A webinar I tuned in to today interviewed an expert on employee engagement, Peter Hutton, who argued that the best way of gauging this phenomenon is by measuring advocacy what employees say about their place of employment to others.

Teasing this apart, it seems that if people like their jobs, they're more likely to say good things about it. And liking their jobs can cover a whole range of factors involvement in decisions, autonomy, respect for and from colleagues, identification with a company's values, even liking the furniture and colour scheme.

The BBC meanwhile has just conducted a survey of happiness in Britain. It appears that people are happiest in Yorkshire and East Anglia, (because they have friendly communities and access to outdoor space). And what we like to do more than anything else is eat chocolate and pizza and watch TV.
 
As an afterthought, the BBC survey result added money. The employee engagement expert didn't refer to money at all.
 
This tells us a couple of things. Either, as a nation, our incomes are regarded as irrelevant to our happiness at work, at home and in life generally. Or, as seems more likely in these belt-tightening times, the question of our incomes is becoming increasingly awkward for pollsters and consultants to deal with.
 
As budget cuts, job losses and VAT rises loom, this avoidance of the elephant in the room will only become more uncomfortable. News organisation features compete, depending on their ideological bent, to offer dramatic evidence of benefit cheats on the one hand, or whole communities without employment opportunities on the other.
 
And while it's true that a society can demonstrate how it values its citizens in non-material ways (because after all, the notion of Big Society, if we're to take it seriously, does need to play in both directions), it's still quite hard for employers to do the same for their staff.
 
A gold star, a pat on the back these are all very well. But in the end, people want money in their pockets. And they need it, too. Because what else is going to pay for the pizza and chocolate?