Employees unhappy with salaries, workloads
The recent recession was grueling, no doubt, and it’s not over yet. So it’s no surprise employees are complaining of higher stress and heavier workloads, according to three recent surveys.
“We’ve been through a pretty rough go of it and it does take its toll. Even if people’s jobs themselves aren’t necessarily affected, there’s some fear, there’s some concern, people start thinking in different ways: ‘Is the company well-positioned?’ ‘Am I next?’ ‘Is my spouse?’” said Paula Allen, vice-president of organizational solutions and training at Shepell-fgi in Toronto. “And even if they themselves are not impacted in terms of job loss, it’s extremely stressful to go through that worry and also to take on the additional burden of other employees.”
It’s also possible employers could see more mental health claims with an economic downturn, she said, citing the recession of the early 1990s when such claims increased exponentially.
“That is something people really want to pay attention to,” said Allen. “There’s an increase of demands and people really aren’t taking care of themselves well in terms of taking stock and problem-solving and even things as straightforward as getting enough sleep and relaxation. There’s always the feeling, if things are rough, you should be working 24 hours a day. If you are doing that, it’s going to take a toll. You’re going to build resentment, fatigue.”
Thirty per cent of Canadian workers feel more stress now than last year, with the top stressors being an insufficient salary (30 per cent), work overload (27 per cent), lack of recognition (22 per cent) and a negative work environment (22 per cent), according to a survey of 1,769 people by Desjardins Financial Security.
But only 32 per cent felt their employer helped them better manage their stress at work. Respondents suggested employers needed to provide better recognition (36 per cent), an improved work environment (31 per cent), better working conditions (26 per cent) and better work tools (19 per cent).
“We’re seeing an expectations gap between employers and employees,” said Michele Nowski, director of disability income claims and disability management at Desjardins. “Employees and employers are not struggling with the same work-related issues. While it seems simple enough to suggest providing better recognition and improving the work environment, ultimately, the best way to tackle this issue is through teamwork and communication.”
Cost-cutting steps — such as hiring and salary freezes, layoffs and bonus reductions — took a toll on workers. Two-thirds of 155 Canadian employers (66 per cent) believe these actions increased employees’ workloads, while 57 per cent said they adversely impacted employees’ ability to manage work-related stress.
There was also a negative impact on employee engagement (56 per cent) and workers’ ability to balance their work and personal lives (50 per cent), according to the Towers Watson Global Talent Management and Rewards Survey of 1,176 companies worldwide.
Almost one-half of the companies took at least four cost-cutting measures, “so the amount of stress that that created for employees was incredible,” said Maureen Neglia, a senior talent management consultant at Towers Watson. “You’ve also got a lot of employees with the survivor syndrome — they’re still in the environment, many of their colleagues are gone, all these cost-cutting measures have happened, there’ve been no pay increases and no promotions. So, yeah, they’re feeling pretty down about the whole thing.”
And employers may not understand the overall effect of the stress of the last few years, she said.
“They’re really not recognizing the impact. I don’t think they are making the connection between the impact of the stress and how that will impact their overall customer experience, their overall business objectives.”
However, a survey by Right Management suggests employers are increasingly worried about poor morale and employee burnout. Almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of more than 2,000 senior executives cited employee morale and burnout as a barrier to achieving their business goals in 2010, according to the survey.
“It was quite an exceptional experience that we went through with the credit crunch and the net effect, with all the cuts corporately. There’s been a commensurate level of concern about employee morale and burnout because the issues have never quite been as acute,” said Henryk Krajewski, vice-president of Right Management in Toronto.
What employers should do
Employers are recognizing they held the line on revenues and yet have taken so much out of business, so they had better confront the fact employees can’t possibly sustain this, he said.
“Finally, in some sense, they’re making a connection between productivity, burnout and ROI on the business end.”
As a result, employers need to develop leadership skills that can help manage in this new normal, said Krajewski.
“There’s such premium for leaders, particularly technical leaders, to have the ability to engage people on a human level, day to day,” he said. “A manager’s ability to do that is going to dictate how long those employees stay and really endure some of the burnout that they’re experiencing. So human relations issues are now massively important to the bottom line and I think now, for the first time, we’re starting to see that connection.”
Organizations are really trying to get back to the basics, figuring out all the bells and whistles offered in the past are not necessarily what workers are looking for, said Neglia.
“There’s a real theme of security on the part of the employees — they’ve had enough of the constant change and chaos of the last couple of years.”
That means employers are trying to get things like base pay and benefits right, no longer having extremes in both, and actually following through on commitments to workers, said Neglia.
“It’s not about all the extras and frills that go with your package anymore,” she said.
Organizations can also focus on the employee value proposition (EVP) as 42 per cent of high-performing companies around the world have a formal EVP, said Neglia.
“Despite all the cuts and reductions and the stress in the environment, there are still a lot of fantastic things about working for some of Canada’s top employers and now is an opportunity to really go back, formalize that, communicate it and help employees to understand how good the deal really is, despite some of the losses.”
Another way to reduce stress is to provide greater flexibility, as employees put a flexible schedule and time off in their top 10 things to look for in a job, said Neglia.
“When employers get that right, they’ll realize that’ll help alleviate a considerable amount of stress for some employees, contribute to employee well-being and, hopefully, create a better environment overall,” she said.
