does change slightly but which DOES link to overall trait level of engagement. Give people the power to change their state and you'll get increases in the trait.

The best thing about the tool is that it's an engagement survey that actually makes a difference, rather than only giving you data.

How Do We Know it's Valid?

We teamed up with London Metropolitan University's Occupational Psychology department to investigate the tool itself in more detail, using survey data from 305 people across two separate studies in the UK and Romania.

The key scientific headlines about the study are:

1. It's valid at the criterion level – which means the test measures what it is meant to measure.
2. It correlates well, but not completely, with an existing academic measure of employee engagement; the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). I.e. It is measuring a linked construct to employee engagement – but not exactly the same thing. We call it 'state engagement' or 'the experience of flourishing'.
3. It has strong internal reliability (α=0.871) which means that every time you apply the scale you will get similar results.
4. It predicts job satisfaction.
5. It has strong questions: almost all of the questions link statistically to the overall 'factor' of flourishing at work.

Our study has shown to be linked to the more traditional understanding of employee engagement both theoretically via our research and from the survey data gathered by London Metropolitan University research.

Why is Flourishing at Work So Important?

At the individual level, flourishing people:

• Live longer
• Are healthier
• Are better at creatively solving problems
• Are generally nicer to be around

Even better than that, having flourishing people in the workplace actually affects business metrics, with increased engagement strongly linked to:

• Greater productivity
• Lower employee turnover
• Higher profitability
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Greater discretionary effort

All of that means money gained or money saved. Either way, with a happy workforce, employers are getting more for their money.

Next Steps

Sign up and try it out. All you have to do is visit the Flourish at Work website and register.

We spend most of our lives at work, so why not do something to get more from that time? If you'd like to find out more give us a call, we're always happy to talk about flourishing.