Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 16 | Page 35

////////////////////////// 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 INTELLIGENTCIO 35