But, there’s always a caveat emptor quality to a lot of this research. That’s because you never really know how well the survey was set up, whether the questions seemed to have some bias and led respondents to certain answers, or even if the group surveyed was really one that would generate a meaningful result.
And there’s something else as well: Sometimes people aren’t completely honest in their responses, even in anonymous research. For example, I’ve been seeing a number of surveys indicating that lots of businesses are poised to bring back salaries and wages that have been cut or rolled back this year, but that sounds a lot more definitive in the surveys than it does when you talk to real executives about their plans.
Could it be that no one wants to admit, even in an anonymous survey, that 2010 is going to be another bad year of holding down pay?
So, that’s MY caveat emptor to these two surveys that seem to be directly contradicting each other. See what you make of them:
According to the survey, more than 80 percent of the respondents say their companies are headed in the right direction, while only 15 percent think things are headed the wrong way. Nearly nine in 10 employees believe conditions will be better or the same a year from now, and only 12 percent say they will be worse.
In addition, respondents to the survey report very high levels of job satisfaction, with nearly 80 percent saying that they are extremely or somewhat satisfied with their current jobs, while only 9 percent are extremely or somewhat unsatisfied. Given the choice, nearly 90 percent of the employees say they will be at the same job six months from now. The employees cite job security, stability, pay and benefits as the primary reasons for their satisfaction. The survey was carried out among a cross section of 500 U.S. full-time workers who have been employed for at least one year at companies with 100 or more employees.
“The study provides a barometer of employee engagement in the workplace, with results that might alarm and surprise many employers,” said Douglas J. Matthews, president and COO of Right Management, in a press release. “Employees are clearly expressing their pent-up frustration with how they have been treated through the downturn. While employers may have taken the necessary steps to streamline operations to remain viable, it appears many employees may have felt neglected in the process. The result is a disengaged and disgruntled workforce.”
So, one survey says that four out of five employees are extremely satisfied with their current job and don’t plan to leave (APCO), while another indicates that nearly two-thirds of workers are unhappy with their employment and intend to bolt whenever they can (Right Management).
Which is it? Can both of these surveys be right?
Here’s my take: You need to take any and all surveys with a grain of salt. Yes, it really is caveat emptor when it comes to these things, and no matter what the respondents may say, I don’t think anyone, anywhere can really handicap when our turbulent economy might improve, or what America’s workforce will actually do when it does.
Steve is a former EEOC trial attorney and management law firm partner. His Atlanta-based company, ELI, provides “a variety of programs and services that teach professional workplace conduct, helping our clients translate their values into behaviors, increase employee contribution, build respectful and inclusive cultures, and reduce legal and ethical risk.”
He also writes a blog that gets into a lot of legal issues in the workplace, and I found this blog post he wrote this week to be especially insightful given the explosion in social networking and modern communications. I’m happy to share it with you because readers tell us that they always need good workforce legal information, so take a read on this and let me know what you think:
“I’ve wondered when it would happen—for years there have been stories of athletes, proxies for other celebrities, who say and do what they want while their behavior is ignored, minimized or attributed to ‘locker room’ humor or conduct. But the doors of locker rooms, operating rooms, broadcasting booths and boardroom suites are wide open these days; conduct that used to be tolerated in the bastions of such resident ‘untouchables’ is now falling prey to general workplace standards, publicity, business harm and personal penalties.
“Also, ESPN suspended Bob Griese for making on-air disparaging comments about a Latino racecar driver. Almost before I’d finished reading that online scoop, another story broke about Larry Johnson, a Kansas City Chiefs running back who used a homophobic slur on Twitter and while addressing reporters. At the time of this writing, Johnson has been told to stay away from the team while the NFL and the Chiefs complete their investigation.
“What’s happening here is that the transparency of modern communications is preventing such behavior, no matter who the offender, from being swept under the rug, or bed, as the case may be. So the message is simple and direct, not just for those at the middle and bottom but also for organizational leaders and ‘high’ performers.
“As we have taught in Civil Treatment, ‘Guard your words and actions.’ The more public your role, the more cautious you must be. There is no invincibility when conduct is outrageous, unprofessional and uncivil. What’s increasingly obvious is that the issue involving such conduct is not simply legal risk. ESPN’s brand has been harmed by its broadcasters’ actions, and the careers of those involved have been tarnished if not ruined, in Phillips’ case.
“Whether lawsuits are filed and ultimately dismissed or settled is almost secondary. Business and irrevocable personal harm has been done, and all of it could have been avoided if standards of professionalism and behavior had been in place and understood and applied by everyone, at all levels.”
An additional 19 percent said that their organization allows the use of social networking sites for business purposes only, while some 26 percent said their workers could use such sites for personal use while on the job.
“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology, in a press release about the study. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”
Here’s my take: Doesn’t this sound a lot like the discussions and debates we used to have about employees using the Internet while at work? There was a lot of time and energy spent on policing shortsighted policies that were constructed around the notion that anyone who was on the Internet while at work must be goofing off and not doing their job.
That was a wrongheaded notion in many, many workplaces, and I can’t help but think that not allowing employees on social networking sites while they’re on the job is following along the same path.
We’ve written here at workforce.com about the perils and pluses of social networking, but a lot of that was focused on the notion of posting too much personal information online and how that might come back to bite you.
