Stress and Culture Vitality
February 11th, 200586% of workers are experiencing job stress, and half of them describe their stress as “extreme fatigue” or “feeling out of control.”
Stressful work relationships and job demands in turn contribute to other problems such as burnout, errors on the job, emotional and physical distortions of perception, and safety problems and accidents. Ultimately, this results in lowered productivity and increased turnover.
Job-related stress directly contributes to absenteeism as well as presenteeism.
The number of employees calling in sick from stress-related factors has tripled since 1996. Companies spent 15% of payroll on absenteeism in 2002. For an employer with 5,000 employees and an average base pay of $40,000, this adds up to $30 million annually.
Presenteeism – the phenomenon of employees who show up to work but for a variety of reasons are not producing as they should – accounts for 80% of lost productivity, according to American Productivity Audit. The U.S. Employee Engagement Index claims that 17% of employees are actively disengaged from their job. They do not see the link between their performance and company profitability. Actively disengaged workers are costing US businesses $300 billion a year in productivity losses. These workers are not just unhappy but actively undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish. 54% of workers are “not engaged” – going on autopilot – and only 29% are truly engaged.
If you want to know how your company stacks up, consider a Culture Vitality Survey. The overall cultural vitality of the company is not only a predictor of turnover, but also a means of confronting and overcoming its causes. Quite often anyone who is in management, in any setting, senses that things are not running well. It is easy to sit back and do nothing, pretending that everything is okay, or to think, “If I do nothing, things will work out.” This is a dangerous and sometimes fatal mistake for the well-being of a company. You can revitalize and excite a workforce with a simple survey that gives them a forum to share their ideas about what you could do better (much better) and what needs to change.
Surveying is the only way to know what’s happening individually, overall, and over time. You can’t know if you’re winning or losing if you’re not keeping track.
The Culture Vitality Survey gives you a current snapshot of your company’s vitality, giving you feedback regarding perceived job attractiveness, vitality trends and current vitality, dealings with external customers and investors, productivity, teams and other workgroups, and vital behaviors. Trend reports can follow the resulting feedback over time. This is sometimes viewed as “BAD News,” but it is vital information if you are interested in keeping your key people and improving results.
The real questions you have to ask yourself are: do you really want to hear the bad news and are you ready to do something about it?
