Who Will China's Future Business Leaders Be?

The new Gallup Poll of China asked Chinese employees a set of questions designed to test their engagement level -- the same questions Gallup regularly asks of American workers -- and found a disaffected Chinese workforce ill-suited for sustained, long-term growth. This article is the second in a series examining Chinese workers' responses to Gallup's Q¹² employee survey.

By some estimates, China's private sector is growing at twice the rate of the country's already burgeoning economy. The influx of joint ventures and foreign investments has created opportunities outside the state-owned organizations that dominated business enterprises through most of the last century.

Chinese employees have more choices about where to work and what to do -- a departure from the traditional mindset in which workers secured a position and then locked themselves into long-term loyalty. Employees have more control, and the value of Chinese products comes increasingly from between their ears -- namely, in their ideas, intelligence, and instincts -- rather than from the toil of their hands. The traditional "don't think, just do" orientation that many Chinese enterprises still maintain will increasingly handicap organizations looking for new talent.

Among foreign-owned firms in particular, the demand for self-directed leaders and managers from among the Chinese population has risen rapidly. Where will these new leaders come from? Presumably, many will emerge from the younger population, Chinese between the ages of 18 and 34.

Who Is Leadership Material?

But lack of worker engagement may be a problem even among this young group. The new Gallup Poll of China indicates that for every 100 Chinese employees in the 18 to 34 age group who are engaged in their jobs, 135 are actively disengaged (see "China's Disaffected Workforce" in Related Items). That's a more favorable engaged-to-disengaged ratio than that found among the population as a whole, but it is still not good.

As age increases, the proportion of Chinese employees who are actively disengaged declines. However, so does the percentage who are engaged. In other words, the Chinese population's high proportion of "not engaged" employees -- those who have simply settled into a holding pattern -- becomes even larger among older age groups. The 18- to 34-year-olds are least likely to be "not engaged" at 61%; that figure rises to 72% among 35- to 44-year-olds and 75% among those 45 and older.

The fact younger employees are more likely to be at one extreme or the other may be a good sign; it implies younger workers are more sophisticated in what they want from their employers, and are more willing to discriminate in their evaluations of such factors.

What Do Engaged Chinese Employees Look Like?

As companies doing business in China search for effective managers and leaders, what else can Gallup's data tell them about which Chinese employees are most likely to be engaged?

• Engaged employees are more likely to have taken part in some form of continuing education in the past 12 months.
  
  
• Engaged employees are less likely to have taken part in formal "management training." Those who have focused upon management training are actually less engaged.
  
  
• Engaged employees are more likely to work for smaller companies, especially those with 25 or fewer associates.
  
  
• Engaged employees are more likely to be very satisfied with their place of employment.
  
  
• Engaged employees are more likely than those who are not engaged or actively disengaged to choose "study hard and make a name for yourself" as the statement that best describes their life philosophy.
  

Reviewing these characteristics, it appears employees' sense of control over their own destiny is apparent. In past decades, the value was not upon individualization and ambition, but upon conformance -- now, respondents tend to think of increased productivity in terms of their own accomplishments, rather than expansion of the broader group.

If Chinese organizations seek to attract and retain talented young leaders, they will need to get better at providing developmental opportunities and making individuals feel as though someone genuinely cares about them as human beings at or away from the job. Only one in five urban-dwelling Chinese workers strongly agree with the statement, "There is someone at work who encourages my development." This item strongly differentiates engaged Chinese employees: Among employees who strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development, about 4 in 10 are engaged, nearly 6 in 10 are not engaged, and 1 in 20 are actively disengaged. Among those who do not agree, just 1 in 50 are engaged, nearly 6 in 10 are not engaged, and 4 in 10 are actively disengaged. 

This ongoing failure to address the individual personal developmental needs could be behind the "fending for themselves" mentality that many Chinese employees are apparently feeling in their jobs. It's a feeling that does not bode well for the emergence of managers and leaders who are self-directed, but committed to the success of their organization.