The Employee Engagement Report 2011, which explores global workplace attitudes, revealed that trust in executives has a stronger correlation to employee engagement than trust in immediate managers. Half of employees who trust senior leaders are engaged compared to 40% of those who trust their direct boss and 33% of the North American workforce overall.

These findings are consistent with pre-recession findings. Highlighting that trust in leadership is an important factor in achieving high levels of engagement.

It’s harder to build trust with people who you rarely see or have never met, explained Christopher Rice, CEO of BlessingWhite, the consultancy responsible for the survey. “Most immediate supervisors and managers can demonstrate trustworthiness in their daily actions and become known beyond their titles. Executives don’t have that luxury. The workforce scrutinizes what they do see and hear – and will draw the most unexpected, unfortunate conclusions if leaders do not communicate carefully.”

The authors of the report, urge business leaders to demonstrate consistency in words and actions, communicate often and with depth, and create a culture that drives results and engagement.

For more information, download a copy of the report >

Melitta

As in this blog we have spoken a lot about Employee Engagement in the past, I found a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit on the subject most enlightening. It clearly signposts a disconnect between the boardroom and the rest of the organisation when it comes to understanding and acting on engagement issues.

According to the report, more than 80% of top executives across Europe and the Middle East view disengagement as one of the three biggest threats to their business. Yet, during the survey, almost half of these executives (47%) admitted that they do not discuss staff engagement issues in the boardroom.

Perhaps even more worrying was the report’s finding that many senior executives appear to have a fundamentally flawed view of what – and who – influences the levels of engagement within their organisations. For example, just 13% of C-suite executives believe that line managers and middle managers are chiefly responsible for staff engagement – this despite the raft of evidence pointing to line managers as being the key to morale and productivity.

Perhaps the most enlightening statistic to emerge from the report is the fact that nearly half (47%) of the senior executives surveyed believe that they are personally responsible for generating the levels of employee engagement in their firm – a view that is shared by only 16% of senior directors outside the C-suite.

Paul Lewis from the EIU, who edited the report, said: “this research strongly suggests that many, though certainly not all, CEOs retain an unrealistic and over-optimistic view about their own impact when it comes to staff engagement.”

An important point to bear in mind when building a business case for engagement related campaigns.

Melitta