It’s frustrating for employees when bosses and line managers don’t give them recognition for the hard work that they put in. And it seems this is a far more prevalent problem than might be expected: a new study by Oracle, the integrated cloud applications and platform service provider, has found that in western Europe a majority of employees are forced to turn to their workmates for positivity.
According to a survey of 1,511 employees throughout the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, 42% of employees believe peers have the most positive impact on their engagement at work. Only 21% and 7% of employees said line managers and business unit managers respectively played the biggest role in keeping them engaged. However, the most worrying finding was that only 3% of employees believe human resources (HR) made the largest contribution to staff engagement.
Though employees are now turning to fellow work peers to feel engaged in their workplace, 57% are longing for a more proactive management style and only 26% say this is currently provided in their place of work. Even worse, line managers came under fire for lack of communication, as 56% of employees say their immediate superiors were average, poor or very poor at providing regular feedback. The study also found that employees believed that regular engagement with management would increase how they worked, with 56% saying increased engagement enhances their productivity.
Loïc Le Guisquet, president for EMEA and Asia Pacific regions at Oracle, said: “From the perspective of employees there is a gap between what makes them engaged and the approach taken by management; a gap which provides HR with a great opportunity to take ownership of engagement within their organisations. Employees feel engaged by their peers and HR can help encourage this by providing access to sharing and collaboration platforms and social tools. But employee expectations are also changing fast, particularly those of millennials. They want recognition and feedback and they want it consistently.”
Management better start sharpening up on their positive feedback and encouragement then. 
