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Employees 'fearing for their livelihoods once again'
HR News |
29/07/2010
Human resources professionals face greater challenges in keeping employee morale levels high, based upon the findings of a new study.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) job satisfaction index fell to a record low score of +35 during the second quarter of 2010, down from +36 during the first three months of the year.
Employees were 29 per cent more likely to say their living conditions have declined since April than improved (ten per cent), compared to 28 per cent and 13 per cent when questioned in quarter one.
In further worrying statistics for HR departments, 18 per cent of employees are now worried about losing their jobs, rising to 26 per cent among public sector workers.
Some 40 per cent of survey respondents said their pay remained frozen during Q2 2010, despite the growth witnessed in the economy, while an unfortunate seven per cent saw their salary cut.
And almost a third of those surveyed (31 per cent) revealed that their employer had already made redundancies, while another 16 per cent are planning to do so.
Ben Willmott, senior public policy adviser at CIPD, warned the reality for many people in the workplace is that they "still feel like they are in the grip of a severe economic downturn".
This is particularly the case in the public sector, he noted, where employees have increasingly negative attitudes to their senior managers.
"Less than a fifth say they trust senior managers or are consulted by them on important decisions," Mr Willmott said.
"One of the difficulties facing senior public sector managers in the current environment, in which major spending cuts have been announced but few details have been released, is that they too may also be in the dark and may not yet know how many jobs will have to go."
Where this is the case, employers must do all they can to communicate the situation to staff and continue to have an open dialogue with employees, he added.
"People are more likely to accept tough decisions if they are kept informed and given the right information at the right time," Mr Willmott said.
Earlier this week, the Office for National Statistics reported that UK gross domestic product rose by 1.1 per cent during the second quarter of the year, well in excess of the 0.6 per cent predicted.
Posted by Stephen Wilkinson
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