Viewed in Harvard Business Review
Companies of the world confront many challenges.
None are likely greater than the ongoing question of how they will navigate their way back to normalcy (if that is even possible at all) from the world’s hugely damaging coronavirus pandemic.
Yet one additional cost of the pandemic is that it is overshadowing challenges that were monstrous prior to it.
Lacking sufficient passion impacts performance
One of those is the fact that employees of the world are largely lacking sufficient passion for their jobs—and it is impacting companies’ performance.
13 percent of U.S. workers exhibits sufficient passion
The data supporting this challenge, highlighted in this Harvard Business Review article, is convincing and alarming: A 2017 Deloitte survey, for instance, found that only 13 percent of U.S. workers exhibited “the type of passion in their work environments that helps them truly improve in their professions.”
This deficiency is even more profound in light of the fact that U.S. companies have hardly neglected it; in fact, they have invested over $100 billion on training and development to date in a serious effort to improve it.
What should companies’ do next?
The co-authors of this article, a founder and chairman of a Deloitte research unit and a University of Southern California visiting scholar, report that three attributes can be found in a passionate employee:
- a long-term commitment to increasing one’s impact in their respective functional areas,
- an inquisitive disposition, and an inclination to connecting with other who can aid in their growth.
Few employees have all these attributes, but more than fifty percent, the authors report, have at least one of them.
By developing processes and a work environment that develop these three attributes, companies can begin making progress in enhancing their number of passionate employees.
