Poor work/life balance undercuts leadership

I found this at SHRM.org. 

By Kathy Gurchiek

If it seems like employees spend increasingly more time at work than at home, it’s probably because they do.

The United States has one of the highest rates of average annual hours worked per person in industrialized economies, according to the International Labor Organization, and U.S. workers log a median of 50 hours per week, according to 2004 Harris Interactive figures.

Those long hours lead to more stress and an off-kilter work/life balance, and they can lead to lessened confidence in corporate leadership, according to an employee opinion study from Chicago-based ISR, an international employee research and consulting firm.

That lack of confidence also can hurt a business’s bottom line, according to data ISR collected in 2004 and its poll of more than 50,000 U.S. employees at financially high-performing companies.

“One of the more interesting findings that this study confirmed was the direct connection between good management practices and an improved bottom line,” psychologist and ISR Research Director Rebecca Masson said in a press release.

The study looked at companies in industries that include consumer goods, financial services, manufacturing and professional services. Respondents were those in non-supervisory positions as well as middle and upper management.

Among its findings:

 

• Employees reporting high stress levels and poor work/life balance said their leaders did an inadequate job of setting clear direction; only 63 percent gave their leaders a favorable rating.

• 68 percent ranked their leaders favorably in communicating important matters to employees.

• 79 percent ranked leaders favorably in encouraging cooperation.

On the flip side, among survey respondents reporting low stress levels and a strong work/life balance, 74 percent ranked their leaders favorably for setting direction; 75 percent ranked them favorably for communicating important matters; and 89 percent ranked them favorably for encouraging cooperation.

Managers who staff their departments sufficiently to handle the workload, distribute work fairly, allow schedule flexibility and are considerate of employees’ personal lives yield more satisfied customers, lower absenteeism, lower accident rates and increased revenue, ISR found in comparing its results to similar recent employee satisfaction studies linking workplace culture to key business outcomes.

Comments

[Edmund R]

If you really want to find out about how employee morale is affected by poor managers read, "160 Degrees of Deviation: The Case for the Corporate Cynic" by Jerome Alexander.
You don't need extensive research to figure this out. Alexander lived it and writes about it. A great quick Read.