What other kinds of answers could we expect from a citizenry that's been depicted as economically threatened?
Positive ones, it turns out.
Across the board the 34 questions prompted upbeat -- sometimes even glowing -- responses. Could this be the same American workforce we've been reading about? (See below for a copy of the survey questionnaire, a complete breakdown of the answers, and a description of how the poll was conducted.) A sampling of the results:
- 90% of the respondents said that they were not worried about losing their jobs (even though 39% said they had friends who lost jobs because of downsizing).
- 69% believed they had been compensated fairly over the past year.
- 75% said they had not had three or more days in the past month when stress caused them to behave badly with their families.
- 70% said that management did what was necessary to make their company a great place to work.
- 80% said that their company was "family friendly."
- 82% said that every day they have an opportunity to do what they do best.
Perhaps most contradictory to current popular consensus was this finding: 63% of workers felt more secure in their jobs than they did a year ago, compared with only 20% who felt less secure. (Seventeen percent felt about the same.) What's more, when asked to rank their level of satisfaction with their place of employment -- on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 representing "extremely satisfied" -- 71% rated it at 4 or 5 while only 9% rated it at 1 or 2.
Are Americans worried about the practical matter of keeping a job? No. Do they think their employers treat them fairly? Yes. And from the most personal perspective, do they feel their jobs fulfill them and enrich their lives? Yes again.
To better assess whether the survey results are as positive as they initially appear, we compared our findings with those of similar national surveys conducted by Gallup in 1994 in Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany. The results from the working populations of those countries were also more positive than negative, but not nearly as positive as those in the United States. And American workers are hands-down more positive about how they are treated by their employers than are workers in any other country. To the question "In the past seven days, have you received recognition or praise for good work?" 62% of U.S. workers answered yes. The next highest percentage of yes answers came from Canada, with 54%. Germany registered 36% yes answers and Japan a meager 33%. The same relative findings emerged from questions about whether someone had talked with employees about their progress at work and whether supervisors seemed to care about them as people. U.S. workers, it appears, aren't just happy. They seem to be the happiest workers in the world.
Still, interpreting survey results is sometimes a matter of how one wants to cast the light. So here's another angle: Imagine you're the manager receiving positive answers to a survey of your own workforce. (To make this proposition real, you can conduct the survey, using the questionnaire on below.) What would you think if you saw that 84% of those surveyed felt that their supervisors seemed to care about them as people? That a whopping 96% of them said that they knew what was expected of them at work? That 82% felt that every day they had the opportunity to do what they do best? That 87% said that the mission of their employer made them feel important? That 69% felt they were compensated fairly? That 79% were not looking for another job?
Wouldn't you be thrilled with how satisfied -- even how downright happy -- the vast majority of your employees appeared to be? You'd probably think you were doing a pretty good job.
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4. What's wrong with this picture?
Why then do journalists, policy-makers, and politicians paint such a dismal portrait of the American workplace, indicting business and business owners in the process? Are they wrong? In an environment of much-hyped public sentiment that the economy is going to hell in a handbasket, what are we to make of the positive results from the Inc./Gallup survey? Does the poll give the lie to everything we've heard about economic jitters? Is it wrong?
The overall health of the U.S. economy is hard to read. At a time when we have the lowest unemployment rate in almost 30 years, real wages have fallen from a 1979 average of $24,000 for a high school graduate to a 1995 average of $18,000. And there is unquestionably concern among American workers about what the future holds. Still, it's difficult in the face of our survey not to conclude that there's something the gurus and opinion makers aren't getting. In his recent book, How to Tell When You're Tired: A Brief Examination of Work (W. W. Norton, 1995), Reg Theriault uses Karl Marx to explain the shortcomings of many economic thinkers: "Marx, it appears, lacked insight into the reality of day-to-day work, perhaps because he never really held down a job."
But amateurs appear to have trouble interpreting the work-related feelings of their compatriots, too. The regular folks we asked to read our survey results were shocked at the positive findings. Doubt and denial were the common reactions. To collect more anecdotal research and test theories about the apparent mismatch between public perception and statistical reality, we asked a number of people (staff members, relatives, passersby) to answer the questionnaire before looking at the results. Every one of them answered the majority of the questions positively -- yet everyone was astounded at the overwhelmingly positive response of the nation as a whole.
