Employee engagement ''can be increased by a bottom-up approach''

The public sector is now implementing an approach that has worked for the private sector for many years - using bottom-up communication lines to increase employee engagement.

Angela Baron, an adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said that many successful businesses had been using this approach since the 1970s as part of a total quality management system.

"It''s worth having a variety of ways in which people can put their views forward through group discussion, or through writing it on a piece of paper and putting it in a box," she added.

Ms Baron noted that intranets were a good place for getting employees to post their suggestions, while discussion groups could help generate ideas which may never have been raised otherwise.

Her comments came in response to the news that the prime minister David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg wrote a letter to public sector employees, promising to give them more involvement in the way their organisations are run.

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