Рабочая программа (стр. 3 )

Unilever Bestfoods also hopes to seduce Latino consumers, encouraging them to “enamorar los con Ragu” (fall in love with Ragu) through the pasta sauce brand`s first television ad campaign, launched last month, aimed at US Hispanics. Shot in Argentina, the ads tell the story of how a family falls in love with Ragu.

With a Hispanic population rapidly heading towards 40m, the increase in numbers is matched by a sharp rise in Latino spending power. In addition, it seems that Latinos may be more responsive to advertising than other groups. A Nielsen Media Research study released this month found that Spanish-language television viewers pay more attention to commercials and more likely to base their purchasing decisions on advertisements than other US consumers.

But while the Hispanic community may represent an appealing target for advertisers, it is by no means a uniform one. American Latinos represent a highly diverse population – the word “Hispanic” is an ethnic category, rather than a racial group, that can refer to people whose origins range from Mexican and Puerto Rican to Cuban and Argentinean.

Marketers also need to take into account differences between first-generation and second-generation Hispanics. “As an advertiser, it is important to be aware and sensitive to these differences and what they mean from a strategy and communications perspective”, says Susan Wayne, Executive Vice-President of marketing at Old Navy, the clothing retailer that is part of the Gap group. Recognition of this fact was what last November prompted Old Navy to create its first Spanish-language TV campaign. “We know from our research that we had a stronger emotional connection with our Hispanic customers who were very integrated in American culture. But we also found out that we were not speaking to Hispanics who are predominantly Spanish-speaking and who are more comfortable with Hispanic culture”, says Ms Wayne.

From the Financial Times

Employment

Bait for the headhunters

That unexpected phone call offering a plum job with another firm isn't always just a matter of chance. Given a little planning, the talent scouts can be directed to your door. Stephanie Jones explains how.

"Naturally, I was headhunted into my present job," a typical City whizz-kid boasts. "Headhunters ring all the time. During Big Bang they phoned us so often that we put their calls over the office loudhailer. Then we'd have a laugh when the headhunter said: “Confidentially, I have a uniquely exciting opportunity that might just interest you Being headhunted is not only for young bloods and famous chief execu­tives. Almost 90 per cent of the top 1,000 companies use executive search consultants to find senior people. In the last few years they have been joined by smaller companies, accounting and law firms, chartered surveyors, architects, private hospitals, the media, and even local authorities and Government depart­ments.

So how do you attract those ego-trip phone calls which spell a new career opportunity?

John Harper, 33, has been headhunt­ed three times. His first job was as a graduate trainee with Procter & Gamble where, after five years, he was a brand manager on Pampers, which he had launched in the UK market.

He was invited to Kenner Parker (the American toy and games manufacturer responsible for Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly and Care Bears) where in five more years he rose to be European marketing and operations director.

Then he was lured away into Avis, the car-hire giant, and two years later head­hunted again into the job he started last week as international marketing director for Reebok, the sportswear company. He won't quote figures, but each time he moved his salary and benefits showed substantial improvement.

Not one of these positions was adver­tised. Indeed, before his latest move he was not considering a career change at all. So his advice to those hoping to hit the headhunt trail is born of experience:

•  First, start out with a large interna­tional company. Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Shell, IBM and Mars, for exam­ple, offer not only excellent training but a ready-made network of contacts around the world, arguably more helpful to a career than being a Harvard alumnus.

•  Secondly, ensure you are noticed by superiors. Headhunters frequently find people through referrals from a source, usually a more senior person who suggests suitable names. Successful and highly-respected mentors should be cultivated, so that they will think of you when approached.

•  Thirdly, make an impression out­side your company. The research depart­ments of search firms take note of execu­tives mentioned in the Press and trade journals.

