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Engineers Are Crying Out to be Heard, Says Survey
01 Jul 2004
Managers in engineering are overworked, put business ahead of family, and work within a negative culture, according to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute and Adecco, the global leader in HR solutions. The Business Energy Survey questioned over 1,500 managers across the country in May and found businesses failing to understand the needs of their most important assets and workplace energy dropping dangerously low.
"It is no wonder many organisations have trouble finding and keeping the right people given what we've found here, " said Richard Macmillan, managing director of Adecco UK and Ireland. "The atmosphere they are creating inside their businesses is not the positive, proactive, empowering culture where most would aspire to build their careers. By listening to and embracing new ideas companies can retain their best staff and build a reputation that attracts new talent."
The Business Energy Survey, conducted in May 2004, assessed the attitudes, motivations and aspirations of managers. The report shows that volume of work has adverse effects on employee energy levels. In the engineering industry, 29% admit to having no energy on weekday evenings because of work and the same number admit to using the weekend solely to recover from work.
However, many seem happy to work extra hours providing they feel a sense of purpose in their work (61%) and are helped to achieve their goals (64%).
Many managers working in engineering feel that there is a negative management style operating in their organisation with most crying out for open and receptive management but not getting it. 31% believe the prevailing management style is bureaucratic, and 33% believe it is reactive, compared to 34 and 31% nationally. Despite the time and effort spent by managers in trying to develop effective communications strategies, less than one-third of respondents expressed satisfaction with the communications.
The survey shows a real desire from managers to develop new flexible ways of working. The most popular idea in the engineering industry is to introduce career breaks (39%) and annualised hours (37%). However, despite the enthusiasm for these new flexible benefits only a few people (around 1% and 6% respectively) believe these will ever be brought in by their organisations.
Recruitment is clearly a problem for many businesses surveyed. 23% of respondents cited 'difficulty in recruiting the appropriate staff' as a reason why new working practices had been introduced.
www.managers.org.uk
