Study: Managers Make Recession Worse By Ignoring Workers

(Leadership IQ: Washington) -- Note to managers: Employees want a lot more attention and feedback from you, even if it’s sometimes negative.

According to a new study by Leadership IQ, 66 percent of employees say that they have too little interaction with their boss. In an indication that this could be driven by the recession, this number is up from 53 percent in May 2008, the last time this study was conducted.

However, employees don’t just want warm-and-fuzzy interactions. While 67 percent of employees say they get too little positive feedback, 51 percent also say they get too little constructive criticism from their boss. Perhaps most troubling is that employees who said they didn’t get enough feedback were 43-percent less likely to recommend their company to others as a great organization in which to work. 

These are the results compiled by Leadership IQ, a leadership training and research company headquartered in Washington, D.C., after surveying 3,611 workers from 291 business and health care organizations in the United States and Canada. Employees were asked 21 questions about their relationship with their direct boss, their personal effectiveness, work-force issues, and overall management effectiveness. The surveys were delivered to Leadership IQ subscribers, with 93 percent of respondents submitting their responses electronically, 5 percent via paper, and 2 percent by telephone. Leadership IQ statisticians reviewed the data for accuracy and consistency, and analyzed the valid submissions.

It is not just the quantity of the feedback that is lacking. Of the surveyed employees, 53 percent say that when they do receive praise for performance excellence, their supervisors neglect to provide enough useful information to help them repeat it; and 65 percent say that when they receive negative feedback for poor performance, their supervisors don’t provide enough constructive criticism to help them correct the issue.

“Managers are neglecting one of the most fundamental aspects of their job—providing feedback. Especially in these stressful times, employees are desperate for feedback and interaction with their boss. And when they don’t get it, their job performance suffers. But perhaps worse than the lack of interaction, is the finding that when managers actually do give feedback, more than half of employees say that the feedback is useless. The whole point of feedback is to improve poor performance or reinforce great performance. And this study shows that it’s just not happening,” says Mark Murphy, chairman of Leadership IQ.

“We know that this has worsened, at least in part, because of the recession,” says Murphy.  “When times get tough, managers become avoidant.

“Focusing on spreadsheets seems a lot easier than talking to employees. Not only might you get hit with questions you can’t answer, but when your own stress levels are through the roof, the last thing many managers want is to meet the emotional needs of their employees. However, this is precisely the time that employees really need a lot of feedback; and they need it to be very high quality.”

What can managers do to fix this?

“First, focus on giving a lot more feedback,” recommends Murphy. “Managers should double their efforts to interact with, and provide feedback to, their employees. Second, managers must be sure that when they give feedback, it’s actually useful. If the feedback doesn’t help employees improve poor performance or repeat great performance, then it’s not worth the breath it took to utter it.”

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Leadership IQ

Leadership IQ provides best practices, research, and executive education to the world’s leading companies and their leaders. We direct one of the largest leadership studies ever conducted, and currently focus our work on management and executive performance, work-force issues, negotiations, strategic planning, and customer service. Our work has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, the Harvard Management Update, CBS News, and many more. We’ve trained tens of thousands of leaders from across the Fortune 500, nonprofit, small, and midsize companies, and government organizations. Recent attendees include leaders from GE, Intel, Allstate, CNN, Time Warner, Johns Hopkins, Uniden, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and more. We are headquartered in Washington, DC, with regional offices in Atlanta, Georgia, and Westport, Connecticut.