1 in 5 office workers fear being fired for poor decisions

Nick Elvin

The pressure to make blind business decisions at work is leaving many UK office workers stressed and worried that they are unable to do what is asked of them, according to new research.

The study, conducted by ICM on behalf of Epicor Software Corporation, reveals that 76% of UK office workers have had to make un-informed decisions at some point in their career.

Yet, the need to make these decisions could be inadvertently putting employees’ health and wellbeing at risk, with 38% of office workers suggesting that making decisions without sufficient information leads to higher than necessary stress levels.

According to the research, this stress is likely to be caused by concerns over the ramifications of un-informed decisions. Workers feel it could damage their personal reputation (32%), or lead to poor personal performance (29%), while one in five even fear that they may lose their job as a result of making wrong decisions (20%).

The impact of un-informed decisions doesn’t just affect employees’ performance, but the organisations too. Consequences to business include poor organisational performance (24%), loss of revenue (16%) and absenteeism (7%) which is often quoted as a result of stress placed on employees.

Despite these risks, many workers are frequently asked to make un-informed decisions with just under a third (23%) doing so on a weekly basis and 15% on a daily basis. Epicor says the findings reaffirm the results from the PwC 2014 Big Decisions survey ‘Gut & gigabytes’ in which less than a third of employees (32%) described decision making within their organisation as “highly data driven.”

A data-driven approach could provide a simple solution to the problem; many employees believe that if organisations could put better systems in place, it will help to combat these issues – with 46% of the respondents suggesting that the solution can be found with technology.

“With the company’s reputation, revenue and staff welfare at stake, it’s vital that organisations put the technology and systems in place to enable employees to make confident decisions, particularly in high-pressure, fast moving industries such as manufacturing and distribution where there is little room for error,” said Keith Deane, EVP and general manager international for Epicor Software.

“The fact that people get stressed when having to make decisions without the right information at their fingertips, and that they are concerned that it may cost them their job, is something that organisations need to take seriously.”