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Y
ou don’t have to search far on
LinkedIn before you come across
phrases like ‘I’m a results-driven
go-getter’; ‘I thrive in a fast-paced
environment’; ‘I’m a best-of-breed strategic
thinker’ and ‘I have a track-record for
generating business growth’.
But beyond the online show, a lot of people
– and the organisations that employ them
– find business growth rather stressful.
And that’s the case even though many
organisations are constantly looking to grow
their businesses by expanding into new
territories, developing new product lines or
boosting their profits.
According to Gideon Neiman and Marius
Pretorius in their book Managing Growth,
business growth puts a strain on resources. It
often requires employees to work harder and
faster, and needs managers to make quicker
and more accurate decisions. Business
growth also involves change, whether that’s
integrating new locations, new colleagues
or new products into existing processes and
this too can make growth more challenging.
As part of its global growth survey, Epicor
has looked in more detail at the realities
of business growth in order to better
understand how different organisations
across the globe cope.
By surveying over 2,000 business
professionals across the world, we found
something that LinkedIn’s online show of
pride doesn’t give away. While one in three
business professionals find growth rewarding,
two in five find it challenging, one in five finds
it stressful and one in 10 even finds it painful.
Perhaps these things are easier to admit on
an anonymous online survey than on a public
LinkedIn profile page.
The realities of growth are therefore more
complex than they may at first seem,
with stresses and challenges playing a
significant role in employee experiences
as the businesses they work for develop.
Nevertheless, with businesses generally feeling
optimistic about their growth prospects
(scoring an average 7.2 out of 10 for
optimism), they must get to grips with these
realities to make the growth process easier.
The picture is different across the globe.
For example, in Mexico, 90% of business
professionals admitted they live in
www.intelligentcio.com
Terri Hiskey, Vice-President,
Manufacturing Product Marketing,
Epicor Software Corporation
“
TECHNOLOGY
CHANGE CAN
MOREOVER
THREATEN THE
ORGANISATIONAL
CULTURE OF THE
WORKPLACE.
anticipation of stress as their organisations
grow, making this the most stressed country
in the business world. This perhaps makes
sense in the context of reports from the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), which has
found that Mexican workers clock up
an average 42.85 work hours a week,
more than workers in any other country
surveyed. Mexico is followed by Hong Kong,
Singapore and China, where around eight in
10 business professionals feel the same, in
contrast to Canada, where just half (56%)
are living in anticipation of stress.
While a certain amount of stress can be
stimulating, it can also be incapacitating
for businesses or employees for whom it is
not manageable. For example, in his work
on stress in business, Jim Taylor, PhD from
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