More than half of UK workers don’t know their boss’s name 

According to new research into business communication, more than half of the UK’s workers don’t know the name of the person in charge of running the business they work for, and haven’t been given guidance on how to do their job properly.  

Research carried out by OnePoll on behalf of communications company Herkess Marketing asked 2000 full and part time adult workers around the UK about communication in their workplace. They were asked about their employer’s communication on topics including health and safety, information security, company values, best practice, and the people running the organisation they work for. It also explored silo working issues.

55% of the respondents hadn’t been told the name of the person in charge of running the business or organisation they work for.  Among ‘Gen Z’ workers (aged 18 to 24 yrs), this figure rose to 65%. Familiarity with the organisation’s leadership was higher across all of the older age groups, with 50% of 25-to-34-year-olds, 44% of 35-to-54-year-olds, and 48% of workers aged 65+ knowing who held the top job in their organisation.

Around two thirds of respondents hadn’t been given basic health and safety advice, such as how to manage stress in the workplace (66%) or the correct posture for sitting at a desk (62%). 

When it came to getting support from their employer with doing their job properly, more than half (57%) hadn’t been given any best practice guidance. 

Nearly two thirds of workers (61%) hadn’t been given any guidance on managing cyber risk. 

Just over half (51%) weren’t made aware their business’s values, which are used to shape company culture.  

More than a third of the respondents (35%) said they would be happier in their job if the internal communication within their organisation was better.

The research also identified that silo working was an issue estimated to be worth £381.15 billion per year to the UK economy in wasted productivity. A third of the respondents (33%) said that work was often done wrong or repeated because different teams weren’t communicating effectively. 

The internal communications picture was worse in some parts of the UK. Workers in London were the least likely to know their boss’s name with just 39% confident they knew their CEO (Chief Executive Officer) or MD (managing director)’s name. Less than half (43%) said that they’d been given best practice guidance on how to do their job properly. 

Workers in Northern Ireland were the least likely to have been given guidance on how to do their job properly (35%). Workers in the South East of England and Scotland were the most likely (48%) to have been given direction on best practice. 

When asked to rate communication in their organisation out of 10 (10 being excellent), 40% of the respondents in the UK gave a score of 5 or less. Nearly a fifth (17%) rated internal communication as very poor. Less than a third gave their employer a good rating (8 or higher). 

More than a third (35%) of all of the respondents said that they thought they would be happier in their job if communication was better, suggesting that staff retention would be higher if businesses had better internal communication. In Yorkshire and the Humber, this figure rose to 41%. 

The research was done on behalf of competitive advantage consultancy, Herkess Marketing, which advises on internal communication. Emma Radcliffe, Founder of Herkess Marketing commented: “Whilst knowing the CEOs name in a huge organisation isn’t necessarily 'the be all and end all', it is symptomatic of businesses where internal communication is poor. 

“All too often businesses take it for granted that their staff know everything they should, but as our research found, that simply isn’t the case. 

“Staff want to feel informed and included on the things that matter. It motivates them and helps them to perform better, which is to everyone’s benefit, especially the business itself.

 This research has been used to create a white paper called The Competitive Edge which you can download for free by clicking the image below.