Staff confidence in Indian firms up in Q3

Indian employees maintained high level of confidence in the future of their companies in the third quarter of this year compared with their global peers, a study says.
As per the study by global human resource solutions provider Kenexa, except India, China and Brazil, employees from nine other countries reported a decline in employee confidence in the third quarter compared with the previous quarter.

“Globally there was about one point decline in the third quarter 2009 (in the employee confidence index), compared to five point improvement in the second quarter. China and India sustained and built very slightly on the improvements seen in the second quarter of 2009, while Japan reversed a second quarter downward trend,” Kenexa Research Institute research consultant Anne Herman said.

Employee confidence, a quarterly measure of the degree of confidence employees have in their employers’ marketplace competitiveness and their own careers, dropped to 97.9 at the end of September from 98.9 in June this year.

The country-wise employee confidence index score for India was 100.2 in September quarter, rising marginally from 99.6 in June this year, the report showed. “Only three countries, China, India and Brazil, are at or above the employee confidence levels first measured in Q2 of 2008,” the report stated.

In September, Brazil (105.3), China (102.8) and India had highest levels of employee confidence, while Germany (96.7), Japan (95.6) and Spain (93.3) had lowest. The largest declines in 2009 Q3 employee confidence levels compared with the second quarter were registered in France followed by Spain and Germany.

Interestingly, the US employee confidence index score dropped 1.2 per cent since June this year to 97.7. “While Q2 of 2009 showed a global economy rebounding strongly, the third quarter employee confidence scores indicate that recovery is not going to be a straight line of positively improving results,” the survey said.