47% of UK employees feel their senior leadership team is effective

Less than half (47%) of UK employees rate their senior leadership team as effective, according to a study by the Kenexa Research Institute.

Developed from a survey of 21,920 employees in 18 countries, the study shows that an organisation’s senior leadership team has a significant impact on its employees’ overall opinions of the company and engagement levels, which have been linked to both earnings per share and total shareholder return.

Employees in India (69%), Brazil (59%) and the United States (54%) report the highest ratings of leadership effectiveness followed by those in China (53%) and Canada (52%). Workers in Japan (33%) report the lowest ratings. The average number of employees worldwide who rate their leadership team as effective is 51%.

Jack Wiley, executive director, Kenexa Research Institute, said: "UK employees view their senior leadership team as effective if it quickly responds to marketplace opportunities and competitive threats, keeps employees well-informed about organisational issues, makes decisions that demonstrate that quality and improvement are top priorities and motivates people to work hard and to put in extra effort when needed."

For all workers studied, a strong organisational leadership team has a significant impact on the level of employee engagement. This is the extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organisational success and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplishing tasks important to the achievement of organisational goals. Engaged employees favourably rate their pride in their organisation, their overall job satisfaction and they are willing to recommend their organisation as a place to work.

Employees with positive opinions of their leadership team state a much higher intention to stay with the organisation compared to those who are dissatisfied. They are also much more likely to have confidence in the organisation’s prospects and more likely to feel that they have a promising future career within the organisation.

"These findings reinforce the importance of senior management’s communication with employees," said Jack Wiley. "Those teams that demonstrate a strong emphasis on gaining employees’ confidence through their decisions and actions, keep employees well informed regarding company direction and have the ability to deal with the organisation’s challenges are the teams that will build more highly engaged workforces and outperform their competitors."

The Kenexa Research Institute is a division of Kenexa (NASDAQ: KNXA), a global provider of business solutions for human resources.

For more information, please call Kenexa on 020 8585 2345 or visit www.kenexa.com

Editor’s notes - The data comes from an analysis of the WorkTrends™ database, an annual survey of worker opinions conducted by the Kenexa Research Institute. Approximately 10,000 U.S. citizens and 1,000 individuals in each of the following countries/regions took the WorkTrends survey online: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and 750 individuals in Russia. The Gulf Co-op Council (GCC) countries of the Middle East were also surveyed to a lesser extent due to surveying limitation in that region of the world. The GCC countries include the Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait. Altogether, 21,920 employees were surveyed.

Kenexa® provides business solutions for human resources. It helps global organisations to multiply business success by identifying the best individuals for every job and fostering optimal work environments for every organisation. For more than 20 years, Kenexa has studied human behaviour and team dynamics in the workplace, and has developed the software solutions, business processes and expert consulting that help organisations impact positive business outcomes through HR. Kenexa is the only company that offers a comprehensive suite of unified products and services that support the entire employee lifecycle from pre-hire to exit.

Journalists who want further details about Kenexa should call Amanda Dawson on 020 8953 8863 or e-mail amanda@daws.com