•  You can't be sure exactly which par­ticular self-publicizing effort led to an approach (headhunters rarely reveal how they found you, and it is naive to ask) but developing a profile stands you in good stead. Whenever Kenner Parker was launching another toy or game, John Harper's name repeatedly cropping up in Marketing, Marketing Week and the Financial Times played a useful part in his progress.

•  Fourthly, when you want to move - and don't stay in the same job, with the same company, for more than five to seven years - make it known. According to Harper it's rare, and only when you're hitting the big time, that a headhunter will call out of the blue.

Most headhuntees have put out the word that they are looking, and have taken the initiative by sending their CV to selected research consultants. When moving from Kenner Parker to Avis, Harper passed his CV to fifty searchers, identified through friends, contacts and other headhunters.

The likelihood that one of the search firms will be looking for someone just like you is remote, so it's wise to cast your net widely. Harper was headhunted into Avis by Bruce Rowe of Rowe International in Paris - not only one of his targeted search consultants, but a fel­low ex-Procter & Gamble man, which underlines the value of his first piece of advice.

Finally, keep in with headhunters. This includes a willingness to act as a source. Harper admits he would not recommend anyone he was current­ly working with - it would conflict with his allegiance to his employer. But he will mention outstanding people he has worked with in the past.

©The Daily Telegraph

Employment

The mercenary manager

Companies that have warned their workforces to confront the realities of job insecurity and limited careers are finding they have created a new type of mercenary manager prepared to move to the highest bidder, according to a new report. The survey by Ashridge Management Centre says the wave of insecurity that affected managers during the corporate downsizings of the early 1990s was an unpleasant experience for many, but it has taught them to be more self-centered and independent about their careers.

The backlash for companies, according to Laurence Handy, Ashridge's director of research, is that many managers are now more likely to look elsewhere to further their careers if their current employer is not meeting their expectations. “They are saying they want something that's interesting, and they want paying for it. You now have a very hard-nosed group of people who have got the message,” he said.

Nearly three-quarters of the 553 managers who responded to the survey said they felt in control of their jobs. “This is a marked change from previous years” research when the message coming from managers was that they did not feel in control of anything; said Mr. Handy. ‘Life has moved on and now managers are flexing their muscles.' he added. The pressure is moving over to the other side with the laws of supply and demand and now companies are screaming that they are spending a fortune on headhunters.'

Managers are keeping their options open, says the report. More turn to their partners for career advice than to the personnel specialist or to their immediate boss. Trust in senior management also appears to have declined in some companies. Many of the managers interviewed in the survey complained that fear and threats were the prime motivators in their companies.

From the Financial Times

Employment

JOB ADS:

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

Checking out job advertisements is popular with executives worldwide. But though the activity is universal, is the same true of the advertisements? Are executive positions in different countries advertised in the same way? A comparison of the jobs pages of The Times of London, Le Monde of Paris and Germany`s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung suggests not.

First, what UK job seekers consider an essential piece of information – what the post pays – is absent from French and German adverts. It is often left to applicants to raise this themselves. In contrast, most British advertisements mention not only salary, but also other material incentives including a car and fringe benefits. French or German advertisements rarely refer to these.

The attention given to rewards in the UK indicates the importance of the job and its responsibility. In Germany and France, that information is given by the level of experience and qualifications demanded. Salary can be assumed to correspond with this.

If French and German adverts are vague about material rewards, they are precise about qualifications. They usually demand `a degree in…`, not simply `a degree`. In Germany, for example, a technical director for a machine tool company will be expected to have a Dipl.-Ing degree in Mechanical Engineering.

French advertisements go further. They may specify not just the type of grande ecole degree, but sometimes a particular set of institutions (Formation superieure X, Centrale, Mines, HEC, ESSEC), these being the most famous grandes ecoles.

All this contrasts with the vague call for `graduates` (or `graduate preferred`) which is found in the UK. British companies often give the impression that they have a particular type of applicant in mind, but are not sure about the supply and will consider others. Their wording suggests hope and uncertainty, as in this advertisement from The Times: `Whilst educational standarts are obviously important, a large measure of personal oomph* is likely to secure the success of your application`.

