Workers: Trust Is Lacking

Results from the second annual APCO Worldwide and Gagen McDonald employee engagement study show high rates of confidence among employees, but they sense their companies aren’t committed to them.

The Employee Confidence Index, which measures optimism, and the Employee Connection Index, which measures loyalty, yielded high numbers – 81.4 and 83.5, respectively. But the Employer Connection Index posted a score of just 63.3.

The firms offer three reasons for the gap:

•Degree to which the executive team supports and lives the company values

•Authentic, open and honest communication from the executive team

•Employees receiving consistent information from all the leaders in the company

The firms surveyed 500 full-time workers across the United States who have been with their companies for at least one year and work for companies with at least 100 employees.

This perceived lack of commitment by employers should not come as any surprise.

Many employers during the Great Recession that began in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009 dumped bodies like a snake shedding its skin.



Millions of loyal and veteran workers found themselves on the outside looking in – and wondering what the hell happened in a blink of an eye.

Some of the layoffs and buyouts across a multitude of industries – everything from publishing to construction – were justified.

Who could argue the logic of a half loaf being better than no loaf if a company’s survival is at stake?

But now there seems to be a nagging sense among many workers – including 14.5 million people who remain unemployed – that some companies took advantage of the national downturn to cut costs by axing employees.

These employers seem to fall into two categories:

•privately owned companies which had grown accustomed to the revenue boom days of the 1990s, when double-digit profits were possible.

•publicly held companies which had cut budgets to the bone before the Great Recession to make the bottom line rosier for shareholders.

I worked for both types of companies in my former newspaper career, and I can say it does make a big difference where you sit when things go wrong.

My former employer, The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., cut its staff by about 40 percent in late 2008 and early 2009.

The state’s biggest daily paper belongs to Advance Publications, the largest family-owned (Newhouse) media company in the United States.

The Ledger’s owners warned the paper would be closed or sold if steep staff cuts were not made.

The family owner offered a severance package of full salary and health care benefits for one year – a generous deal they did not have to strike with staffers.

Contrast that with the Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, N.J., another former newspaper employer of mine.

The corporate owner, Gannett Co. (USA Today), has sliced hundreds of jobs from its New Jersey papers, including the HNT, with little or no severance pay.

Those cuts continue at the HNT and follow a downsizing of the paper’s staff that began in the early 2000s as a way for management to improve its bottom line.

When the Great Recession hit, Gannett had no cushion and its stock fell like a rock.

I enjoyed my 30 years as a print journalist, and I learned a great deal about people, places and life – good and bad.

But perhaps the most valuable lesson I took away is simply this: Trust is earned, not given.

 Ken Cocuzzo