Human Resources: AMERICAN WORKERS BELIEVE THEIR COMPANIES WILL EMERGE FROM DOWNTURN AS LEADERS

NEW YORK, BOSTON AND SAN JOSE (July 20, 2010) - Americans who work for larger organizations are bullish about their companies' prospects for coming out of the economic downturn on top -- and give their CEOs relatively high marks. However, workers say that meeting future challenges will require a change in management practices, according to new national poll of employees of companies with 300 or more workers.

83% of American workers still believe their companies will emerge form the downturn as industry leaders.
42% give their CEO an honors grade of "A" for management during the economic downturn, and 31% give them a "B".
64% are at least cautiously optimistic about the direction their companies are headed.

However, American workers are also sounding a warning:

55% believe management practices need to change in order for companies to tackle future business challenges

These are insights from "Employees First," a just-released national, random-digit-dial telephone survey of 704 American employees of private sector companies with 300 or more employees. The "Employees First" survey, fielded during June 2010, was commissioned and sponsored by HCL Technologies, the global IT services company.

While loyal to and sanguine about their employers, "American workers seem to have an intuitive sense that current command-and-control management structures may be outdated and that companies would do better if they were to shift their focus to empowering employees to solve customer problems - in part by making management accountable to the employees, who are the real creators of value, just as those employees are responsible to management," said HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar, author of the new book Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down (Harvard Business Press, June 2010).

Workers Believe Corporate Leadership Under-Leverages - Even Under- Appreciates - Employee Enthusiasm and Engagement

60% of employees say customers are the most valued group at the company, followed by top management (20%) and then, at the bottom, employees (15%). (Nearly half - 48% - say, explicitly, that employees are the least valued group at the company.)
Yet most workers believe rank-and-file employees - far more than management -- are responsible for the quality of products and services.
A fifth of workers say that when they present their supervisors with a business problem, the supervisors say they'll deal with the problem and don't actually address it.

"This dismissiveness when it comes to employees is counter-productive, I believe. As mentioned, most employees - 52% overall, and the percentage is 60% in the vast $30,000 to $50,000 annual salary bracket - believe the rank-and-file are most responsible for quality service to customers, and they are probably right: Employees, particularly those who are involved in the interface with customers, know where the real problems lie and how to fix them," said Mr. Nayar.

Signs of Emerging Employee Frustration with Current Leadership Attitudes and Actions

The survey results indicate that American workers' satisfaction with company leadership - at least the status quo - and engagement with work could be starting top erode, especially among Gen Y and Gen X employees, who represent the immediate future.

As mentioned, most workers - 55% - believe management practices will need to change in order for companies to effectively confront future challenges. In fact, nearly two-thirds (64%) of workers in their 30s and nearly as many in their 40s hold that view.
While 47% of workers overall say they're committed to staying with their current companies, more than a quarter (27%) of workers age 29 or younger say they're not committed to the company.
39% of employees in their 30s describe the mood among colleagues as one of pessimism and uncertainty.

"Leaders must recognize, particularly in the era of social media and the democratization it brings to all dimensions of society, that the key to success and growth is getting employees to tell you what's really going on - to identify the elephants in the room that no one was willing to acknowledge - and that the key to doing that is making employees believe that you, as a manger, are willing to listen and take action. The findings of our survey suggest that most companies are just not close enough to that level of democracy. I see it as a warning," said Mr. Nayar.

But American Workers Think Their Companies and Leaders Have the Potential to Change - for the Better

78% of workers say they're confident their top management can create an environment that values employee ideas and suggestions.
72% are confident that management can create an environment of transparency where all employees are aware of the true challenges facing the business.

The survey was conducted to test among American workers some of the ideas in Mr. Nayar's book Employees First, Customers Second, which tells the story of how he turned the management pyramid upside down at HCL Technologies, giving more power to employees closest to the customer and making management accountable to them. Doing this radically increased HCL Technologies' ability to compete and grow. During a five-year period beginning in 2005, HCL - which has a workforce of 60,000 - increased revenue by 3.6 times and operating profit by 3.4 times. Further, HCL Technologies was one of the few companies in the world to grow during the 2008-2009 recession: Revenue grew by 23.5% in 2009, and the company added headcount in both the U.S. and Europe during the downturn.

To learn more about the survey or book, or to arrange an interview with Vineet Nayar, please contact Frank Lentini of Sommerfield Communications, Inc. at (212) 255-8386 or lentini[at]sommerfield.com.

About the Survey Methodology

The "Employees First" study was commissioned by HCL Technologies and designed and supervised by Michaels Opinion Research Inc. Data are the result of 704 telephone interviews conducted with a nationally representative sample of adults living in the continental United States who were employed at the time of the interview or at any time in the six months prior to the interview for a private sector company with 300 or more employees. Interviews were conducted from May 20 to June 21, 2010. The margin of error for this sample of employees is +/-4.2 percentage points. To obtain interviews with employees at private sector firms having 300 or more employees, interviews were conducted with a total of 5,024 adults using a combination of landline and cellular random-digit-dial samples to represent all adults living in the continental United States who have access to either a landline or cellular phone.

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. HCLT focuses on 'transformational outsourcing', underlined by innovation and value creation, and offers an integrated portfolio of services, including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and business process outsourcing. For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com.

About Vineet Nayar

Vineet Nayar is chief executive officer of HCL Technologies (HCLT), a leading global IT services company based in India. After being named president of HCLT in 2005, Mr. Nayar spearheaded a remarkable turnaround of HCLT, which had been rapidly losing ground and critical employees to competitors. By 2009, HCLT was named Best Employer in India by Hewitt Associates, and in the same year, BusinessWeek called HCLT one of the world's five most influential up-and-coming companies.