Study: 90 percent of employees prefer bad news to secrecy
Keeping employees in the dark about your organization can hurt productivity or, worse, make them quit. If your leaders balk at transparency, consider these tips from fellow industry pros.
Think about the last time you had to deliver bad news.
Maybe your company’s profits were dipping, or fluctuations in the industry or marketplace were hampering business.
Although it’s tempting to ignore that information and pray it will go away, a new study from Geckoboard found that more than 90 percent of employees would rather hear bad news than be kept in the dark.
Sixty percent of workers say they are more productive when they know more about the business, and one in four employees have quit, or know someone who has quit, a job because a manager didn’t keep them informed about what was going on with the company.
Despite these findings, most companies don’t do a good job of keeping employees in the loop. Only 10 percent of workers say they are aware of how their company is doing in real time.
For most corporate communicators, this probably isn’t shocking.
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