ONLY 23 percent of Filipino employees say that their managers encourage dissent and debate and only 26 percent of Filipino managers will tolerate small-scale failures, according to PwC’s Philippine Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023.
Veronica Bartolome, consulting managing principal of PwC Philippines, said while people are clamoring for feedback to improve their performance, their leaders and supervisors do not encourage being contradicted and opposed.
With this, Bartolome noted that, “This is a call to action wherein leaders are part of the problem.” She said organizations have an opportunity to “enhance workplace culture and nurture open and more transparent communication.”
The PwC official noted that globally, while only 50 percent find their jobs fulfilling, in the Philippines it’s 69 percent who find meaning and purpose in the work that they do. Equally, she said, 69 percent believe that their manager treats them fairly and equitably.
“This is interesting because I just talked about managers not tolerating failures, not encouraging dissent and debate and yet employees are generally satisfied,” Bartolome said.
Moving forward, she said this requires organizations to “look inside, look into themselves, look into their culture and not take it for granted. Not to be complacent just because this is what the survey says.”
Bartolome noted that a company’s culture may look very different from the c-suites, from the executives, than it really does on the ground and the frontlines.
“So I think it’s really imperative for companies to look into their culture once they do a cultural assessment and see how they can improve to make sure that they are providing quality, meaningful and purposeful work for their employees,” the PwC official stressed.
For his part, Aldie Garcia, assurance managing partner of PwC Philippines, emphasized that dissent is “very difficult” to enable in an environment where the workforce are “only asked to perform and not to explore.”
“Making sure that the workers also will have adequate time for them to explore other ways of delivering their work, other ways of being more fulfilled because once you free up that time, that gives a lot of opportunities for feedback…for dissent,” Garcia stressed.
According to PwC, the Philippine Workforce Hopes and Fears 2023 surveyed 1,000 Filipino employees across 17 regions within the three island groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, as part of the annual PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey.
Uncertain future
Meanwhile, the survey also divulged the uncertainty of organizational future, noting that 39 percent of Filipino employees believe that their organization “will not survive beyond 10 years” if they remain on their current path, with Baby Boomers being the most pessimistic at 53 percent.
With this, PwC recommended, “To survive, organizations must embrace transformation, involving employees in co-creating and facilitating change.”
In terms of career advancement decisions, the survey showed that while Filipino employees are more likely to ask for a raise or promotion, they are less likely to change employers.
The results revealed that 70 percent of Filipino employees ask for a pay raise compared to the 42 percent global employees; and 59 percent of Filipino employees ask for promotion while only 35 percent of employees globally ask for promotion.
PwC stressed that talent shortages, rising living costs drive pay rise. Hence, the firm said organizations must consider more “holistic reward and recognition” to meet expectations.
Of the 1,000 respondents in the survey, 36 percent are female while 64 percent are male. In terms of region, 65 percent of the respondents are from Luzon, 20 percent from Visayas and 15 percent from Mindanao.
In terms of age group or generation, 55 percent of the respondents are millennials, 19 percent are Gen Z, 19 percent are Gen X, and 6 percent are Baby Boomers.
As for the respondents’ employment status, 86 percent are employed full-time while 10 percent are employed part-time.