I've been writing some posts lately about the dark side of organizational life. Why Top Talent Leaves and What We Like (and Hate) About Work both focus on the all-too-common phenomenon of badly managed, uninspiring companies with no clear direction.
But all is not awful. Even though statistics From Mercer show that half of all employees are disaffected - either seriously considering leaving their organizations or in a state of fairly profound apathy - the flip side of that statistic is the half of all employees are pretty happy: they like what they do, and they feel positive about their organization, their manager, and their company's senior management.
So I was intrigued yesterday when my assistant, Dan, linked me to this chart of the 25 highest rated CEOs from Glassdoor, which is written up on Forbes.com here. The rankings are based on feedback from employees who were asked one simple survey question: Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company? (In 2011, almost 300,000 employees rated their CEO on Glassdoor - so, though it's informal and not validated, there's a pretty good body of response.)
The top 10 are especially interesting to me; heavily weighted toward technology-focused companies (Apple, QUALCOMM, Google, Intel, and VMware) and service providers (Ernst & Young, American Express, and Accenture), with just two in retail (Starbucks and Nordstorm). In fact, in the rest of the top 25, there's only one other retail-store-based company - Home Depot.
One thing this says to me is that it's tough to run a company well that consists largely of front-line employees in a retail environment. It makes sense: having a well-run, inspiring retail company requires good first-line managers and a consistent focus on helping front-line employees know what the company stands for and then including them in that vision so they feel motivated to deliver on the company's promise. Based on this survey, I'd say Starbucks (Howard Schultz) and Nordstrom (Blake Nordstrom) are doing a very good job at this.
And what do you think about the inclusion of so many hi-tech companies on the list? Is it that, because they're newer, they have less historical baggage to overcome in terms of creating an environment where employees like to work and feel satisfied with management? Or perhaps it's more about the CEOs themselves - are the CEOs of hi-tech companies more inspiring and inclusive, or better leaders?
I'd love to hear your point of view....
