HR World 4/14
Global engagement statistics, dodgy Japanese management and office rumpy-pumpyThe office romance conundrum
You know the scenario. That hot guy (or girl) from accounts is making eyes at you again. Should you agree to go out with them or do the sensible thing and keep your head down?
The reference to accounts aside, this may sound like it’s been lifted from the pages of a teen magazine. But anyone who has ever had a crush on a co-worker understands the dilemma: do you listen to your head and stay in the friend zone or throw caution to the wind and start something beautiful (or, if not beautiful, then at least fun).
It turns out that for most people discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to romance in the workplace. According to a global survey by Monster, 39 per cent of respondents believe dating a colleague could hurt their career prospects and would nip love in the bud, while 15 per cent think it’s harmless but still wouldn’t go there.
Only 27 per cent are in favour of dating co-workers and believe it would do no harm, while a reckless 19 per cent believe it could damage their career but would do it anyway if they fancied the other person enough.
Interestingly, Americans are the most opposed to love at work: 52 per cent say that dating a colleague is harmful and they’d never do it, while just 18 per cent believe workplace relationships are harmless and would happily go there.
At the other end of the spectrum, the French (somewhat predictably) put love above all else: although 72 per cent believe an office romance could hurt their career, 49 per cent say that for the right man or woman, they’d pursue one anyway. On the other hand, only 24 per cent of Germans say the same – not enforcing any stereotypes there, then. However, non-Europeans are even more cautious: only 9 per cent of Indian respondents say they’d date a colleague even if it didn’t damage their career.
Japanese TV boss asks senior management for undated resignation letters
Katsuo Momii, the newly appointed president of Japan’s public broadcasting company, NHK, has come under fire for demanding undated letters of resignation from all 10 members of his executive board on his very first day in office.
According to The Japan Times, Momii asked the executives – who had been chosen by his predecessor – to submit the signed, sealed and undated letters to acknowledge his authority. The move essentially makes it easier for him to dismiss them should he deem it necessary.
While the president of NHK can sack a member of the executive board if they fail in their duty, he can’t do so without the agreement of the board of governors, which is appointed by the prime minister to oversee the executive board’s activities. By holding onto the executives’ resignation letters, Momii appears to be giving himself the option to bypass this process.
Although all 10 members agreed to the demand, opposition lawmakers questioned the move at a meeting of the Japanese parliament’s lower house Committee on Internal Affairs and Communications on 25 February. Momii, who was previously president at Nihon Unisys and an executive at Mitsui & Co, defended the decision by arguing that it was common practice in the business world – a claim later denied by other business leaders.
It’s not the first time Momii has courted controversy since his appointment. At his first press conference, he sparked widespread outrage with his comments that Japanese troops’ use of sex slaves during World War II was only wrong by “today’s morality”, and his assertion that despite NHK being a public-service broadcaster, “when the government says right, we cannot say left”.
Only one in eight workers worldwide engaged at work
Only 13 per cent of employees worldwide (around one in eight) are engaged at work, according to Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report.
The 142-country study for the 2011-2012 period also showed that actively disengaged workers (those who are negative and potentially hostile to their organisations) make up 24 per cent of the global workforce, outnumbering engaged workers (those who are emotionally invested in and focused on creating value for their organisations) by nearly two to one. Meanwhile, the percentage of workers who are simply ‘not engaged’ (that is, lacking motivation and unlikely to invest discretionary effort) is even greater at 63 per cent.
While these figures are a slight improvement compared with those for the 2009-2010 study – which put actively engaged workers at 11 per cent and actively disengaged workers at 27 per cent – Gallup points out that low levels of engagement continue to “hinder gains in economic productivity and life quality in much of the world”.
The report also reveals significant differences across the world when it comes to engagement. Regionally, East Asia (including China) has the lowest proportion of engaged workers in the world at 6 per cent, while North America has the highest proportion at 29 per cent – albeit largely thanks to the US (30 per cent) rather than Canada (16 per cent). Australia and New Zealand combined come a close second at 24 per cent.
Not all economically developed regions fare so well, though: in Western Europe, only 14 per cent of employees are engaged while 20 per cent are actively disengaged (compared to 18 per cent and 16 per cent in the US and the Antipodes respectively). But the regions with the highest proportion of actively disengaged workers are the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with 35 per cent, and Sub-Saharan Africa, with 33 per cent.
Notwithstanding these regional generalisations, the study’s findings for individual countries also throw up some surprises. For example, only 8 per cent of Indonesians are engaged at work (4 per cent below the average for Southeast Asia) despite the country’s strong economic growth. By contrast, employee engagement in the Philippines – another growing Southeast Asian economy – is a massive 29 per cent, the fourth highest in the entire study.
As for us Brits, just 17 per cent of us are engaged in our jobs, which puts us only slightly above the regional average. And with 26 per cent of our workforce actively disengaged, it’s probably safe to say we’re not going to be winning the Employee Engagement World Cup any time soon.
Fine for Aussie boss who sacked employee with cancer
A Perth-based company that sacked a long-term employee because he had cancer has been fined over $40,000 by the Federal Court as a warning to other employers, reports online business publisher Smart Company.
The employee, a spray painter, had worked for panel-beating business Hi-Lite Automotive for nine years and had accrued around 500 hours of sick leave when he discovered he had cancer. But when he told company owners Pasquale Minniti and his wife, they not only refused to pay him sick leave but spent over a month pressuring him to resign.
When the employee refused, Minniti eventually dismissed him, saying he did not believe there was anything wrong with him. At the time of the sacking in 2012, Minniti told Smart Company: “I would never sack a guy with cancer. At the end of the day I am not worried about it as I have not done anything wrong.”
The court disagreed, however, and found that the company had neglected to pay its employee $16,000 worth of sick leave, wages in lieu of notice and annual leave entitlements. The company was subsequently fined $35,000 while the Minnitis were personally ordered to pay $6,500.
Justice John Gilmour said: “There was nothing inadvertent about Minniti’s conduct in this case. He did not proceed upon a mistaken view of the law… The need for general deterrence in the present case is strong and the law should mark its disapproval of the respondent’s conduct and impose a penalty at a level which will serve as a warning to like-minded employers.”
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