Nearly a third (29%) of UK employees are facing high levels of stress at work while nearly four in ten (37%) do not believe that company leaders are taking staff wellbeing seriously, with both findings being well above international levels.
That’s according to a global study by Culture Amp, which also reveals that women experience many key aspects of work less positively than men, suggesting that a substantial proportion of today’s workforce feels their employer does not give them the support they need to thrive.
Drawn from a subset of Culture Amp’s employee experience data lake, with over 1.4 billion answered questions across 3.3 million employees from 8,200 global companies worldwide, the data found that on average, nearly one in every four employees (24%) feels overstressed at workーbut this was five percentage points below that experienced by their UK counterparts.
Researchers found that 70% of workers globally believe that their company leaders regard employees’ wellbeing as important while just 63% of UK employees said the same.
Culture Amp’s analysis also found that women employees perceive workplace key factors around wellbeing much less favourably than their male colleagues.
Asked if they feel their employer ensures a healthy work-life blend, 68% of men globally agreed but only 63% of women did. Fewer than six in ten women (59%) feel safe to take risks at work but in contrast, more than two thirds (67%) of men do.
However, employees worldwide were markedly more positive about their relationships with their line manager amid the general concerns over work systems: almost nine out of ten (89%) of respondents worldwide say that their line manager is available for support.
Justin Angsuwat, Chief People & Customer Engagement Officer at Culture Amp, said: “This wellbeing issue in the UK goes beyond established people and manager connections and into the way work is designed.”
He says employers will need to revisit their organisation’s culture, reset job expectations and lighten employee workloads, to address wellbeing concerns, with the first quarter of the year providing a potential window to recalibrate systems.
Angsuwat added: “Given employees’ focus on improving their lives and careers in the New Year, company leaders could consider tactics such as reviewing team norms to shave off frictions; team members could ask each other what standing meetings they can reduce or cancel and which low-impact projects they can pause. With this type of refocus, teams can save energy for where it matters most and successfully share it out.”
