By Dave Crisp
The Corporate Leadership Council reported more of their excellent research at a Strategic Capability Network event in Toronto last week – primarily showing measures of employee engagement continuing to plunge, a trend that has been ongoing for about 15 years.
The recession neither accelerated nor stopped the drop. This slide of trust and willingness of employees to fork over any extra effort voluntarily seems to have no bottom in sight. Increasing workloads were noted even before the financial crisis began and sudden cutbacks pushed those further. While just less than 50 per cent of workers say they’ll extend themselves to get the basic job done, far fewer will go beyond that — just when we’re constantly reminded of the need for more creative innovation to help companies survive. And almost everyone is expecting a stampede of talent out the door as soon as the economy permits, which will worsen these trends.
The one saving factor was found to be skills of the individual manager, but there is no indication companies are spending more on training or supporting executives to be more effective with people even though the techniques to be taught are themselves mostly low or no cost. Simple recognition of good work goes a long way and is showing up as increasingly important at a time when many managers subtly or overtly communicate the opposite — “just be glad you have a job.”
Sadly, to encourage innovation managers have to feel secure themselves. If they encourage risk-taking, some of which inevitably fails, they themselves are likely to be held at fault. Who can risk that in this environment?
What about increasing revenues through creativity to justify holding costs steady? Anyone seeing any worthwhile efforts at that?
Dave Crisp is lead commentator on Leadership in Action for Strategic Capability Network (www.scnetwork.ca). He can be reached at dcrisp@CrispStrategies.com.
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