In the UK qualifications beyond degree level make employers nervous, but in France or Germany it is difficult to be `overqualified`. Many people on Germany executive boards have doctorates and the French regard five or six years of intensive post-baccalaureat study at a grande ecole as ideal training. British managers are not selected primarily for their intelligence, as managers are in France or for their expert knowledge, as in Germany. Instead the British give importance to social, political and leadership skills.

This difference also shows in the personal qualities mentioned. British advertisements stress energy, ability to communicate and motivate. German advertisements like achievement, but it tends to be less personality-driven German companies want candidates with sound knowledge, experience and competence in their field. They rarely recruit novices as do British employers. French advertisements refer more to intellectual qualities like analytical aptitude and independence.

Even the tone of the job advertisements is different in these three French and German standards, British advertisements are very racy**. They attract your executives with challenges such as: `Are you reaching your potential?`, whereas French and German advertisements are boringly direct, aiming to give information about the job rather than to sell it.

All this points to three different conceptions management. The French regard it as intellectual complex, the Germans as technically complex, and the British as interpersonally complex. But they agree on one thing: it`s complex.

Jean-Louis Barson

May 1993 INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT(adapted)

*oomph = enthusiasm

**racy = bold, audacious

Innovation

COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE, INNOVATION

It is worth saying that innovation is a path, by which we can get the future we pre­fer; it touches every aspect of a company's activities. So, a company should use all ideas, talent and resources to satisfy customers’ needs and desires. The focus of its management must be based on creating new forms of demand and value that leads, in turn, to close connection between strategic thinking and panies tend to have a clear picture of their future, but it takes a lot of time, money and effort.

In fact, any company isn't developing in a vacuum: it shapes knowledge and is shaped by knowledge. One of the most famous philosophers, Aristotle, notes in his "Metaphysics": "By its very nature all humankind desires to know." Some theorists state that innovation is the ability to see old things in a new way, the ability to move from the existing to the preferred. The others consider innovation as a matter of a physical survival. It is worth noting here the individual intuition, creativity, persist­ence and very lucky guess. That is intuition that leads to discoveries and ideas, which are floating around. There is a tremendous number of things that are being discov­ered and invented in business in accordance with a commercial motive for innova­tions.

Really, most firms often have troubles with innovation: it isn't easy to foresee, which road leads to success. The barrier to innovation comes from the lack of under­standing it, from the lack of investment required to it, from the lack of clear picture of the situation. Many inventions are simply waiting to be discovered, but they don't fall out of the sky and don't grow on trees; any invention has to be something not yet known and not yet available.

Nevertheless, some companies understand innovation as a great waste of money and time, whereas the others note that innovation is the great process and tool for a company strategy development and a source to create a sustainable competitive advantage: such companies are successful; they have the new management model and policy of discovery with high level of competitiveness.

In general, most people see the same things as everybody else, but some of them see them differently. The common things are always something new for them due to freedom of thought, they are never the same. So, Bill Gates gave the world the best operating system. Thanks to Bill Gates and his free spirit, with just a couple of mouse clicks we discover a new world of information. He continually states that innovation arouses envy, and so leads to competition. Innovations are of great importance for the future, but not every company has a system of innovation that satisfies today's market. is a big gap between the aspiration to innovation and its implementation. It isn't easy to achieve the promising land of strategic innovation.

There must be a close connection between strategic thinking and innovation, the latter gives the answer to the big set of strategic panies should have new sense of the scope of innovation, new vision of it, new set of possibilities and new ways of doing things and delighting customers.

The point is: innovations are based on "three whales": idea, talent and capital.

One of the reasons of the great success of Silicon Valley is that all these 'whales' came together one day. The title of Silicon Valley is EiR, which means "entrepreneur in-residence". "Tell us what you invent and, if your idea is in our area of interest, we will give you money to start your own business," so says the Silicon Valley's slogan.

