Most Workers Say Leadership Makes Decisions They Don’t Understand

A recent nationwide Howdy.com survey of full-time workers uncovered just how deep the worker-leadership divide can get: 54% of workers think their leadership lives in a different world.

Howdy.com surveyed  over 1,000 full-time employees and found:

• 42% believe their C-suite is held to a lower standard of behavior than a typical employee.
• 24% said their leadership doesn’t follow their own policies around paid time off or return-to-office.
• 60% said their leadership doesn’t work as hard as they do.
• 72% said their leadership has made a decision they didn’t understand in the last year; 16% said it happened more than five times.
• 61% of those who think their company is run poorly are planning on leaving within a year.
• 31% said they could do a better job running the company than leadership.

Still, most (79%) like their leadership, and 74% trust their leadership. However, more than a quarter of employees (27%) have experienced layoffs in the last year and 28% said leadership doesn’t value their employees. Most respondents (70%) would rather see leadership take a pay cut than lay off employees.

The survey found almost most companies need to examine their communication strategies, and the data points to three levers. With 68% of employees saying they have no say in how the company is run, simply giving people a voice in decisions is the cheapest trust-building move available. The second is consistency: A quarter of employees said leaders don’t follow their own policies, and nothing erodes trust faster than rules that apply to everyone but the people who wrote them. The third is visible, shared sacrifice—the majority who would rather see a pay cut than layoffs are really telling you how they judge whether leadership is in it with them.