We coach leaders. We also facilitate numerous workshops on leadership. Often I find that we quote the data from countless surveys regarding leadership and its impact on employees and therefore the corporate bottom line. One glaring stat that has stood the test of survey time is that the number one reason that employees leave their employer to go to another organization is their immediate boss. As our client organizations ask us to conduct exit interviews we see exiting employees finally share the truth for why they chose to leave. Overwhelmingly we hear them say, “My boss sucked.” We can debate who is responsible for motivating and engaging employees and the research points to the leaders in the organization.
In a survey produced in March 2011 by Psychometrics Canada, their conclusion was that “if employees aren’t motivated, it’s poor management that is to blame.” The poll of 368 human resources managers at Canadian companies found:
• 69% consider low employee engagement a major issue in their organization,
• 82% per cent said that they feel their management should be doing more to address employee engagement.
Shawn Bakker, who conducted the survey said, “The thing that really stood out is they overwhelmingly pointed the blame on management. They said it wasn’t so much the employees who are lacking motivation, but that their direct managers or senior management are not creating conditions that make employees feel engaged.”
The survey continued on to show that executives are failing in four key areas:
• 71% said managers should listen more to employees’ opinions,
• 68% said they fail to communicate clear expectations,
• 58% said they need to give more recognition and praise and,
• 57% said they need to provide more learning and development opportunities.
So, if you continually wonder what it takes to attract and retain a talented, engaged and motivated workforce, look to your leaders. Are they doing the job? My belief is that leaders who see the role of leadership as a job or occupation versus a calling to noble work will be the leaders that contribute to the statistics of disengaged employees. Which leader are you?