Innovation

Getting ideas across

Michael Skapinker

Why can't companies produce_ more innovative ideas. "Because the structure of large organisa­tions is against innovation, and they are too conservative. New ideas also often threaten the profits of existing products and services.

Now, two books* have examined the problems of innovation in large organisations and what companies can do to develop their employees' ideas. There are some depressing stories. Being innovative can damage your career. Of the leaders of 12 innovation projects studied, four resigned from their companies, two threatened to resign and two were dismissed.

Several innovators felt they would be poorly rewarded if they succeeded and criticised if they failed. The origin of a successful breakthrough project is often for­gotten,' one innovator warned, 'but a research and development effort that fails is never forgotten.'

Many innovators are technically minded and find it difficult to explain their ideas in business terms. Many do not even see the business benefits of their ideas until these are pointed out to them.

From the Financial Times

*Richard Leifer et al.: Radical Innovation, Harvard Business School Press, 2001 Michael Schrage: Serious Play, Harvard Business School Press, 1999

Money

Nick Leeson and the Collapse of Barings

On Februarythe world was shocked by the news that Britain’s oldest bank, Barings, had collapsed. People were even more surprised when they learnt that it was due to the actions of just one man – a young trader called Nick Leeson.

Lesson had started working at Barings Singapore office in 1992, when he was 25 years old. Using the bank’s money, he bought and sold derivatives contracts – like futures and options – at SIMEX, the Singapore Monetary Exchange. This can be a very risky business, but Barings thought it knew what it was doing.

Leeson quickly became the star of the Singapore office and its profits from derivatives trading grew dramatically. His bosses in London were delighted. But they didn’t know the full story. In fact, while his huge profits appeared in the official reports, he was hiding his losses in a secret account. And his losses were much much bigger!

The truth was that Nick Leeson had never behaved like an ordinary trader. He saw the financial markets as a gambling casino and, just like a losing gambler, he believed that he would win in the end. So, towards the end of 1994 he decided to solve his problems by making a very big gamble.

Leeson though that the Tokyo stock market would remain fairly stable for the next few months. He knew that he could make a good profit from this situation by selling a special kind of option contract – so he sold thousands and thousands of them. But, unfortunately for Leeson, Japan was entering a very unstable period.

On 17 January 1995 a huge earthquake hit the industrial city of Kobe. In response, the Tokyo stock market plunged. Leeson’s gamble had gone badly wrong and Barings had lost a huge sum of money.

Leeson didn’t stop gambling. He believed that by spending an enormous amount of his bank’s money, he could control the market and save his position. But he was February 23 he had lost more than £300 million and the game was over. The following day he and his wife flew to Malaysia for a holiday.

Back I London, Leeson’s bosses realized what had happened. Day by day, as the losses grew, it became clear that Baring was bankrupt. On March 6 it was sold to a Dutch bank for just £1.

On March 2 1995 Leeson was arrested by German police at Frankfurt airport on his way from Malaysia to the UK. He was later sentenced to six and a half years in a Singaporean jail. On May 1 of the same year twenty-one members of Baring senior staff resigned or were sacked by the new owners.

Money

Funding IT Start-ups

Nick Denton

Venture capitalists (VCs) act as headhunters. An entrepreneur who approaches a VC for finance will not typically have management experience. If you hire a good CEO, the business will take care of itself; but usually an entrepreneur has no network and no idea who to hire,' says Mr. Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Associates. So the venture capitalist usually takes on the role of recruiter, finding the entrepreneur some experienced executives.

Second, VCs provide advice and support. Accel Partners, for instance, gives office space and time to entrepreneurs so that they can develop their business plans. For inexperienced entrepreneurs, VCs are advisers, too. 'We are professional coaches,' says Ms Ann Winblad, co-founder of Hummer Winblad.

