The Gallup Organization recently released "The State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders" survey report. This follow-up report covers 2010 through 2012; an earlier, similar study covered 2008 through 2010. The survey findings from both reports make for depressing reading. But they should serve as a call-to-action by the WLP profession. You can find the report at this link.
The survey sample represent the 100 million full-time workers people in our country. The results show that about 70 percent of American workers either hate going to work or are even actively undermining the workplace (“roaming the halls spreading discontent,” as the Gallup report puts it) to the point of causing economic loss to their organizations. (The polling organization puts the loss as between $450 billion to $550 billion annually.) This leaves only 30 percent of workers feeling “engaged and inspired” by their work.
These results are not much different from those of the earlier study. Some had tried to explain away the dismal results from the 2008-10 survey as a consequence of the Great Recession, which left the workforce scarred, scared, and angry. That explanation doesn’t wash anymore.
This year’s report squarely lays the blame for all this misery at the feet of American management. The problem isn’t wages (though there is plenty of discontent over growing inequality between the C-suite and everyone else). It isn’t benefits or hours. There are just too many bosses-from-hell running loose in the land, wreaking damage everywhere they go.
The WLP profession knows how to fix this problem. There are good leadership models and programs out there that show how to identify and train good leaders and supervisors. But it does take the will to change – and money, money most organizations are not willing to invest, to their own and society’s detriment. Which leads me to this …
There is much support these days in the halls of Congress and state capitols for STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – education. When STEM was just getting off the ground a few years, National ASTD’s public policy group promoted the idea that leadership should be considered to be a STEM subject. The reasoning was that more training resulting in better leadership would pay off handsomely in boosting productivity, a theory for which the Gallup results give added credence. Unfortunately, the proposal went nowhere, and National ASTD is no longer actively pushing it.
Things change. It’s time to dust off this proposal and start advocating for leadership as a STEM subject. As Seattle-based New York Times columnist Timothy Egan (from whom I learned about the Gallup study) writes, “Sad to say, there are two great tragedies in professional life: not having a job, and having a job you hate.” As a society we can longer afford to continue this deplorable state of affairs.
Quote of the Day: “Even though worker capacity and motivation are destroyed when leaders choose power over productivity, it appears that bosses would rather be in control than have the organization work well.” --Margaret J. Wheatley
