SUPERVISORS AND MANAGERS MUCH LESS LOYAL THAN LAST YEAR

This year, there is a slight decline from 2011 in employee loyalty within the Hoosier workforce, and some signals are telling us it may get worse. The Walker Loyalty Matrix™ (shown at right) provides a breakdown of the loyalty classifications of those that participated in the 2012 study.

The percentage of employees classified as “truly loyal” fell slightly from 64 to 61 percent. When we took a closer look we saw that there was also a slight decline in loyalty amongst executives which fell from 77 to 73 percent. However, the most significant declines in loyalty were seen among middle managers and supervisors. The loyalty of middle managers fell from 55 percent in 2011 to 41 percent in 2012. The percentage of loyal supervisors fell from 45 to 39 percent.

Difficult times may lie ahead as only 42 percent of Indiana Business Council members feel that employee morale will increase in the next six months. This is the lowest score on this question since we started the Business Council in 2010.

WHY ARE PEOPLE LEAVING?

We saw employee loyalty for key groups of employees on the decline. In order to determine how to prevent them from leaving, we asked of those who had left their job in the past 2 to 3 years why they left. The top reasons for leaving are:

1. Limited career opportunities
2. Compensation
3. Not a good fit

Organizations, in conjunction with the employees, must provide employees with a future and a path to achieve that future. Many organizations are concerned they will lose employees they have invested in, however, only 10 percent said they would leave if the organization if they were provided with a clear career path.

Companies need to act fast to stop the flow of employees leaving the organization as things do not look good for the next year. In fact, 16 percent of those responding plan on looking for a job in the next year. However, the numbers are higher for Supervisors (31%) and Individual Contributors (23%).

IS HR STRATEGIC?

As part of this month’s study on the workforce we asked Hoosiers how they felt about their human resources departments, specifically focusing on their strategic contributions.

Unfortunately, most participants in the study do not see HR as being very strategic.

When asked about this in 2011, a lackluster 48 percent of the Council considered their human resources department to be strategic. In 2012, the perception has declined – only 40 percent currently describe HR as strategic. What’s more, only 45 percent of executives view HR as strategic, down nine percentage points from 2011. Finally, only one-third of individual contributors view HR as strategic.

Gerry Dick

President and Founder of
Grow INdiana Media Ventures LLC

Gerry's take

Indiana business leaders are very concerned about what will happen in the next 6 to 12 months and that is clearly reflected in the Indiana Business Confidence Index hitting its lowest level ever. This sentiment is also carrying through to the employees in their lack of optimism that employee morale has any hope of improving in the next six months.