December 30, 2004
Employee Satisfaction Study
Source: 71% of Workers Commit This Indiscretion
A fascinating survey of 1,000 to 1,200 employees over a 2-1/2 year period done by Gallup found that 71% of them are slackers. Some questions come to mind:
- How did our system get to a point where the majority of workers are disconnected from their work, something they spend over 75,000 hours with during their lifetime?
- Has it always been this way?
- Is this a result of human nature? Our economic system? Both?
- What do we know about the characteristics of the 29%?
Posted at December 30, 2004 12:18 AM
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It would be interesting to see a study of the quality of work a so-deemed "slacker" produces compared to the remaining slackless.
Mcenroe said that a player only needs 30 minutes of productive high-focus practice a day to be good. I would wager that in a well managed environment, a large percentage of slackers produce great work when they work. The reverse psychology of "chill" starbucks-like work environments are scary, misleading, and utterly popular -- seemingly ala the Gortex company.
Is it a social expectation to slack-off at work? The fact that I'm writing this at work suggests so.
This study has a self selecting bias. If the study was on entrepreneurs, one'd probably find that 3/4 of entrepreneurs are /not/ slackers. This is why some people own companies and the rest just work for companies.
Good point about the self-selecting bias. I think about 12% of adults in America are entrepreneurs. If you take out this bias, probably an even larger percent of employees are 'slackers'.
I've also read that there are some similar statistics with home ownership. The majority of people are renters and not owners of property. The renters are more likely to not invest back in their property and neighborhood as they don't have of an incentive too.
