John Zavacki in LO15829 said:
>In my experience, when I have described someone as a "valuable
>resource" the reaction has always been positive. Perhaps we should
>take this thread to the shop floor or the help desk rather than trying
>to decide what other resources themselves feel about being resources.
Yep. Couldn't agree more.
There is most certainly an issue of non-communications between management
and workers regardless of whether what we call them.
Some statistics I posted in a recent handout to 400 most senior bank
managers to make the same point (I thought that the information hounds
herein would find them of interest!):
* Only 35% of workers characterize the level of trust between senior
management and employees as favorable.
* Little more than half of employees will recommend their company as a
good place to work, according to a survey of 9,100 people by Watson Wyatt.
* Only 23% of those surveyed by Gallop for The Marlin Company said they
are extremely satisfied with work.
* There is less willingness to take risks, especially among workers age 19
to 32, possibly because risk-taking is often punished in our schools and
on the shop floor. Risk-taking is also one of the key tactics for
long-term organizational competitiveness and survival.
* In the Wyatt Company WorkUSA Survey (1991), they report that most
executives (88%) thought that employee participation was important to
productivity yet only 30% say their companies do a good job of involving
employees in decisions that affect them.
Only 38% of employees report that their companies do a good job of
seeking opinions and suggestions of employees, which has dropped since
1989. And even when opinions are sought, only 29% of employees say that
the company does a good job of acting on those suggestions.
* Towers Perrin surveyed 250,000 workers at 60 companies and found only
48% thought their bosses listened to their ideas or acted upon them.
That's a 3 percent drop from 3 years ago. And only 60% of employees think
their bosses keep them well informed.
Only 32% feel management makes good and timely decisions.
Just 38% of workers said the information needed to accomplish
their duties is widely shared and only 36% feel their companies actively
sought worker opinions.
* And Kepner-Tregoe reports that their survey showed that two-thirds of
managers and hourly workers estimate that their organizations use less
than 50 percent of their collective smarts and when asked to select the
barriers to thinking from a list of 13 possible causes, both managers and
workers cited the same three causes: organizational politics, time
pressures, and lack of involvement in decision-making.
KT's research also said that a little over half the hourly
workers, and 40 percent of the managers, stated that frequent
second-guessing of their decisions created a disincentive to spend a lot
of time thinking up solutions to job-related problems.
* And Dale Carnegie & Associates (1992 in a study of 4000 American
managers) produced the startling finding that only 46% give their best
effort at work. Only 36% feel challenged by their jobs; 52% have not
attained their personal objectives; and more than 43% feel trapped in
their jobs."
(sources various)
I called this "The Square Wheels Reality of being a Caterpillar!"
-- For the FUN of It!Dr. Scott Simmerman, author of the Square Wheels toolkits Performance Management Company SquareWheels@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>