studies

Citibank survey

A recent survey of Citibank branches in four countries (the United States, Germany, China, and Spain) was conducted to determine the most effective persuasion methods for employees to use in order to convince their colleagues to do a favor for them. All four countries had very different results.

The survey showed that Americans are more likely to be persuaded to help their colleagues if there’s something in it for them, or if they owe their colleagues a favor. They tended to ask questions like “What will I get out of this?” and “What has this person done for me?”

Germans, on the other hand, were more likely to be persuaded to help if the favor stayed within the rules of the organization. They tended to ask questions like “According to the official regulations, am I supposed to help?”

Power to the engineers!

In the most recent poll on occupational prestige in Germany conducted by the Allensbach Institute engineers and university professors took seventh place, behind physicians and craftsmen, but well ahead of politicians and journalists.

26% of Germans polled noted a high degree of respect for the engineering profession. No wonder, for Germans define individual prestige based on technical (specialized) knowledge.

Almost every third supervisory board member of a DAX30 company is an engineer by training. Industrial heavyweights like Volkswagen and DaimlerBenz have always been run by engineers, to the dismay, as the magazine Spiegel wrote, of those colleagues with a business or legal background.

Overqualification

According to a recent study, almost half of all employed Americans with college degrees are overqualified for their jobs. In 2010, 15% of taxi drivers had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 1% in 1970, and 25% of retail sales clerks had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 5% in 1970.

In fact, U.S. overqualification has become such a large problem that in 2013, The Globalist published an article titled “The U.S. Overqualification Crisis: Why the United States is looking to Germany for answers on higher education.”

Now, many degree programs encourage American students to avoid doctorates and/or other certifications because having these will make it harder for the students to find jobs. Engineers are warned not to get certified as Professional Engineers (PEs,) because companies typically hire only a handful of licensed PEs, but hire many more unlicensed engineers.

American employers have several reasons why they avoid hiring people who are overqualified for a position. Some of their biggest reasons include:

Higher salary expectations – someone with more qualifications is likely to expect to be paid more money.

Promotion expectations – someone with more qualifications might accept a job that’s “beneath them” only because they expect to be promoted quickly to a job that’s more deserving of their higher skills.

Upstaging – someone who has more qualifications and/or experience than their boss might have difficulty following orders.

Short term – someone who is overqualified is likely to lose interest in their position, and won’t stay for very long.

Colleague, not Facebook friend

In 2010 the online-career portal monster.de conducted a study regarding German behavior in social online networks. 61% of people said that they are not friends with their colleagues via social media.

Only 27% indicated that they talk to their colleagues on Facebook. 12% of the survey participants are friends with their colleagues on Facebook. However, most have different profile settings for colleagues. The survey results suggest that Germans separate their private life and their professional life.

Demographics

According to a report by the Census Bureau, the United States is expected to be a majority-minority nation by 2043. Within the next 50 years, nearly one in three U.S. residents would be Hispanic. Within the same time span, the Asian-American population will double from 15.9 million people to 34.4 million, and the African-American population is projected to increase by 20 million people.

From 2024 to 2060, the non-Hispanic white population will fall by nearly 20 million people, and will make up 43 percent of the nation’s total population by 2060. In 2011, the population of the United States was comprised of the following: White persons not Hispanic (63.4 percent), Black (13.1 percent), American Indian (1.2 percent), Asian-American (5.0 percent), Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (0.2 percent), Two or more races (2.3 percent), Hispanic or Latino Origin (16.7 percent).

In diverse cultures people approach potentially sensitive topics indirectly.