Will Executives Listen to their Employees via Towers Perrin?
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 24, 2007
You’ve heard the phrase, living well is the best revenge?? I must say it does bring a smile to my face when organizations pay me, as an external consultant, several times what I was making as an internal consultant?to say the same things they reviled me for saying while working inside an organization.
In that same vein, Towers Perrin has just released the results of an uber study letting executives know what their own employees have been telling them all along.? Gallup and DDI, as well, find employees singing the same song:?
Employees do not believe their organizations or their senior management are doing enough to help them become fully engaged and contribute to their companies? success.
Just 21% of the employees surveyed around the world are engaged in their work, meaning they?re willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed. Fully 38% are partly to fully disengaged. The result is a gap ? which Towers Perrin has dubbed the ?engagement gap? ? between the discretionary effort companies need and people actually want to invest and companies? effectiveness in channeling this effort to enhance performance.
Calling all executives!? Organizational systems are the accountability of executive leadership.? Systems drive behavior.
Remaining unconsciously allegiant?to our culture’s disjointed, Catch-22 views on managerial leadership and organizational design will leave you?continuously rearranging?the chairs on the deck of your corporate ship as?it sinks.? And it leaves 79% of your employees disengaged!?
May I offer an alternative???Suspend your assumptions, set down your defensiveness, and move to curiosity.?? Have the courage to abandon a sinking ship.
Ask yourself, if people really do want to work and give their best, but yet we only have 21% engagement,?does the problem lie?with the people or the systems within which we are asking them to work?
When you are ready to work on systems, I’m ready to work with you.
?I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Ship image courtesy of the U.S. Navy Naval Historical Center.? As a property of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management
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