Dive Brief:
- A new survey by APPrise Mobile, a mobile employee communication firm, found that 23% of employees didn’t know their company’s CEO by face or name. The findings are from a Google Consumer Survey of 1,000 respondents at companies with more than 500 employees.
- Interestingly, 78% of workers over 25 could identify their CEO, while only 66% of those ages 18 to 24 could. But generally, 32% of employees didn't think they would recognize their CEO’s face or be able to pick out him or her out of a lineup.
- The survey results concluded that top-down communication is critical to employee engagement. It cites Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report on engagement, which found that disengaged workers cost businesses $450 billion to $550 billion annually.
Dive Insight:
The survey results don’t blame employees as negligent for being unable to identify their CEOs. Instead, the results point to other factors, such as infrequent communication from the top, more employees working remotely (71%), a seldom seen chief executive and email versus face-to-face correspondence (16%). Another 16% said they never receive messages from the CEO at all. Only slightly less than half (46%) of employees said they had personally met the CEO.
Employees polled also admitted they didn’t know their organization’s mission, another critical lapse with potentially dire ramifications. Employees need to understand their organization’s purpose to understand the value they bring to it, or they will not be engaged with the company.
The estimated cost of workplace disengagement is staggering. Employers can use these study results or conduct similar internal polls to find out how informed and engaged their workers are.