Workers in the dark over company plans

Employers who fail to involve a wide range of staff in drawing up their corporate strategies are missing out on the buy-in and commitment needed to make sure their plans come to fruition, research from IRS Employment Review suggests.

A survey of HR managers in large public and private sector organisations found that those with formal systems for agreeing and reviewing their corporate strategies were more likely to report that employees at all levels of the organisation understood what was expected of them.

By contrast, the less formal the planning system, the more likely it was that first-line managers and employees in non-management roles would have a poor understanding of corporate goals.

Researchers at IRS Employment Review found that almost all the organisations surveyed said that employeesí understanding of what the company was trying to achieve was greatest at board level, and that it diminished at each step down towards the shop floor.

The survey also discovered that attempts to align the goals and rewards of individual employees with those of the organisation as a whole were taken seriously only in the highest tiers of management in most companies.

The individual goals set for first-line managers were either not very well linked or not at all linked to corporate goals at one-third of organisations surveyed. This was also the case for non-managerial employees at more than half the participating organisations.

The 72 organisations responding to the survey together employ more than 100,000 people. Among the best known are the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Taylor Woodrow Developments, Bentley Motors and Sue Ryder Care. A copy of the full report is attached as a PDF document.

IRS Employment Review managing editor Mark Crail said: ìFew employers believe that their boardís attempts to communicate the direction they want to take the organisation are reaching the shop floor and being understood. This is especially true of companies that rely on informal approaches to strategic planning and communications ñ with some of these admitting that even senior managers do not know where the organisation is heading.î

Press inquiries only to Mark Crail, managing editor, mark.crail@irseclipse.co.uk, 020 8625 2247.