 Email |
 Print |
 Post Comment
|
Share |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
A costly scandal at a French bank recently has observers wondering why workers didn’t report suspicious activity. Some are saying the scandal highlights one of the most important challenges employers face today: poor employee engagement.
| Related Stories |
| Why Having Engaged Employees Matters |
| Dear Employees, Keep Complaining |
| Top New Year’s Resolution: Keep Employees |
In January, Société Générale announced that for years one of its low-level traders had been masking trades, which ultimately resulted in €4.9 billion ($7.2 billion) in losses for the giant French bank.
Meanwhile, the credibility of the bank’s management has come under scrutiny after the junior trader told French prosecutors that his fictitious trading started as far back as 2005 — a year earlier than the bank had acknowledged — and French officials have berated it for lax risk controls.
Some observers are saying the scandal highlights some of the major challenges employers face regarding their workers today.
Although the scandalous — and very costly — fraud was perpetrated by one employee, an internal probe uncovered that many back-office employees failed to alert their supervisors of suspicious activity.
A February 20 report issued by the committee overseeing the internal probe found that the bank’s controls “were carried out in accordance with the procedures, but did not make it possible to identify the fraud before Jan. 18, 2008.” It added that in some cases, “operating staff did not systematically carry out more detailed checks.”
“The Inspection General department has refrained from drawing any conclusions at this stage regarding the responsibility of the front office managers supervising the fraud’s author …” said the 22-page preliminary report, called Mission Green.
Now, these other employees didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. But they also didn’t go beyond what was expected of them as laid out in their job descriptions. The fact that staff members didn’t go beyond what was expected of them may point to a larger issue of employee engagement.
Employee engagement, in which employees feel a vested interest in the company’s success and are therefore both willing and motivated to perform beyond their stated job requirements, differs not only from company to company but from country to country as well.
Employers in France in particular are faced with particularly challenging engagement problems.
Consulting firm Mercer LLC recently found that only 53 percent of employees in France said they would recommend their organizations to others as “a good place to work.” Forty-eight percent said they think senior managers do a good job of managing their workforce. Fewer than three in 10 feel they are paid fairly for their performance and only one in 5 indicates that their organization does a good job of matching pay to performance. Only one in 4 feels that their organization is doing a good job of retaining its most talented people.
According to a recent report by Mercer, India ranks first among 22 countries in terms of employee engagement with an overall favorable rating of 25 percent, while Mexico scored second with 19 percent. The United States ranked in the middle with a 1 percent rating, while Japan ranked last at -23 percent.
The study, which polled 12,500 employees worldwide, asked employees which of 12 factors most influenced their engagement at work.
Workers in the United Kingdom and the U.S. demand more respect and expect more opportunities for career advancement, while workers in France and India cited the type of work as the strongest driver of engagement. In France, workers also place a premium on work/life balance, and in India, where workers appear to be the most engaged, the type of work performed and promotion opportunities seem to be the biggest motivating factors; four-fifths of Indian workers say they would recommend their organizations as “a good place to work.”
Chinese employees, which posted the third-highest level of engagement, place a premium on benefits, but workers indicate this is an area where they’re increasingly dissatisfied. In Japan, employees rate base pay as most important. German workers, meanwhile, cited the people they work with as the strongest factor.
Mexican employees value structured and ongoing developmental activities that will prepare them for upward mobility.
Globally, respect ranks as the No. 1 factor contributing to employee engagement.
Had workers at Société Générale known about the fraud, would respect have driven them to be whistleblowers?
Overall Favorable Ratings by Country
Source: Mercer
Additional
| Share | |
|
|
|
|
Follow Discussion
Recommend 
See More Comments
See Less Comments
|
||||
|
||||
|
Advertisement
|
Browse IMT by Date
Browse IMT by Date
| Also Featured in IMT |
| Expert’s Corner |
| How Food Companies Can Trim the Fat |
| The food industry is struggling to cope with market fluctuations. In this Expert’s Corner, Jonathan Daiker, a partner at CFO services firm the Interlochen Group, identifies strategies to stabilize costs and boost profits. |
| Sites We Like |
| Harvard Business Review |
| IEEE Spectrum |
| Lifehacker |
| Popular Science |
| Shopfloor |
 |
I agree that it is everyone’s responsibility to report abuse and violations in the workplace, especially given the magnitude that has brought this particular French bank, and others, to their knees.
While I don’t know how employee engagement is looked upon around the world, the “whistleblower” mentality here in the US, at least, is not highly regarded. From what I read, and what I have witnessed in a Fortune 50 company some years ago, making management aware of these issues brings with it a stigma that travels with that person into their next employment and beyond. I think it can be blamed on the “embarrassment” that the exposed management feels when the abuse is uncovered, usually because they did not have processes in place to reveal problems before they became catastrophic.
Unfortunately for the whistleblower, it’s a small world, especially when it’s industry specific. With corporate buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, the do-gooder could be met at his new employ with a reputation of not being trusted to keep their mouth shut, and shunned from a industry where they have built all of their marketable experience. The price of their revelation could be ultimately quite costly, both financially and socially.
Coop, I couldn’t have said it better.