In this PrOPEL Hub Research Showcase video, Professor Patricia Findlay and Professor Colin Lindsay explore how people management and workplace practices can support employee engagement, innovation, productivity and wellbeing.

As many organisations seek to reboot in the wake of Covid-19, business leaders and HR professionals face twin challenges – to harness and include all employees in innovating in response to a rapidly changing business environment while also supporting employee wellbeing.

ESRC-funded research led by the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at Strathclyde Business School is working with employees and business leaders to explore the links between HR and workplace practice, engagement and wellbeing, and innovative work behaviours. Drawing on multiple case studies in private, public and third sector organisations across a range of sectors, this video highlights survey research showing how HR practices focused on learning and development, and opportunities for job crafting, can be crucial in promoting engagement, wellbeing and innovation performance. Evidence from in-depth interviews with organisational leaders helps the research team to understand decision-making processes around people management and job quality, and ‘what works’ in workplace practices. The video concludes with a discussion of insights and challenges facing business and policy stakeholders.

This video is part of the PrOPEL Hub Research Showcase. You can find details about other events on our website.

About our speakers

Professor Patricia Findlay is Co-Investigator on the PrOPEL Hub. She is Distinguished Professor of Work and Employment Relations at the University of Strathclyde where she is also Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research.

Professor Colin Lindsay is Director on the PrOPEL Hub. He is Deputy Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at the University of Strathclyde. He conducts research on workplace innovation and teaches human resource management at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level.

(Research team: Findlay, Lindsay, Baaker, Demerouti, Roy, Burns, Dutton and McQuarrie, with Boesten and Junker)