North American Workers Feel
Negative About Work

February 18 2003 - A recent survey by Towers Perrin shows that employees in Canada and the US have strong emotions about their working lives but these feelings are mainly negative at the moment.

Bruce Near, Managing Director for Towers Perrin in Canada, says that: "Employers should not underestimate how strong employees' emotions are for their work. Our research partner Gang & Gang used an innovative, emotion-based research approach called Resonance(R) to conduct the research. The intensity of emotion generated by this study was double that generated by consumer research conducted using this methodology."

The report, Working Today: Exploring Employee's Emotional Connection To Their Jobs, is claimed to be the first study to quantify the emotional nature of the work experience, using an emotion-based methodology tested and proven in market research.

"There appears to be a huge gap between employee's current work experience - and their ideal work experience," said Near. "People have a fairly clear idea of what it would take to close this gap - and the good news for employers is that this goal is achievable."

The full study included a North American survey of 1,100 employees and 300 senior human resource executives. It showed that the HR executives accurately predicted the mood of the workforce - in both Canada and the United States employees are feeling alienated, angry and disconnected. But the executives are not correctly diagnosing the cause of this disaffection. Consequently, they may be investing in some of the wrong things, or failing to do the right things to deal with the problem.

"Employers are overestimating the impact of senior management and nervousness about the future, mistakenly believing they exert more of a negative influence on employees than is the case. Conversely they are underestimating how important it is for employees to feel self-confidence in and from their work," says Martine Ferland, Managing Partner for Towers Perrin's Montreal office. "Employers also underestimated the importance of professional development opportunities, challenging work, rewards and recognition."

"The findings of this survey should serve as a wake-up call to employers. The current negative emotion is so strong it is unlikely to pass when the economy bounces back and may result in a mini retention crisis if the economy improves and people's job options increase."

Positive Emotion and Company Performance

A finding that helps explain why employee emotions are important is that organizations perform better when employees have a more positive emotional response to their work. This may seem intuitive but this study provides a statistically valid documentation of the relationship. The research looked at corporate financial performance, as measured by five- year total return to shareholders, and a clear correlation was found between employee positive emotion and financial performance.

The survey also revealed that employees have a very clear sense of their ideal work experience and that there is an enormous gap between it and their current situation. Employees identified three strong needs that drive their performance and dedication to their organization:

* A need to feel connected to, and competent in their work;

* A need to strengthen personal capabilities, self- and career-development;

* A need for recognition.

It seems that workers are not necessarily looking for financial recognition but instead are looking to feel part of something bigger, and to believe they are making a valued contribution to the bigger entity.

"If a company could deliver on the elements of the work experience critical to strong positive employee emotion - employee confidence, competence, control and contribution - the research suggests that employees' emotional investment in their work would shift dramatically," says Near. "This appears to be in the company's best interest, because of the correlation between strong positive employee emotion and a company's financial performance."

The study was conducted by Towers Perrin and Gang & Gang in September 2002. They surveyed a randomly selected group of 1,100 employees working for mid-sized to large companies across North America, including about 150 Canadians. Respondents were asked to describe their feelings about current work experience and an "ideal" work experience. At the same time, 300 senior human resource executives (about one-third Canadian) were surveyed about how employees at their company would describe their current work experience. Data showed extremely similar findings for the U.S. and Canada.