Top Management Gets Mediocre Marks
<p><strong>Boston — July 18</strong><br />Senior management gets mediocre marks from human resource professionals for communicating with employees, according to a survey by Novations Group, a global consulting and training firm based in Boston. </p><p>Nearly half of the 2,000 HR executives surveyed give top management a grade of C or less.<br /><br />In regard to the question, "How would you grade the effectiveness of your senior management’s communications with employees?" the answers are as follows:</p><ul><li>A: 14 percent</li><li>B: 39 percent</li><li>C: 32 percent</li><li>D: 13 percent</li><li>F: 2 percent <br /></li></ul><p> </p><p>The findings are a warning to organizations that they are failing to connect with their most important asset: their employees," said Rebecca Hefter, Novations senior vice president for training. “HR people have a unique vantage on employee opinions and attitudes and are ideally placed to evaluate the communications effectiveness of top management. </p><p>"The survey results aren’t just disturbing — they’re also startling, given the time and money devoted to internal communications.”<br /><br />The HR executives were also asked to identify the causes of senior management’s difficulty connecting with employees:</p><ul><li>Senior management relies too much on e-mail (and little face-to-face time with employees): <strong>35 percent</strong></li><li>Senior management assumes a single message is enough: <strong>30 percent</strong></li><li>Senior management has no feedback loop: <strong>28 percent</strong></li><li>Senior management’s messages often lack clarity: <strong>24 percent</strong></li><li>Senior management communicates too much, too often: <strong>3 percent</strong></li></ul><p> </p><p>“Interestingly, few faulted management for trying too much to communicate,” Hefter said. “What stands out is the inherent weakness of e-mail for employee communications — the Internet is used more and more, but there seems to be a point of diminishing returns when e-mail is relied upon so much. </p><p>"Employees like to see and hear their management and may feel depersonalized by too much e-mail messaging instead of direct contact.”<br /><br />The Novations Group Internet survey of 2,046 senior human resources and training and development executives was conducted by Equation Research. </p>
