Latest Modern Survey Study Shows Decrease in U.S Engagement Magnified in Financial Services Industry
Minneapolis, MN, July 20, 2010 – Over the past twelve months, employee engagement has dropped significantly across the U.S. workforce. In March 2010, Modern Survey released the results of a comprehensive study depicting a precipitous decline in the degree to which U.S. workers are psychologically invested in their work. Now, nearly six months later, a new study focused specifically on the financial services industry shows the same trend of declining engagement, only magnified to a startling degree.
While employee engagement had trended upward in the U.S. financial services sector from 2008 to 2009, over the past year, the industry has experienced a tremendous decline. Most alarmingly, the number of disengaged employees has skyrocketed from 11% of the population in 2009 to 29% in 2010, a statistically significant increase of eighteen percentage points.
Modern Survey’s Employee Engagement Index uses five questions that gauge the extent to which employees: take pride in their company, believe they have a promising future at their company, recommend their company as a great place to work, go “above and beyond” their normal job duties to help their company succeed, and intend to stay with their company. All five of these items saw steep declines from 2009 to 2010, including twenty-plus percentage point drops in the degree to which employees take pride in their organization, and the degree to which they are willing to put forth extra effort on the job.
Modern Survey President, Don MacPherson, explains, “The pattern we are seeing in the financial services industry is in line with the pattern we have seen for the overall U.S. workforce. But within financial services the declines in engagement are much more dramatic. Worker disengagement is even worse for the largest financial services companies. At companies with over 10,000 employees, two out of every five employees are disengaged. That compares to one in five for the overall U.S. workforce.
“Another disturbing trend we found is that employee “intent to stay” continues to drop. In 2009 it dropped to 62% favorable from 65% favorable the year before. This year it dropped to 55% favorab
