UK firms failing to effectively engage with staff

News Article - 21 September 2010
Category: Business

According to a new report, UK firms score 'significantly lower' than businesses in other countries when it comes to offering job security and successfully engaging employees.

The Infogroup Perspectives survey analysed employee engagement across 17 countries worldwide and found a global engagement index of 57%. The UK scored a ranking of 54%, placing it 11^th overall. The number one spot was taken by India.

UK employees are far less likely to stay in their current role than staff in other countries, and are less inclined to recommend their organisation as a great place to work. The 2010 Infogroup Perspectives survey also identified the UK as the lowest performer in relation to job security, perhaps due to the significant effects of recession on the UK economy and the widespread redundancy drives common over the last two years.

A lack of trust in management figures was also identified amongst UK employees, who were asked to comment on the question, 'I trust the management team of my company to appropriately balance my interests to those in the organisation'. With regard to trust, the UK scored in the bottom three countries worldwide.

UK employees also ranked eight percentage points lower than the global average on whether opportunities for career advancement in their organisation are based on merit. Staff in the UK also feel that poor performance is not dealt with appropriately and effectively where they work.

UK employees did rate their organisations highly in terms of the overall health and sustainability of employee engagement. Questions related to this were focused on physical and psychological health, engagement, working relationships and specialist support available to staff. UK employees also ranked in the top three, along with staff in Austria and Germany, for both feeling supported by colleagues and feeling challenged and motivated by their work.

Engaging with staff, and making them happier in the workplace, is essential to both staff retention and productivity. The recession has added heavily to senior managers' workloads; this lack of available man-hours is one reason employers are finding it hard to engage with staff.

Access HR and business software can help. By providing key figures with a wide variety of business intelligence, decisions can be made more quickly on the basis of accurate information. This frees up more time to be spent on employee engagement. And the specialist HR modules, such as the learning and development software, allows firms to more easily provide staff with training that really engages and appeals on a personal level.

For more information, please call Access on 0845 345 3300.

Article keywords: Industry news, business news, employee engagement, HR solutions, human resources, business software, business intelligence, staff productivity

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