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Contact: Marty Mordarski, Director of Research & Membership, mmordarski@ercnet.org

Press Release
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Attitude as Important as Aptitude in the Workplace

Cleveland– The results of a recent study on 73 organizations conducted by ERC suggest that employee attitude is as important as aptitude according to a significant number of employers in Northeast Ohio. In fact, the new study suggests that employee attitude and professionalism are among the most common criteria assessed during employee performance evaluations. In terms of frequency of usage, attitude and professionalism criteria was used consistently across varying industries and organizational sizes behind quality of work and productivity.

Customer service, teamwork, annual goals, and learning/skill development targets were less popular performance evaluation criteria than attitude and professionalism. This indicates that organizations are increasingly viewing employee professionalism and attitude as more important to performance. The results complement other workplace research suggesting that poor employee attitudes result in lower productivity, poor performance, deficient customer service and low morale, all of which negatively influence an organization’s objectives. In fact, the financial performance of organizations with favorable employee attitudes is typically nearly four times better than the financial performance of companies with poor employee attitudes (Watson Wyatt, 2005) – demonstrating the implications of employee attitude on the bottom line.

“Organizations are recognizing that attitude matters: it is as important as aptitude because it is the driver behind other performance criteria, such as quality, customer service, productivity, and teamwork – all of which influence financials and the bottom line. Poor attitude is often at the root of performance problems that exist,” says Patti Flauto, Senior HR Consultant with ERC.

ERC is Northeast Ohio’s largest organization dedicated to HR and workplace programs, practices, training and consulting. The organization also hosts NorthCoast 99 and sponsors the ERC Health insurance program. For more information about ERC, check out www.ercnet.org.

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