Manulife benefits from staff study

THE RESULTS of a survey by Manulife of employees in 2004 showed that many, particularly middle management, did not demonstrate appropriate leadership skills and lacked understanding of the rationale behind policies and career opportunities within and across departments.

However, the response rate of 77 per cent, with many employees taking the time to submit detailed comments, was seen by the company as an indication that employees cared.

The Canadian-based financial services group, Hong Kong's second-largest life insurer, with 1,000 employees, enlisted Hewitt Associates, a global human resources outsourcing and consultancy firm, to carry out the survey in November 2004 to find out about attitudes towards working at Manulife.

The survey was called 'Have an opinion about your work here you would like to share anonymously?' All responses were analysed by Hewitt and compared with external benchmarks.

'We scored very low in terms of employee engagement because many felt they were in a sandwich class - they were not the ones building policy, did not understand the rationale behind policy but at the same time had to execute it,' said May Wong, assistant vice-president, human resources, Manulife.

After examining the results of the survey, the human resources department formed a steering committee to investigate and activate practical ways of improving employee engagement.