I recently attended a Gallup webinar that explored the findings of Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report which captures the voice of the global employee on topics including employee engagement, wellbeing, stress, worry and more.
The insights in the report and the webinar discussion are meant to equip leaders to make purposeful decisions based on how employees around the world are truly feeling.
There were two key topics that were very eye-opening for me.
Before the pandemic, engagement and wellbeing were rising globally for nearly a decade -- but now, they're stagnant.
"Living for the weekend," "watching the clock tick," "work is just a paycheck." These are the mantras of most global workers. With only 21% of employees engaged at work and 33% of employees thriving in their overall wellbeing, most would say that they don't find their work meaningful, don't think their lives are going well or don't feel hopeful about their future.
Whether employees are stressed because of work, or their stress is carrying over into work, one thing is clear: The world's employees are feeling even more stressed than they did in 2020 (the previous all-time high).
Forty-four percent of employees experienced a lot of daily stress in the previous day. While almost half of the world's workers felt the burden of stress, working women in the U.S. and Canada region were among the most stressed employees globally.
Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report
As an internal communications professional, you may be wondering what low employee engagement and high employee stress mean to you and your role. The way I see it, the current state of today’s workforce means that, as a diverse, global community of smart, talented internal communications professionals:
While it’s definitely not good to see that the global workforce is generally disengaged and stressed out, it may be the motivation companies need to stop, think and start acting differently. The way people work has changed dramatically over the last couple of years, organizations need to start meeting employees’ needs as they are today. Only then will we see the state of the global workforce start to really improve.
I’ll leave you with Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."