Elliott Masie recently did a poll about economic anxiety in the workplace, and more than 1,444 learning professionals responded. When asked about the level of economic anxiety in their workplaces, 56 percent of the respondents said they have some anxiety in the workplace, 29 percent said they have severe or high anxiety in the workplace, and 15 percent have low or no anxiety in the workplace.
Masie also asked what actions organizations have taken in response to economic anxiety, and 46 percent said no actions were taken to date. How can that be possible? How productive can employees be if they’re worrying about money, job stability or housing costs while they’re on the job?!@!
I recently wrote an “Executive Briefings ” on the fact that if your employees are stressed about the financial crisis, you need to address it. It can’t be the elephant in the room. So why aren’t organizations dealing with the issue? What’s the problem? Why is there no need to address it?
It’s not as though the solutions to employee anxiety are expensive. It just requires some honesty on the part of the organization. According to Masie’s poll, 21 percent of the respondents said they’ve had briefings by leadership on the organization’s economic health, 13 percent said they’ve had briefings by leadership on the economic crisis, 13 percent said they’ve had manager conversations with employees on economic anxiety, and 7 percent said they’ve had workshops/briefings on dealing with 401(k) management. These simple actions can help ease employee worry and will help employees be more productive in the long run.
