According to Gallup’s latest report—State of the Global Workplace 2022, only 21% of all employees worldwide are engaged in their workplace with the levels of engagement swinging wildly across regions. In East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, South Korea and Taiwan), the number of engaged employees dwindles to just 17%.
On a country level, Japan had the least engaged employees with only 5% of employees being so followed by Hong Kong (6%) and Taiwan (10%). The survey also polled workers on their daily worries and found that Hong Kong had the highest daily worry, stress, anger and sadness levels of all East Asian countries.
The global survey of the world’s workers also uncovered that a whopping 60% of the workforce are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable. In one of the largest studies of burnout, Gallup found the biggest source was unfair treatment at work followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure.
Despite all its challenges, the US and Canada region remains the best region in the world to be an employee. The region ranked first in terms of employee engagement and job opportunities and came second in terms of well-being and living comfortably.
Looking ahead, organisations need to think about the whole person, not just the worker in order to tackle these workplace problems. Leaders need to add well-being measures to their executive dashboard which can alert them to critical warning signs that do not show up on the traditional spreadsheet. When leaders take responsibility for the well-being of their workers, the result is not only productive organisations, but thriving individuals, families and communities.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
