A new survey of C-level executives and vice presidents across a variety of industries finds most companies still struggle with significant misalignment issues between management and employees, making it difficult to implement key initiatives and retain top talent.
Not Listening
The survey, conducted by POPin, an anonymous crowdsourcing platform designed to help leaders increase productivity and achieve goals, finds a communication gap.
Forty-one percent of survey respondents say town hall meetings are “typically one-sided” with information flowing from management to employees. In addition, 47 percent of respondents say employee opinions are “only sometimes” heard and addressed in such meetings. Moreover, 45 percent of respondents fail to conduct town hall employee meetings at all.
Fifty-six percent of responding executives say they rely on email as the “primary” method of employee communication. Only 21 percent of executives surveyed solicit feedback from employees in person, and often that feedback in not candid for fear of negative career consequences.
“Businesses today are in crisis when it comes to employee engagement and organizational alignment,” said Brian Anderson, chief marketing officer of POPin. “As social collaboration continues to create new methods of bringing people closer together, most companies continue to follow older, less effective practices. Business leaders continue to prove they are completely unable to establish an effective process for employee engagement and fail to build organizational alignment on key initiatives.”
Additional Findings
The POPin survey also finds:
- Lack of productivity: Most managers do not prioritize employee feedback when it comes to productivity improvements. Only 26 percent make this a “high priority.” Nearly 55 percent will listen to employee concerns but admit they are challenged to address them. Twenty percent say it is “too difficult” to sift through feedback to identify employee challenges.
- Failure to gauge employee satisfaction: Twenty-four percent of respondents say they have “frequent” conversations with employees to solicit feedback but there is “no quantifiable method” to do so. Fifty-two percent say they have conversations with employees but often “do not receive candid feedback.” Twenty-five percent say there is “no process whatsoever” to gauge employee satisfaction.
- Inability to solicit candid feedback: Fifty-four percent say employees will share their opinions but typically “withhold” critical feedback about the organization. Twenty-six percent consider that they have “open and honest” conversations with employees. Twenty percent say employees try to communicate honestly but are hesitant to offer critical feedback for fear that it would reflect poorly and affect their career.
- Employee retention: Fifty-three percent of managers can predict when an employee is not happy but are often unable to remediate the problem. Only 18 percent do well to predict employee dissatisfaction and can usually remediate the problem in time. Twenty-nine percent say it’s “usually a surprise” when an employee resigns.
- Misalignment on technology initiatives: Fifty-seven percent of respondents say their company is “slightly out of alignment” on new initiatives and that it “takes some time to come up the learning curve.” Fourteen percent say employees are reluctant to embrace new ideas. Only 29 percent of respondents are “well aligned” and “in lockstep” with senior management.
- Ideation challenges: Fifty-two percent of respondents say that although they have an “open line” of communication between departments, there’s “no solid process” to share ideas. Twenty-five percent say they are “not effective” at ideation with “limited interaction” with disparate departments. Only 23 percent of respondents they have a “solid infrastructure” in place to develop new ideas.
- No standard process for sourcing ideas: Responses are mixed on how ideas are sourced internally. Twenty-two percent use an internal solution; 12 percent use social collaboration tools; 32 percent use a survey; 15 percent arrange large brainstorming sessions; and 20 percent admit they “don’t know” how to source ideas and concerns from the organization.
- Mobile communications: Only 20 percent of respondents say that mobile has had a “significant” impact on employee communications. Thirty-nine percent say mobile capabilities have had a “moderate” impact, creating “an important communication channel” for “alignment.” Thirty-six percent say mobile has had “no improvement on alignment and ideation.” Only 5 percent consider mobile to be a “hindrance.”
- Senior management fails to “take action”: Twenty percent of respondents say they have processes in place that enable senior management to react quickly to employee concerns. Forty-four percent say they have “some processes” but need to be “more nimble in this area.” Thirty-six percent of respondents say e-level executives are “slow” with “limited resources to react in a timely manner.”