But telling workers they can’t use social networking sites while at the office seems to be a move that is both regressive and foolhardy, especially since so many workers use smart phones or other such devices to access their social networks. That’s a lot harder to police than it was back when you could simply block all Internet access on office computers.
Robert Half’s Willmer does offer one piece of solid advice along with this survey: a caution that employees should always exercise good judgment, no matter how lenient their company’s social networking policy.
“Professionals should let common sense prevail when using Facebook and similar sites—even outside of business hours,” he said. “Regrettable posts can be a career liability.”
Yes, that’s always the worst-case scenario. Workers can always post something regrettable that might damage their career, but to my way of thinking, that’s a lot more likely in a world where organizations try to keep employers away from social networking while on the job rather than coming up with a smart policy to deal with that eventuality.
Workers in this day and age are going to use social networking sites and I don’t think there’s any way to get around that. This latest survey simply tells me that all too many businesses simply haven’t faced up to that fact yet. Maybe more will use this recession as an opportunity to work on figuring that out.
I love holidays but always find that part of the price I pay for taking off is that a bunch of stuff has stacked up in the interim. So, here are a few interesting workforce odds and ends that you too might have missed while we were out celebrating Labor Day and the end of summer 2009:
The story discusses how Petco, the San Diego-based pet supply chain, adopted a three-page policy in November, modeled after what IBM is doing when it comes to employees and social media.
“Petco intranet manager Daniel Sundin said the policy bars blogging and using social media at the office unless required as part of an employee’s job,” the Union-Tribune story said. “The policy says employees are personally liable for what they write and are precluded, in part, from sharing sales numbers and proprietary information or using the company logo without permission.”
That sounds like a reasonable, level-headed workplace policy to me, but Petco’s intranet manager also made this point: “[A]lthough restrictions are needed … companies ignoring social media’s power miss the big picture. That’s just a head-in-the-sand thing,” Sundin added, “and you’re a dying company if you’re doing that.” Truer words have never been spoken.
And, here’s an observation from the Mercury News story that should frighten anyone who wonders what might happen if they get a pink slip.
“People don’t believe there’s a job out there for them anymore and they give up on themselves,” says Janice Shriver, a labor market consultant with the state’s Employment Development Department. “The long-term unemployed used to be people difficult to place because they were maybe ex-offenders, or homeless. Today it’s government workers and chemists and engineers.”
“As bad as the unemployment numbers are—10.7 percent in Florida—they don’t tell the whole story,” the Herald story says. “While hundreds of thousands of Floridians have lost their jobs because of the Great Recession, thousands more have taken big hits to their paychecks because of limited work hours or a shortage of jobs that use their skills. Economists call this underemployment, (and) the full extent of underemployment may be impossible to measure. But we do know this: In addition to the 9.7 percent of workers across the nation who were unemployed in August, another 5.8 percent were working part-time because they couldn’t find a full-time job. If those people were counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would be 15.5 percent.”
Remember the old New Yorker cartoon from the early 1990s (you can see it here) that poked fun at the notion that so many people lie or fib about themselves on the Internet? Everyone got a big laugh out of it because it was not only funny but also dead-on accurate. Yes, lots of people DO lie about themselves on the Internet for all sorts of selfish reasons.
Fast-forward that thought to 2009, when Twitter is the rage and just about anyone can sign up and claim that they are just about anyone. Basketball great Shaquille O’Neal found this out the hard way when he tried to sign up for a Twitter account and found out that there were upwards of 30 other Twitter users claiming they were Shaq. He ended up signing up for a Twitter handle as The Real Shaq so he wouldn’t be confused with all those fake Shaqs who were Twittering up a storm.
That pretty much sums up the problem with Twitter and the Internet in general: Users can be totally anonymous, hide out and say whatever they want no matter how inflammatory, libelous or wrong.
I’ve always felt that the anonymous nature of the Internet was one of its great shortcomings, mainly because so many people hide behind the cloak of anonymity and write all sorts of vile things that they would probably never say to a person if they were forced to publicly stand behind them.
Well, leave it to Twitter to take a very small but meaningful step toward greater civility on the Internet. It’s going to “crack down on celebrity impersonators who post messages on the service as if they were the real thing, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, by introducing “a verification system to ensure that famous people are who they say they are.”
“Twitter has long been a playground for people pretending to be Hollywood stars or high-profile political figures,” the Chronicle noted. “It left other users confused about whether they were actually following updates by their favorite artists and athletes or just some 12-year-old with too much time on his hands.”
But Twitter got broadsided when St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed suit against the company last month in San Francisco Superior Court “for allowing an impostor to create an account in his name. (The account was subsequently deleted.)” the Chronicle reports. “Musician Kanye West has also complained. An account in the name of the Dalai Lama was suspended earlier this year.”
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post “that the company will start testing a verification service this summer for public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes and other well-known individuals at risk of impersonation. Their accounts will get a verification seal so users will be able to see that they are legitimate.”
Although this isn’t a big move by Twitter, it’s certainly a step in the right direction and it may be the beginning of reasonable standards that help clamp down on the Wild West nature of the Internet.
I said this back in February and it is as true now as it was then: No matter how cool the social networking tool, the rapid growth of technology brings along and equally rapid growth of technology-related legal issues. It’s a good idea for all managers to get out in front of them before they have a chance to overrun you.
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