The most recent 2012 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study is out – and finds that “companies are running 21st-century business practices with 20-th century workplace practices and programs”. More and more businesses and organizations struggle to maintain engagement over time.
While factors such as stress, concerns about job security, having to do more with less are perhaps less surprising challenges to workforce engagement, the study also highlights the role of senior leadership as well as support from direct supervisors.
The feedback from respondents speaks for itself:
- Less than half of the respondents agree their organization’s senior leaders have a sincere interest in employee well-being.
- Also fewer than 50% have trust and confidence in the job their leaders are doing.
In line with several organizational effectiveness studies, the Towers Watson finds the key leadership competencies shown at the top of this post.
Most if not all of these competencies aren’t the result of a class or a one-week workshop but the result of bringing ongoing attention to personal growth that supports professional excellence – and executive coaching is proven to be an effective tool. In the light of these findings based on 32,000 responses across 29 markets I would like to suggest these “thoughts for the week”:
- What we want to cultivate in ourselves to grow with a world whose complexity has increased dramatically and where collaborative capacity becomes an ever more decisive competitive edge?
- And what changes it takes in our workplaces – the very arena of our professional challenges – to become also a crucial part of our support systems for this kind of growth…?