What they never told us at Davos
Sean Trainor
Board advisor and executive coach | Stakeholder Engagement | Earned corporate reputation and enhanced organisational performance | Savvy. Canny. Gutsy | safeplacestowork.com salientksa.com
Gallup have just published its State of the Global Workforce Report 2022 under the clickbait headline "The World's $7.8 Trillion Workplace Problem"
My mind is immediately drawn to the ficticious advert issued by the Lard Information Council claiming "eating lard makes families happy". Had Gallup published its report 4 weeks ago, it could have saved nearly 2,500 world leaders travelling to Davos to tackle global issues and find solutions to the world's most urgent geo-economic shocks. Reading the report they would have realised how simple it is to contribute 11% to the global GDP.
Or maybe not.
Like me, they most probably would have recognised that the sensational headline was created to arouse interest in employee engagement and possibly drive sales in workplace solutions provided by the authors. They may also have seen beyond the arbitary correlation between workforce engagement and the world economy.
I thought I'd take a closer look.
Aggregating the results from the world's most advanced economies (the G7) and comparing them to the results from one of the most advancing economies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), here are the 2021 scores (with percent point changes for a rolling 3 year period compared to 2020 in parentheses):
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The average Saudi employee is more engaged, feels more respected, less worried, and less stressed. They are significantly more satisfied with actions on the environment and more optimistic on employment prospects and social mobility. But they are slightly more angry and getting angrier than the average G7 employee.
In conclusion, it appears that there is little correlation between employee engagement and the economy. The highest correlation within the Gallup results for these countries are Daily Anger (+77%). Interesting when you consider the efforts corporate HR departments are putting into employee mindfulness.
When you analyse the macro-economic factors published by the IMF for the 8 countries the results are even more interesting. Employee engagement has a high correlation with the increase in Consumer Price Index (+82%) and Unemployment Rates (+74%) over the same periods that Gallup aggregate their index changes.
When inflation, unemployment and anger is rising, employees get more engaged at work.
With rising inflation and unemployment across the G7, the good news is that employee engagement scores are likely to improve over the coming years, especially as people get angrier. Not so good news for employee engagement scores across the Kingdom as it continues to drive fiscal optimisation and job creation while improving quality of life for its citizens.
I guess it brings us back to the fallacy of employee engagement surveys and the old adage:
“Not everything?that?counts can?be?counted, and?not everything?that?can?be?counted counts.”
Owner & Coach at Naturally Good Coaching
2 年It's definitely the most contentious of the 12 questions, and a shame to hear it led to such a negative experience in your organisation. But I'm not here to persuade, I just wanted to offer an alternative view. At least we can agree on one thing - the quality of managers is fundamental to any organisation's success.
Owner & Coach at Naturally Good Coaching
2 年I enjoyed reading this provocative piece, and I heartily agree with the addage about what can be counted. Furthermore, I'm generally someone who is allergic to corporate BS, which abounds. However, I would argue that one thing which differentiates Gallup's approach to measuring employee engagement (and how to improve it) from the many others out there, is the intentions of Don Clifton. It seems he was driven to help people fulfill their potential, and chose to study working environments where people were doing well. These intentions led to developing a framework which, when applied with the genuine support of leaders in organisations, can allow for a much more concrete, positive work experience than is the norm. That in turn benefits the organisation as a whole, including its products, services and profits. As far as the conclusions you draw from the statistics you find, it has been said that statistics can be made to say two things at once, both contradictory. In other words, one is likely to find in statistics evidence for the beliefs one already holds. For example, many people over the decades have posited that the WEF at Davos is simply a self-serving lobbyist group, with scant regard for democratic values. Fallacy?
Managing Director at Q4 consulting limited
2 年I think it depends on two inter-related factors: 1 How engagement is defined and 2 how you measure against that definition. If the definition does not include drivers of performance, you won't be able to identify a link.
Board advisor and executive coach | Stakeholder Engagement | Earned corporate reputation and enhanced organisational performance | Savvy. Canny. Gutsy | safeplacestowork.com salientksa.com
2 年PS. There is absolutely no correlation between Daily Sadness and Employee Engagement. So you can conclude that discouraging employees from eating lard will not adversely affect engagement scores. Those that love their food fried in animal fat may get angry from withdrawal symptoms but they will become healthier and more engaged at work. Win-Win. PPS. I'm just glad they never told me that at Davos.
Strategic Sales + Marketing + Private Partnerships - GCC & MENA Masterplanned Communities
2 年Hmmmm