This year’s Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report (2024) is out and the findings are very concerning.

In the introduction to the report, Gallup’s CEO highlights that “People’s mental wellbeing has been worsening. In the last 10 years the number of people expressing stress, sadness, anxiety, anger or worry has been on the rise, reaching its highest levels since the Gallup surveys began.”

Employee well being is on a decline. Let’s look at this in more detail.

Key Highlights from the Report

Here are some of the key findings on employee mental health from the report with special focus on India and South Asia.

➡ Overall, global employee engagement stagnated, and employee wellbeing declined in 2023.

➡ Only 23% of the global workforce is engaged in their work, however, employee engagement in India is a little higher at 32%.

➡ Wellbeing among younger employees has dropped in 2023.

➡ 58% of the global workforce feels they are struggling in life, 34% feel they are thriving and 8% feel they are suffering.

➡ South Asia has the lowest percentage of people who feel they are thriving in life (15%); 64% feel they are struggling and 20% feel they are suffering.

➡ 41% of the global workforce feel stress, 21% feel anger, 22% feel sad and 20% feel lonely on a daily basis.

➡ South Asia has the highest percentage of workforce in the world who feel angry (34%), sad (42%) and lonely (29%) on a daily basis but has relatively lower daily stress levels (31%).

➡India has the highest percentage of workforce in the world who feel angry on a daily basis (35%).

➡ 52% of the global workforce want to leave their job or are actively looking for a new job.

➡ Managers are more likely than non-managers to be engaged and thriving in life, however, they are also more likely to be stressed, angry, sad and lonely than non-managers.

Looking at the statistics in India, majority of the workforce is struggling and wants to leave their job while a large part of workforce is sad, lonely, angry almost every day. These numbers really drive home the need to focus on employee well being and mental health at work.

So what can be done about it?

The report highlights that addressing mental health requires changing how we manage people at an organisational level. It is interesting to note that a study released in January of this year by Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which studied individual level interventions aimed at improving employee well being in the UK, did not find any difference between the mental well being levels of employees who received individual-level mental health interventions and those who did not. This study also suggested that organisational level interventions which look at management practices, scheduling, staff resources, performance review or job design may be better ways to improve employee wellbeing.

The Gallup report further suggests that there is a need to provide support to employees for thriving in life, being engaged at work and for more as well as better labour protection policies and laws. The report found that,

➡ People in countries with substantial labour protection and labour rights laws and policies had stronger emotional health. India is currently listed in the low labour rights category.

➡ Employee engagement is a significant factor in overall life experiences. People who had higher levels of employee engagement also had stronger emotional health.

➡ When managers are engaged at work, non-managers are also more likely to be engaged. 70% of the variance in team engagement can be attributed to the manager.

From these findings, it is evident that employee mental health and well being cannot be ignored and employers need to focus on organisational level interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing of their workforce, particularly, re-look at their management practices, well-being policies and benefits and employee engagement.

Access the full Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report (2024) here: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx

Access the study by Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irj.12418

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