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Economic crisis affects UK workers’ morale

           
Grapevine Online - January 2009

Over a third (37%) of employees in the UK are concerned about losing their jobs, an increase of 10% in the last quarter of 2008 alone. 

		   
This is according to the results of a new survey carried out by ETS, an HR consultancy and technology provider. 150,000 UK employees were involved in the ETS Employee Survey, which was conducted across the last two years.

		   	   
Employee confidence in their companies’ ability to meet their objectives has dropped steadily across the last two years from 84% to 57%. Between the fourth quarter of 2006 and 2008, employee's belief that senior management will tell them everything they need to know about the company fell from 70% to 41%.

		
 Commenting on these figures, ETS Senior Consultant Betsy Travis said: 
 These are significant falls in key measures of employee confidence and they show how quickly sentiment changed at the end of 2008. I believe that employers who act quickly will re-engage their employees and keep productivity and morale high. This year is going to be tough, but it’s going to be even tougher if the workforce is demoralised.