I'm here, boss! These industries value face time with leaders

Do you know what time your senior executives get to work? Do you arrange your morning walkarounds so you get a chance to say “Hi!” to them? Do you care more about who’s in a meeting than what the agenda might be? 

If you answered “yes” to these questions, you’re probably working in an industry where personal contact with leadership is crucial. Ignoring the daily buzz and just focusing on your own work isn’t an accepted part of the culture. Instead, being seen is a big part of being successful. 

Each industry is its own story, however, and the contrasts can be outright startling. The latest edition of LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey reveals how U.S. professionals in more than a dozen industries — ranging from construction to tech — react when asked how important it is to have face time with their organization’s leaders.

Deeper down in this article, we’ll dig into the ways that this face-time factor interacts with people’s workplace priorities — as well as their ability to choose where they work. But let’s start with a detailed look at the latest data. 

As the chart above shows, construction (67%) and oil, gas and mining (also 67%) are the two industries where professionals are most likely to believe in the importance of face time with leadership. That conviction reflects more than just the front-line realities of onsite project work, where foremen and workers are just a few steps away.

The energy sector provides a crisp example of the value of “boss time.” As this McKinsey analysis points out, most companies are in the midst of a delicate balancing act, developing a low-carbon future while still relying on traditional fuels for most revenue. Managers at all levels appreciate senior-level, face-to-face contacts that help keep goals and reality in sync.

Other industries that put a high value on being seen by the boss include consumer services (66%), accommodation/hospitality (66%), real estate (64%), transportation (63%) and government services (62%).  

By contrast, emphasis on being seen by your organization’s leaders is less of a priority in technology, information and media (50%), wholesale (53%), professional services (54%), and administrative and support services (55%). Remaining industries, including hospitals and healthcare, financial services, retail and education, are very close to the national average of 58%.  

As the comments in an earlier edition of this newsletter attest, attitudes toward on-the-job face time vary hugely. For some it’s a welcome part of the job. For others, it’s an annoying burden. Meanwhile, people working remotely or in a hybrid arrangement may worry that less time with the bosses could be a career detriment. 

“We need to get out of ‘one size fits all/most’ work environments,” executive coach T. Tarai Kemp Brown wrote. Better leadership, she added, will involve “leveraging what allows each individual to be most productive, experience less stress and feel most valued.”

Some of that alignment is already happening — almost like the way iron filings arrange themselves into tabletop patterns defined by an unseen magnet. Even if companies’ cultures and workers’ preferences don’t always line up, often they do. 

Consider industries such as construction, transportation and accommodation. According to the Workforce Confidence survey, these fields not only emphasize face time with leaders, they also offer employees less leeway to pick the work setting that’s most appealing (i.e., remote, hybrid or onsite). Another notable trait: workers in these high face-time industries are especially likely to say that they value job stability over the flexibility of hybrid work.

By contrast, workers in tech, information and media enjoy a more independent work culture across multiple dimensions. Fully 56% of workers in this industry grouping say their managers allow them to choose where they work. That’s 10 percentage points higher than the U.S. average of 46%.

Meanwhile, tech, information and media workers show less of a desire to prioritize job security over workplace flexibility, despite a flurry of tech layoffs in recent months.

Across the entire Workforce Confidence survey, 55% of respondents say job security is more important than flexibility, due to economic uncertainty. Yet in the tech cluster, only 51% agree.

Methodology

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index is based on a quantitative online survey distributed to members via email every two weeks. Roughly 3,000 to 5,000 U.S.-based members respond to each wave. Members are randomly sampled and must be opted into research to participate. Students, stay-at-home partners and retirees are excluded from analysis so we can get an accurate representation of those currently active in the workforce. We analyze data in aggregate and will always respect member privacy. Data is weighted by engagement level to ensure fair representation of various activity levels on the platform. The results represent the world as seen through the lens of LinkedIn’s membership; variances between LinkedIn’s membership and the overall market population are not accounted for.

Allison Lewis and Sharon Resheff from LinkedIn Market Research contributed to this article.