Revelation Consulting Publish the Results of their 2011 Survey into Manipulation and Office Politics

May 22, 2012 - PRLog -- It perhaps won’t surprise you to learn that 95% of respondents agreed that politics, manipulation and hidden agendas in the workplace had affected them directly and personally. But the cases that get bad enough to hit the headlines really are the tip of the iceberg. The victims of bullying and manipulation mostly won’t speak out, so we have attempted to quantify the affects of corporate politics through three of their symptoms; under-performance, absenteeism and staff turnover.

70% of respondents said that they had left a job directly as a result of corporate politics, with around three quarters of those saying that their leaving salary was anything between £20,000 and £50,000 and more than 10% of them saying that they left a job paying over £70,000 per year.

The average salary, taken across all respondents affected in this way was £40,000, and the average number of days that the respondents missed work during one year due to bullying and manipulation was 24, almost one tenth of a working year. From December 2011 to February 2012, 29.17 million people were in work according to the UK’s Labour Force Survey, so even if we assume the national average salary, the loss to the UK economy through absenteeism caused by corporate politics is a staggering £802 Billion per year. However, if we remove the small number of respondents who lost almost a year’s worth of working days, we see an average that is exactly in line with the figure of 4.5 days per year published recently by the Office of National Statistics, perhaps hinting that coughs, colds and bad backs aren’t the real reason that many people stay at home for the day.

However, it’s no wonder that the problem is under-reported: 85% of respondents said that managers actively covered up the situation. In our 2012 survey, we’ll be digging deeper into this, asking why individuals don’t speak up when they suffer from the effects of workplace politics.

Underperformance is another key area where business costs can spiral out of control, with more than half saying that either their manager or multiple managers openly knew about underperformance and failed to tackle it. The impact on team effectiveness was estimated by respondents as a percentage of their team’s maximum potential performance, with the average being just 54%

Whilst this data is necessarily subjective, it gives a clear indication that the individual respondents knew that their team’s performance was suffering from corporate politics, and therefore we can determine that business performance and shareholder value are impacted as a result. Even the most optimistic interpretation of the data shows the potential loss to business revenue and value.

One aspect of corporate politics that many people are familiar with is the activity of ‘empire building’, where a person builds a political empire by promoting allies and sidelining ‘enemies’. This practice was seen first hand by 82% of our respondents, and the promotions resulted in individuals being paid on average £50,000 and with responsibility for 14 staff. As you can see, this is a significant responsibility with a huge potential impact on business performance and staff morale. Of the respondents who had observed this taking place, roughly half said that more suitable candidates were turned down, with the other half noting that the position was never advertised. Of the respondents who said that a better candidate was turned down, half said that that candidate then either moved out of the business unit or left the business altogether.

Again, the cost of the problem exists on many levels. A potentially good employee was lost, a replacement had to be hired with the associated recruitment costs and a potentially ineffective manager now has a significant influence over many other staff. Manipulation at work is never isolated; its effects grow and multiply over time, affecting more staff and increasing the cost to the business with every day that it isn’t tackled.

Some of the qualitative data that respondents shared was as surprising as some of the quantitative results. In one instance, a respondent reported from a government agency tasked with maintaining food production standards. Inspectors were routinely harassed and bullied into changing their reports so that the managers of production facilities would be protected. Serious breaches of standards for the treatment of animals and the safe production of food were brushed under the carpet, all to protect individuals and their jobs.

In another organisation, projects were taken from internal staff and given to external contractors; friends of the manager, representing an unecessary direct cost. The rules of a national children's competition were changed after it had already been launched, the aim being to disadvantage a group of young people who a panel of experts had already judged should be finalists, as the entrants did not fit the ethnic and religious profile that managers wanted to present.

As a final comment, we should point out that we have made an attempt to place some quantifiable measures on what is inherently a very subjective experience. One respondent asked how it would be possible to separate individual perceptions from any objective reality, and the truth is that this is very difficult. Manipulative people will very often play the victim, making them hard to spot by anyone who is taken in but their tales of woe. When challenged, the manipulator will have a ready excuse; it was someone else’s fault, they were just trying to be helpful or it’s them that is the real victim in all of this. And when they run out of excuses, their next line of defence is to run for the door, sometimes in floods of tears. Attack is the best form of defence for many, and you will find any accusation of wrongdoing met with a torrent of abuse and ridicule. These are all diversionary tactics, and the acid test must always be, “why would someone do that if they had nothing to hide?”

Corporate politicians, manipulators and those with hidden agendas in the workplace don’t stop when other people get hurt. They rationalise collateral damage by saying that other people should know better, or should learn to look out for themselves.

In this year’s survey, we’ll be digging deeper into some of the areas revealed in 2011, but for now, we present the results of this survey as a foundation for taking control of your own working environment. When you suspect manipulation is taking place or that someone is hiding their true intentions to the detriment of their colleagues, don’t hesitate to bring it out into the open. Challenge people directly, and see what happens, remembering that honest people who have nothing to hide will always answer direct questions. If someone’s behaviour doesn’t make sense, that’s because it isn’t meant to.

The reality of human nature probably means that we will never eradicate this problem, but creating a better workplace for everyone is far beyond the scope of this report or our forthcoming book. Our goal is simply to help you to create a better workplace for yourself, and by doing that, you create a better workplace for everyone.

You can complete the 2012 survey at www.kwiksurveys.com?u=revelation2012