unicornnews: Ignorance costs billions, says report

A new report commissioned by ‘employee assessment specialist’ Cogniso has claimed that UK and US businesses are losing $37billion (that’s £18.7billion) every year because employees don’t fully understand their jobs. Which I don’t doubt, I’m not sure I’ve ever understood a single job I’ve done.

The white paper – ‘$37 billion: Counting the Cost of Employee Misunderstanding’ – defines ‘employee misunderstanding’ as actions taken by employees who have misunderstood or misinterpreted, or were misinformed about, or have a lack of confidence in their understanding of company policies, business processes, job function or a combination of all these three. The banking industry was shown to have the highest cost of misunderstanding, and the transport industry the lowest.

The report also shows that whilst employers are often aware of the costs of such misunderstandings, only a third have said that they take action to deal with the problem. Cognisco’s CEO Mary Clarke said “An organisation’s greatest asset is its employees. Obviously if an employee misunderstands or misinterprets actions there will be repercussions from loss of business to impaired brand image. But what is often not measured, is the employee’s confidence to take the appropriate actions which can also have a significant impact.”

Well, perhaps these companies’ employees will be less ignorant, once that government training bill (here) gets passed.

Posted Wednesday June 18 2008 by Caro Moses