I had the pleasure of seeing Dr. David Sirota speak recently at a monthly meeting of the NY HR Planning Society. Dr. Sirota has been a legend in the HR field for more than 30 years He has a total commitment to – and rigorous methods for – finding the truth about human resource issues and how they affect corporate success. He has a new book titled The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Employees What They Want.
Here are some findings from his latest research – conducted in 237 organizations over 10 years with a total of 2,537,656 respondents:
- Most new hires are pumped up - eager, optimistic, enthusiastic, and hard working.
- But in 86% of US companies, the honeymoon is brief. After 6 months, morale starts dropping - people become discouraged, demotivated, and withdrawn.
- Turnover and absenteeism climb, and work quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction drop
The primary culprit is the way many company cultures impact employees.
3 negative and corrosive cultures identified by Dr. Sirota are:
- Paternalistic cultures treat employees as children.
- Adversarial cultures treat employees as enemies.
- Transactional cultures treat employees as “ciphers” - i.e. “I don’t really know or care who you are - you work, I pay you, now we’re even.”
But there is good news too! 14 % of US companies consciously create corporate cultures that treat employees as partners or allies. They extend the honeymoon period for a much longer time and they benefit in many ways.
- The stock performance of these “high morale” companies is 20.03% better than that of “industry comparison companies.”
- High morale organizations have significantly better rates of turnover and absenteeism.
How do high morale companies like Southwest Airlines, Nucorsteel, The Mayo Clinic and Keebler create the “alliance” culture?
All-parties (company and employees) focus on these critical values:
- Win/win: all parties recognize that they have business goals in common, and success of one party depends on the success of the other.
- Basic Trust: all parties trust each other’s intentions
- Long-term Perspective: everyone is committed to a long term relationship that will survive the short-term vicissitudes of business.
- Excellence: everyone sets high performance standards for themselves and each other.
- Competence: everyone has confidence in each other’s competence.
- Joint Decisions: everyone makes key decisions jointly on matters that affect each of them.
- Open Communication: all parties communicate with each other fully.
- Mutual Influence: all parties listen to and are influenced by each other.
- Mutual Assistance: all parties help each other perform.
- Recognition: all parties give recognition to each other for their contributions.
- Day to Day Treatment: all parties routinely treat each other with consideration and respect.
- Financial Sharing: to the extent that the collaboration is designed to generate improved financial results, the parties share equitably in those results.
Dr. Sirota’s research methods have been rigorous and thorough and his findings have been remarkably accurate and consistent over his more than thirty-year career. His research goes broader and deeper than many others in the HR field, and has serious hard-edged bottom line implications. We would all be well advised to take his findings seriously. Until now, the problem has been getting the C-level executives to listen to experts like Dr. Sirota and understand that the future success of their organizations can depend on how well they address these issues.
To find out more - read Dr. Sirota’s book, check out his company website, or just call Sirota Survey Intelligence at 914-922-2515 - ask to speak to Bruce Segall ([email protected]).
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Posted by: panasianbiz | September 10, 2006 at 07:23 PM