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Monday 25th July 2022

Takeaways from the State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report

‘On average we spend 81,396 hours at work, and the only thing we spend more time on is sleep’ so it’s important to understand the impact of our wellbeing and engagement in the workplace.

Gallup is a global analytics firm who produce an annual report on the State of the Global Workplace.

In June 2022 they published their latest report and All Things IC Communication Consultant Dan Holden has taken a look at what the insights mean for internal communicators.

Whilst I was quietly hopeful of what the insights from the latest report might have shown, I sadly wasn’t surprised about what has been highlighted.

It’s been another tough 12 months for most people and organisations are still trying to organisation what the future of work means for them.

One thing that’s interesting to note is that many of the themes, such as wellbeing and retention also came up in the 2022 State of the Session report by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) that I shared some insights on.

Wellbeing

The biggest standout from the report is the impact of work on respondents’ wellbeing. 44% of respondents reported that their stress levels had increased, even though their worry and anger levels had decreased. Interestingly, Europe and South Asia showed the biggest decline over the last five years on employees’ views of their current lifestyles.

Organisations need to be thinking, and acting, more on ‘the whole person’. More people are evaluating after the Covid-19 pandemic what’s important to them in terms of lifestyle. With the shift towards more homeworking for many, employees are struggling to segment how they feel outside of work with how they turn up to the workplace. It’s not possible in my view that you can log on or arrive at work and leave everything else behind for the day.

New career opportunities

We’ve seen a lot of discussion on social media over the last 12 months about ‘The Great Resignation’ and there seems to be conflicting views on whether this is true or not. It certainly feels like more people in my network have taken on new roles recently but it’s very hard to pinpoint whether it’s perception or reality.

Further reading: What internal communicators need to know about The Great Resignation.

The 2022 Gallup report has shown an increase in the number of people stating it’s a good time to find a new job, increasing from 29% in 2009 to 45% in 2021 (U.S and Canada). In Europe and other regions, fewer than half of respondents felt it was a good time to find a new job, suggesting to me that perhaps ‘The great resignation’ isn’t what we all thought it was.

As internal communicators, we can be working closely with our colleagues in Human Resources and Recruitment on what our Employee Value Proposition is and how we reflect this within our communications. The narrative we use can play a key role in supporting retention and help create an inclusive culture and environment that colleagues feel engaged with.

We of course can’t solve everything when it comes to engagement but we certainly have a key role to play.

Financial worries

The Gallup report highlighted that only 22% of respondents said they were ‘living comfortably’ on their household income. That means potentially up to 78% aren’t feeling comfortable about their financial situation.

I’m sure we’ve all either seen in the news the current financial climate or felt the pinch on our personal finances. It’s something that many people are facing and I recently shared on the All Things IC blog in response to conversations happening on social media.

Take a look at some of the practical suggestions shared in the blog article and if you have any tips or ideas on supporting colleagues, do post them in the comments.

Declining engagement levels

A disappointing statistic to see in the report was only 9% of employees are thriving and engaged with their organisations. This is extremely worrying as it not only highlights a large disconnect but means organisations and their people are been held back from delivering their full potential. In the US alone, Gallup estimates that low engagement has cost the economy $7.8 trillion in 2021.

Leaders and organisations need to think more about ‘the whole person, not just the worker’ as I’ve mentioned already, the boundaries between home and work are now more blurred than ever.

In the US 112, 312 businesses found a strong link between engagement levels and performance outcomes so perhaps we’ll start to see more senior leaders sitting up and paying attention to engagement.

I know as communicators we use the word engagement a lot, and sometimes the lines between internal communication and employee engagement get blurred but I’d encourage you to look at how engagement is measured and shown in your organisation. This doesn’t mean it has to be you doing it but making engagement levels a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), brings the subject higher up the agenda. We recently shared a blog that explores measures of engagement and the role of internal communication.

What to keep in mind

Following the Gallup webinar I’d encourage you to think about how you can support colleagues by:

  • Understanding what’s impacting on colleagues lives outside of work and how we might support them.
  • Keep an eye on your measurement reports so you have early warning signs about the impacts and wellbeing matters
  • Understand what measures and accountability metrics are in place from an engagement and wellbeing perspective and how you can use them for content planning.
  • Help enable managers to support changes to the workplace through coaching skills and resources so they are equipped to support colleagues.

See the Gallup website to access the whole report.

This post was first published on the All Things IC blog 18 July 2022.

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Image by istocksdaily on iStock