This page is frequently updated with the latest news on employee engagement from all around the world. Check it regularly and rest assured you're ahead of the pack!

Employers unprepared for financial downturn

A survey of 1,400 organisations across 37 countries has found that 20 percent of companies in Europe and about one-third of the ones in the US haven't made contingency plans to cope with the recent downturn in the global economy.

Source: Watson Wyat (November 2008)

Companies paying lip service to diversity

Nearly 80 percent of employees say that diversity is "something that most companies publicise more than they actually implement". Apporximately 50 percent of employees say they've experienced discrimination at work.

Source: Adecco USA (November 2008)

Employees wasting time at work

An American survey of 2,500 employess has found that almost 75 percent of employees admit to wasting parts of their workday on non-job-related tasks. Nearly one-quarter of them say they squander two hours out of every workday. The biggest time-wasters were personal internet use (48 percent), socialising with co-workers (33 percent), and taking care of personal business (30 percent). Almost 50 percent of the respondents said they slack off at work because of job dissatisfaction, while about one-third feel they're underpaid.

Source: Salary.com (November 2008)

Financial crisis results in scrapped Christmas parties

79 percent of Irish employers will not be paying for an employee Christmas party this year due to the financial crisis.

Source: Peninsula Ireland (November 2008)

Australians delaying retirement

An Australian study of 600 workers and 150 employers has found that 25 percent of employees aged over 50 expect to delay retirement until their 70s. However, only 28 percent of employers are actually helping their employees to prepare for retirement.

Source: Mercer (October 2008)

Managers play favourites

An Australian survey of hundreds of managers has found that 52 percent of them admit to having a favourite employee at work. The online poll also revealed that one-in-four managers don't read any management books throughout the year.

Source: Team Leaders (October 2008)

Australians struggling with flexibility

3 percent of children aged between 5 and 9 years are going home alone after school because their parents are working. Overall, one-in-five Australian children need to fend for themselves until their parents get home from work.

Source:National Foundation for Australian Women (October 2008)

Baby Boomer resignations

When employees resign, companies are trying to convince only one-in-four baby boomers to stay as opposed to about 40 percent of Gen Y and Gen X employees.

Source:Exit Info (September 2008)

Employees feel they're not paid enough

An American poll has found that 51 percent of employees believe they're being underpaid whereas only 3 percent feel they're overpaid. 46 percent of the respondents said they get paid enough for the work they do.

Source:Gallup (September 2008)

Follow-up key to behavioural change

Following up learning and development programs accounts for 50 percent of behavioural change. The actual delivery of a training program accounts for 40 percent of behavioural change with the remaining 10 percent resting with pre-course work.

Source: American Society of Training and Development (September 2008)

Employees want help to lose weight

80 percent of employees and almost three-quarters of companies say the workplace is an appropriate setting for responding to weight management. About 75 percent of companies that have workplace programs to combat obesity say that they're proving to be effective.

Source: Stop Obesity Alliance / National Opinion Research Centre (August 2008)

Web 2.0 issues in the workplace

Over 50 percent of HR professionals have encountered or disciplined employees for wasting time on the internet. A further 23 percent aren't even ware of Web 2.0 technologies such as YouTube and Facebook. 63 percent of companies block access to these types of sites at work.

Source: Clearswift (August 2008)

Employee theft on the increase

A survey of over 2,000 employees has found that almost 20 percent of them admit to having stolen office supplies for personal use over the past year, with only 22 percent of these employees feeling guilty for doing so.

Source: Spherion Corp (August 2008)

World's most admired companies

The list of the world's most admired companies was recently released. The winners were:

1. Apple
2. General Electric
3. Toyota Motor
4. Berkshire Hathaway
5. Procter & Gamble
6. FedEx
7. Johnson & Johnson
8. Target (US)
9. BMW
10. Microsoft
    

Source: Fortune Magazine and Hay Group (July 2008)

More older women

The number of women aged over 55 in the workplace will increase by 19 percent between now and 2012, even though Australia's overall workforce participation rate will fall over the next few years.

Source: Mercer (July 2008)

Companies rewarding healthy employees

A report into 225 major US companies employing 8 million people has revealed that the number of companies offering incentives to health-conscious employees increased from 62 percent in 2007 to 71 percent in 2008. Companies are providing financial rewards to motivate employees to lose weight and quit smoking. The average incentive is valued at $192 per employee.

Source: ERISA Industry Council, the National Association of Manufacturers, and IncentOne Inc. (July 2008)

Trust in managers

A survey of 7,500 workers across three continents has revealed that 75 percent of employees trust their managers, as opposed to 60 percent who trust their top executives.

Source: BlessingWhite (June 2008)

Pay cuts for dream jobs

An international study has found that employees would be happy to take a pay cut in favour of landing their dream job. 76 percent of employees around the world say they'd accept a pay cut if it meant they'd get a more rewarding career.

