As we move up the corporate ladder, we take on new responsibilities, and our focus broadens. Because we have fewer day-to-day responsibilities, we tend to spend more time thinking about the organization’s longer-term goals. This change in focus can create challenges relating to your former peers.
A recent Korn Ferry study highlights that the disconnect between senior leadership and the rank and file may be widening. They note, “more than three-quarters of frontline workers, 77% to be exact, feel senior leadership doesn’t understand what’s happening at their workplace on a day-to-day basis. In some industries—like retail, healthcare, and travel—the figure is 18% or less.”
This could be a continuation of the feelings employees had after the Coivd-19 pandemic. Multiple studies indicated that employees felt their management was clueless about their day-to-day challenges. With those feelings fresh in employees’ minds, the uncertainty in today’s workforce, from the impact of AI to ongoing economic uncertainty, has imparted new challenges on leadership, reducing the amount of time they have to connect with their teams.
There has also been a shift away from the heightened empathy during and after the pandemic. “Only 38% of CEOs and board directors in a recent Korn Ferry survey ranked emotional intelligence as a top leadership priority over the past three years, and only one in five are prioritizing employee engagement.”
The pressure placed on leadership may be why there has been a change in tone over the past few years. It wasn’t that long ago that companies were seeking new and different options to improve their employee benefits, including mental health and well-being offerings. After encouraging more open and honest feedback, “Workers are less enabled to share their perspectives now,” according to Korn Ferry’s head of Corporate Affairs practice, Peter McDermott.
A significant change over the past couple of years that has led to long-term unemployment for many in the tech sector is the elimination of middle-management layers. This came after years of “over-hiring” during the so-called growth-at-all-costs era.
As companies scaled back their workforce, senior client partner in the Culture, Change, and Communications practice, Tamara Rodman states that, “leaders, amid their rush to flatten organizational structures by removing multiple layers of middle management, lost a critical conduit to the pulse of frontline workers. Middle managers are the proverbial ears to the ground keeping leaders apprised of how frontline workers are thinking and feeling. That link is missing.”
Just as companies were addressing their culture to be more employee-focused, the impact of the disconnect between management and frontline employees could undo all the goodwill and trust built. According to McDermott, “Employees know what’s going on behind the scenes and they know if what leaders are saying is accurate or not.”
When trust and confidence erode, employee engagement drops and innovation slows. Productivity and revenue projections are affected, adding more stress to the already anxious state of leadership amid continued uncertainty in the business landscape.
Instead of stepping away from employee-focused efforts over the past few years, now is the time to double down on internal communications. As associate client partner in the Culture, Change, and Communications practice, Karrin Randle says, “In the same way that executives have to stay grounded in customer needs and client trends, they have to stay just as curious about employee needs.”
For more information on creating an employee-focused culture, visit our blog.