Third, an active venture capitalist puts the companies in which it invests in touch with professional services firms such as lawyers and accountants specializing in information technology. Start-ups backed by a well-known venture capital firm can often obtain legal and other professional advice at a lower rate, until they have the revenues to cover full fees.

Fourth, the backing of a leading venture capital firm, which has identified technology trends correctly in the past, brings credibility with commentators and the start-up's potential customers. 'Far from just providing money, the venture industry brings contacts and confidence,' says Mr. Neil Weintraut of 21st Century Venture Partners. 'We create markets as much as we create companies.'

Finally, the most ambitious venture capitalists act as boosters, not just of a few companies, but of the whole category into which an investment falls. They attempt to create excitement around a particular concept, such as the Java computer language, which will make people take it seriously as a business.

From the Financial Times
Money

BUSINESS LEARNS FROM PAST MISTAKES

By Ian Hamilton Fazey

As the UK looks for new ways to encourage entrepreneurship, Italy might be thought a good place to look for lessons. It has a highly successful scheme to help young people start business; entrepreneurship seems part of the culture; working for yourself commonplace. There is an assumption that if people fail – and 46 per cent do so within five years – they will learn from their mistakes and start again.

Few Italians start a business with bank support. They save their start-up capital, sometimes for years, and borrow from parents, other family members and friends. Italy has almost no merchant banks and the fragmented banking sector is tightly regulated of past banking failures. Banks have therefore become risk-averse and reluctant to lend.

Of scores of entrepreneurs interviewed for the OECD evaluation, only two had successfully borrowed money from the bank under the government loan guarantee scheme, thus avoiding up to three years of saving to accumulate capital. The rest had started from their own or privately-borrowed resources and then used growing turnover to expand. This was found to aid survival, nurturing financially conservative entrepreneurs, who did not over-extend and calculated risk carefully.

Parallel to this is an outstandingly successful government-funded scheme to encourage young entrepreneurs under 24 highly selective, the Youth Entrepreneurship Agency approved only 1,056 projects out of 4,603 applications in the first 10 years. Successfully applicants are tutored and advised, and the survival rate is running at 82 per cent.

The agency is now allowed to take equity stakes in the most promising ventures. In addition, an unsecured “loan of honor” – voluntarily repayable from future profits – has been introduced in southern Italy to help get over the problems of financing businesses in poorer areas where the banks really could not care less.

From the Financial times

Ethics

Slavery in shoe factories

Millions of pairs of shoes sold on the UK`s high streets are produced in the Third Word under slave labor conditions, according to a published yesterday.

The research highlights working condition endured by thousands of workers in places such as China, Vietnam and Brazil, where child labor, poverty and health risks are common.

The report – Just How Clean Are Your Shoes? – has been prepared by the catholic aid agency Cafod. It does not, however, want stores to boycott shoe produced in developing countries because this could lead to the closure of some factories, causing further poverty for workers.

Instead, it was retailers to lay down rough rules to ensure overseas suppliers pay sufficient wages to meet basic needs, offer basic employment rights and refuse to use child labor. And it wants companies to employ independent inspectors to make manufacturers keep to their code of conduct.

British consumers spend ₤5 billion a year on 213 million pairs of shoes – and four out of five pairs are imported. Last year, one in every four pairs of shoes sold in the UK was made in China, where shoes can be produced ₤1.77 a pair. It would cost ₤13.95 to make similar shoes in the UK. In some Chinese shoe factories, new workers can be paid 38p for a nine-hour day and up to a third may be deducted for board and lodging. Workers have only one or two rest days a month and three days holiday a year.

In Shenzhen, China`s booming enterprise zone just outside Hong Kong. Cafod found a factory employing children where there were no fire exits or fire extinguishers. Two years ago twenty workers died in a shoe factory in the same region.