Source: Monster Worldwide (June 2008)

Managers not talking about performance

A survey of 600 employees has found that 40 percent of managers don't talk about performance with them. 25 percent of managers discuss how employees can improve their weaknesses while one-third focus on how to build their strengths. Concerningly, only 8 percent of employees feel they use their strengths all of the time.

Source: Marcus Buckingham / Ipsos (June 2008)

Communication key to performance

A study of 5,500 employees across 175 companies has found that top performers are 66 percent more likely than poor performers to say that their immediate manager does a good job of communicating performance issues. Only one-third of poor performers say that their managers are good at communicating expectations and goals.

Source: Watson Wyatt (May 2008)

Bosses don't care

77 percent of British employees say that their boss is not interested in them and 90 percent say their manager doesn't do anything about poor performers. The 1,500 employees surveyed also say that 79 percent of bosses don't set clear objectives, while a further 89 percent lack innovation and are unreceptive to new ideas.

Source: Ros Taylor Ltd (May 2008)

Length of service irrelevant

44 percent of organisations say that productivity is more important than length of service when determining their high performers. In terms of attracting high performers to the organisation, 38 percent of companies believe that their employer brand is the most important component of their recruitment strategy. 1-in-5 companies don't see flexible working conditions and childcare facilities as essential to attracting high performers.

Source: Alexander Mann Solutions (May 2008)

Companies are expanding their workforce

Only 6 percent of companies are using social networking sites to attract new talent, even though 42 percent of Australian employers will be expanding their workforce this year. This is an increase from 28 percent last year. Popularity in the use of headhunting has increased, with 43 percent of companies saying they use it regularly. It is now the third-most popular method after online and print advertising. With the shortage for talent getting worse, Australian employers are relying on employees from overseas. The UK is the main source of talent, followed by India and then China.

Source: Vedior Asia Pacific (April 2008)

Impending leadership crisis

Over three-quarters of HR executives are worried at their ability to develop future leaders. The study of over 400 HR executives across 40 nations found that companies in the Asia-Pacific region are the most concerned. Furthermore, more than half of the executives said their organisations are struggling to develop skills to address their business needs. 47 percent of companies even said that employee turnover has increased over the past two years.

Source: IBM Institute for Business Value (April 2008)

Telecommuting great for the environment

Telecommuting has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases in the United States by up to 67 million metric tons a year, thereby saving $110 million a day. Telecommuting has increased by 39 percent since 2002, with a jump of 10 percent in 2007 alone.

Source: Lister and Harnish (April 2008)

American bosses are the best

A study of 5,500 employees across 10 countries has found that 90 percent of US workers hold their immediate supervisors in high regard, as opposed to two-thirds of employees internationally.

Source: BPI (April 2008)

Privacy losses at work

About 40 percent of US firms employ people to manually read and review staff members' emails to make sure that nothing inappropriate is sent. 12 percent of companies monitor blogs just to check if their employees are saying anything negative about their companies.

Source: The American Management Association & e-Policy Institute (March 2008)

Information overload

A survey of 650 white-collar professionals has revealed that 85 percent of them say the biggest waste of time for them at work is having hardly enough time to find the information they need when they need it. 62 percent admit to wasting time just sifting through irrelevant information, thereby impacting their productivity. Even simply searching for knowledge takes an average of 2.5 hours each day. 40 percent of these professionals say they're unable to cope with the non-stop stream of information that comes their way.

Source: LexisNexis (March 2008)

Paternity leave not so popular

Nearly 60 percent of working fathers say they wouldn't take company-paid paternity leave even if they had the opportunity to do so. Nearly half the respondents said they wouldn't be able to take the leave due to financial concerns, while 12 percent said they don't think they'd do as good a job of caring for their children as the mothers would. Almost 1-in-10 fathers stated that they just don't have the patience, while about one-quarter admitted they dedicate more time to their professional life than to their fatherhood (compared with 11 percent of mothers).

Source: Adecco USA (March 2008)

Politics at work

About one-third of employees are uncomfortable talking about politics at work, while about 40 percent have no problem doing so.

Source: American Management Association (March 2008)

Low levels of loyalty

A survey of 4,500 employees across four continents has found that just under 60 percent of employees say they "definitely" expect to remain with their employer this year. Employees in Europe and Asia were less content than those in the US or Canada.

Source: BlessingWhite (February 2008)

Boredom results in low job satisfaction

A survey of more than 1 million employees has found that employees who say they're bored because of too little work have low levels of job satisfaction. The two main causes of this are employees occupying jobs for which they're not suited or trained, and jobs that are poorly designed.

