PEOPLE ARE LESS PASSIONATE ABOUT THEIR ORGANIZATION
Last week my post started the discussion on Bridging the Employee Passion Deficit, Part 1. This week, we continue by reviewing the data behind a study published by Keith E. Ayers, Founder Intégro Leadership Institute, Dr. Frank Cahill, Psychologist, BA. Grad Dip Applied Psych, Dpsych, MAPS with Dr. Elizabeth Hardie, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
The findings were significant – 86% of respondents were either passionate about the job only or passionate about the job and the organization. This indicates that the vast majority of employees are at the very least passionate about their job and the work they do. However, of these employees, just under half identified themselves as passionate about their job, but NOT about the organization. More precisely, in the research sample as a whole, 39% of respondents identified themselves as “passionate only about the job” compared to 47% who identified themselves as “passionate about the job AND the organization”.
The significance of the passion deficit was the gap between the importance of the needs and values in the survey to employees personally and how well they believe their manager, team, or organization satisfies them.
It is clear from the findings that there is a significant gap between generally engaged employees and those who are also passionate about their organization. The people lacking passion for the organization are less likely to go the extra mile, or be advocates for the organization when dealing with customers. They may even choose to move to another organization, one which they believe will better meet their needs. This is a clear threat to productivity, talent retention, and the bottom line.
Despite the
fact that these employees are passionate about their work, they get great satisfaction from knowing their
work makes a difference, but, their
trust for the organization is very low. This
underscores both the significance of the passion deficit and the scale of the
task to convert those employee who are only passionate about their job to those
that are passionate about BOTH their job and the organization.
What do you think the percentages are in your organization? Are YOU passionate about your job AND your organization? What can YOU do to help those who aren’t become more passionate about the organization and therefore more passionate about it’s progress? Let’s discuss your observations. You can reach me here or on LinkedIn.