Cafod highlights the punishment and humiliation to which some workers are subjected. It was reports of manages punishing workers for slow work by foreign them to kneel with their heads on the floor. In Brazil, women are regularly examined to make sure they are not pregnant when they apply for jobs. In one factory workers were allowed only four minutes a day to use the lavatory. Cafod is also worried about the health risks to workers, especially children, of using industrial glues and solvents without any ventilation or proper protection.

A spokesman for a British retail chain said the company passionately deplored the use of child labor and frequently inspected suppliers’ premises. It was considering toughening the code of conduct.

Ethics

Being ethical

Being ethical can be a clever marketing strategy. Increasingly, consumers are influenced by ‘non-commercial’ factors, such as whether a product harms the environment. Firma such as Ben & Jerry’s, an ice cream maker, and Body Shop International, a cosmetics retailer, have strengthened their brands by publicizing their ethical standards. Cummins Engine, a maker of diesel engines, made its products greener whole lobbying for stricter pollution laws.

But such ethical self-promotion can be dangerous. Body Shop was publicly forced to change a claim that its products were not tested on animals (some of the ingredients in its cosmetics had been tested on animals by other firms in the past). The error led many consumers to question Body Shop’s ethical standards.

Some think that the best way to persuade managers to think more ethically is to take account of stakeholders. Laura Nash of Boston University’s Institute for the Study of Economic Culture argues that managers should see their role in terms of ‘covenants’ with employees, customers, suppliers and so on. Such covenants should have a single goal: to ensure that a business creates long-term value in a way that is acceptable to all these ‘stakeholders’. A manager would view his business in terms of relationship rather than products; and see profit as a result of other goals rather than an objective in itself. But such ideas tend to go against shareholder capitalism.

The best answered may be a simple ones. Ethics rules should be clear (for instants, should an employee pay bribes where this is accepted business practice?) and they should be regularly tested. Some companies are turning to ‘ethical audits’. In its annual report Ben & Jerry’s carries a ‘social performance report’ on the firm’s ethical, environmental and other failings. Carried out by Paul Hawken, a ‘green’ entrepreneur, the audit has sometimes frustrated Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the company’s founders. So far, however, they have always published it. That may be why Ben & Jerry’s reputation remains good where others fade.

From The Economist

Change

A NEED FOR MORE SPEED

Pearl, which specializes in the low to middle income end of the life assurance market, was in crisis when Richard Surface, an American, arrived from Sun Life. Market share was falling, costs were rising, the product range was too complex. “The best of the sales force were leaving, the worst were hanging around, productivity was dropping and we were selling uneconomically”, he says.

His solutions were radical: completely changing management, cutting back costs and halving the product range. Twelve out of 14 top managers were replaced, with four “outsiders” chosen to provide a broader perspective. The most important reform concerned the sales force. Instead of having one sales agent covering an area, Pearl introduced teams of three – an area manager and two agents – covering a wider area. It was a delicate task, not just because it involved cutting more than 1,000 jobs but because it also meant pay cuts for some who stayed. While some agents were promoted to area managers, the two “supporting” agents had less responsibility.

Mr. Surface insisted on implementing this new structure in a few weeks. He believed the sales force was demoralized and further uncertainty would be bad for the company. “We go fast around here. We don`t plan everything in micro detail. We accept we are going to make mistakes”. He has some blunt advice for companies when it comes to getting staff behind a big upheaval: “Too many companies think you have to communicate with everybody in the same way. You have to segment your staff for the same reasons and in the same way as you segment your customers”.

Mr. Surface identifies three types of employee: high flyers, “anxious” people and “cynics and refuseniks”. Anxious people want certainly and leadership, he argues, while refuseniks are basically lost causes. “Many managements make the huge mistake of trying to convince them and turn them round. We didn`t. we drove round them. We don`t waste time trying to convert the unconvertible”, he says. “You don`t have to bring all staff with you in a major change. You need a coalition. You start with the vital few in key jobs, the anxious will follow, and the cynics will step aside”.