Source: Sirota Survey Intelligence (February 2008)

Respect is a major engagement factor

Respect has the biggest impact on employee engagement, coming in at number one out of a list of 12 factors. The type of work performed and having a work/life balance also rated highly in the global study.

French and Indian employees were focused on job satisfaction the most, whereas pay was most important in Japan. Benefits were the most highly rated factor in China, while in Germany, who people worked with was deemed to be of the highest value. China and India placed less importance on work/life balance than other countries who rated it quite highly. A strong customer service ethic was especially vital to British employees, but not so much to the Japanese who rated it as the least important.

Source: Mercer (February 2008)

War for talent a big concern

A study of 850 executives from the US, UK, Italy, France, Spain, Japan, and China has found that two-thirds of executives are worried about the threat of being able to recruit and retain the best talent, putting it second only behind 'competition' as the key threat.

Source: Accenture (February 2008)

What MBA graduates want in an employer

An international study of over 500 MBA students has revealed that three-quarters of them say a company's corporate reputation will play a critical role in whether or not they accept a job. Further to this, more than half said they would not work in Russia, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East. Preferred destinations were Western Europe, North America, North Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. The preferred industries to work in were banking, finance, IT, technology, and energy, rather than alcohol, chemicals, and tobacco.

Source: Hill & Knowlton (February 2008)

Workplace stress leads to heart disease

Stressed-out employees under the age of 50 are two-thirds more likely to suffer from heart disease. Meanwhile, employees with heavy workloads and little control over decisions at work were 68 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease than their less-stressed co-workers. The study monitored over 10,000 people over a period of 12 years and concluded that a stressful job has a direct biological impact on the body.

Source: University College London (February 2008)

Staff development and retention major priorities

44 percent of 7,000 surveyed employers say that staff development and retention are their major priorities for 2008. Further to this, 29 percent of Australian employers said that attracting suitable staff was their top priority for 2008, which is an increase of almost 15 percentage points when compared to 2004. On the flipside, enhancing productivity and performance recorded a decrease, down to just 14 percent this year from 30 percent in 2004. At the lower end of the priority scale were developing leadership capabilities (8 percent) and managing industrial relations issues (1 percent).

Source: Hudson Australia and New Zealand (February 2008)

Stress the major cause of resignations

Stress is the leading cause that makes employees quit their jobs. Yet the study of over 90 companies found that employers didn't even rank stress in the top 5 reasons as to why employees would leave, instead placing insufficient pay at number one. However, roughly one-quarter of both employees and employers believe that an inadequate work/life balance has an impact on staff turnover.

Source: Watson Wyatt Worldwide (January 2008)

Australia's most unproductive year

Approximately 19 percent of working time was wasted in Australia in 2007, compared to only 5 percent in the US. This cost the economy $77 billion. Reasons include: inadequate supervision (31 percent); poor management planning and control of work (30 percent); and poor communication (18 percent).

Source: Proudfoot Consulting (January 2008)

Retention still a major issue

One-third of employers are struggling with their rates of staff turnover. The survey of over 7,000 employers found the two most common engagement methods used to retain staff were flexibility (67 percent) and financial incentives (62 percent). These were followed by leadership development and succession planning (48 percent each), mentoring programs (36 percent), coaching programs (35 percent), and high-potential programs (27 percent).

Source: Hudson (January 2008)

Company reputation key for graduates

The most important factor for graduates when deciding which company to work for is the company's reputation. This is followed by training and development, the content of the work, and work/life balance. The study of 1,500 recent graduates also found they got their information about their prospective employers from the company's own website (85 percent), university careers fairs (63 percent), commercial websites (44 percent), careers services (43 percent), and social networks (43 percent).

Source: Australian Association of Graduate Employers (January 2008)

Australia struggling with skills shortage

Australia is one of the countries in the world struggling the most with the skills shortage, according to a new study of 37,000 employers across 27 countries. 61 percent of Australian companies said the skills shortage was a problem for them compared to the international average of 41 percent. Manual tradespeople, engineers, and sales representatives were in most demand. Countries facing greater difficulties than Australia included Costa Rica, Mexico, New Zealand, and Japan.

Source: Manpower (January 2008)

No plans in place for high-potential employees

50 percent of Australian companies admit they don't have any formal processes in place to identify and develop high-potential employees.

Source: Hudson (January 2008)

Line managers not focused on learning

About two-fifths of British companies say their line managers are ineffective at supporting learning and development.

Source: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (January 2008)

Older workers left behind

Just over one-quarter of Australian companies have strategies in place to attract older workers while only one-third of employers have startegies in place to retain them. This is startling when compared to nations like Japan and Singapore where 83 and 53 percent of employers respectively, are actively focusing on attracting and retaining older employees. Italy and Spain scored lowest, each with 6 percent.

Source: Manpower (January 2008)

News Archive: 2007

News Archive: 2006