"China, we have a workplace problem" by Gallup

Gallup published a provocative article about China's low workforce engagement one year ago.

In 2013, 6% of Chinese people reported being engaged at their jobs and about 26% were actively disengaged.

To put that into perspective, the U.S. workforce is about 30% engaged and about 20% actively disengaged.

China, we have a workplace problem.

 

Command-and-control management doesn't work anymore

If you were to ask me what the most dangerous state of mind in China is right now, I'd say that it's active disengagement in the workplace because it's so widespread. The cause of disengagement in China is the same as it is in every workplace around the world: The workers despise their immediate boss. And the reason they hate their boss is because the wrong person was hired to be the boss. It's that simple.

How does this happen? Well, I know just enough about the Chinese workplace to know that control is of enormous cultural importance. The type of people who are named "boss" in China command and control their "underlings," and those underlings do as they're told. People are not named manager for their ability to engage and develop employees.

But this command-and-control approach doesn't work in the new global workplace, where employees demand more autonomy and want more freedom of thought and action and to be more empowered and engaged. Old top-down management, the type that's entrenched in China, just doesn't work anymore.

 

China's national workforce will be transformed -- becoming highly productive and engaged -- when its organizations hire and develop managers who inspire employees to give high scores on these items.

These are the 12 most important, and most predictive, workplace elements Gallup has discovered. China's societal advancement -- or collapse -- lies within these elements, as employee engagement boosts productivity, quality, customer engagement, retention, safety, and profitability.

 

 

It would be wise for all Chinese executives and managers to consider how they can deliver on these simple yet transformational demands of the workplace. If Chinese leaders were to change their current spectacularly bad nationwide score of 6% engaged workers to 20% engaged workers, the country would be a completely different place -- one with a much brighter, more stable future.

China must stop choosing the wrong people to manage!

 

Again a voluntaristic (and typically American) call for change, as if  deeply-rooted cultural features could easily be shifted for the sake of good management...