The figures suggest Pearl got it right. Operating costs were £411 million in 1995 but the following year were £265 million. Market share recovered to 2.2 per cent from 1.5 per cent in 1995, but it is still well short of the 6 per cent level achieved in the 1970s.

Change

VENTURES WHO HOPE TO BE THE BUSINESS

In the past few years, a new generation of Japanese entrepreneurs has emerged, boosting hopes that venture businesses are poised to become a new catalyst for the enfeebled Japanese economy.

Japan`s small business sector already accounts for more jobs than the big corporations, such as Sony and Toyota, but a large proportion of smaller companies are subcontractors whose fortunes are totally dependent on big companies. Only now is Japan starting to develop a business environment conducive to entrepreneurial growth.

Of the three main ingredients needed to foster venture business – risk money, a structural frame-work and an entrepreneur-friendly culture – the country has attracted the first, is improving the second, but needs to move forward on the third.

“The reason why there is a business chance for us is because the social structure is changing as a result of the Internet”, says Hiroshi Mikitani, 34-year-old founder of Rakuten Ichba, Japan`s most popular Internet shopping mall. Old skills are becoming less important than Internet expertise and money is flowing to new businesses rather than mature industries, he says. Internet entrepreneurs are also leaving the relative sanctuary of larger companies to set up on their own, something which still rare in Japan. Meanwhile the Japanese authorities have been scrambling to make the country`s legal and structural framework more venture business-friendly.

In the past, Japan`s reliance on indirect financing through banks also discouraged the development of risk capital. “The head of a big bank may know what it`s like to have difficulties in raising Y100bn but he doesn`t know what it`s to try to raise Y500,000”, points out Masao Horiba, founder and chairman of Horiba, a leading manufacturer of measuring instruments.

But while the money flows in and structural change increases, the critical question is whether Japanese culture can change sufficiently to support more entrepreneurs. “Japan`s venture capital sector is like a brand new race track. The track and stands have been built, the gamblers have arrived – but there aren`t any horses”, says Mr Horiba.

From the Financial times

Change

LONG HOURS, INSECURITY AND LOW MORALE

By Andrew Bolger

Managers are unhappy about continued change and restructuring in British organizations, which is leading to long working hours, job insecurity and low morale.

That is one of the main findings of a survey published today by the Institute of Management and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. It aims to follow changes in the quality of working life in corporate Britain over the next five years. This first annual survey found that 82 per cent of UK managers regularly worked more than 40 hours a week. Thirty-eight per cent worked more than 50 hours a week and 41 per cent said they regularly took work home at weekends.

Workplaces in the 1990s are in a state of constant change. Sixty-one per cent of managers said their organizations carried out a change programme in the past 12 months. The most common forms of change were: cost reductions, redundancies, culture change and performance improvement. Sixty-five per cent of respondents felt that employee morale and job security had decreased, while 50 per cent agreed that motivation and loyalty had been negatively affected.

However, reactions varied according to management level: 79 per cent of junior and 74 per cent of middle managers thought morale in particular had suffered, compared with 60 per cent of senior managers and only 21 per cent of chief executives and managing directors.

Poor internal communication was one of the key reasons for managers’ insecurity. Sixty per cent of junior and middle managers felt they were not kept informed about future strategies in their organizations. Moreover, 40 per cent of junior managers said senior executives were poor communicators.

When asked to indicate how satisfied they were with aspects of their job, managers rated the relationship with their other managers and their boss highest (80 per cent and 64 per cent were satisfied). Workload and recognition for performance were the two aspects causing most dissatisfaction: 36 per cent of managers thought their workload was too heavy and 33 per cent did not think their work was recognized.

Managers at all levels were concerned about not having sufficient time to get work done (64 per cent), lack of resources to do the job effectively (45 per cent), and information overload (42 per cent). Sixty-three per cent said they felt guilty about taking time off when sick.