How Committed Are You To Your Job and Your Company?

I’m curious to know what the recession has done to employee commitment.  Ten years ago Management Update reported a three year study by Aon Consulting on commitment in the workplace.  They asked questions such as whether employees intend to stay with their current employer (I’ll bet we know the answer to that one in this recession:  it’s yes.)  They also wanted to know whether the people they work with would “make personal sacrifices” to help their group or team succeed.

 
The results were intriguing.  Aon concluded that if you manage 100 “statistically average employees” (I’ll need to ask my statistician friend to find out what that means), you can assume the following data:

· 11 won’t make efforts to improve their skills

· 14 won’t make personal sacrifices to help the work group

· 7 won’t recommend the company’s products or services

· 16 wouldn’t say that the company is a good place to work

· 18 aren’t intending to stay for the next several years, and

· 31 would jump ship for a modest increase in pay

These are the kind of attention-getting statistics you might see in the bottom left-hand corner of the front page of USA Today.  You know, attention-getters to sell newspapers.  Then too, they were created by a consulting firm to justify the need for their business.  Consultants and vendors are geniuses at using the scarcity motive to sell their services. 

I seriously doubt the validity of those statistics ten years ago, and I’m certain some of them won’t apply today.   I’m quite certain that there are few organizations in which one-third of its employees would jump ship for most anything.  Security is one of the most profound motivators.  That means that a bird in the hand is always better than two in the bush.  There’ll have to be lot more than a modest increase in salary to jump ship.  In-depth research has shown again and again that salaries are at the 9^th or 10^th level priorities.

And, the reason most people won’t make efforts to improve their skills is rather straightforward:  they don’t know how to learn.  I’m clueless as to where the blame for that lies, although I do know how to fix the problem.

Well, on and on.  But I’m really curious to know what you think about this survey.