Employee engagement levels in the UK are one of the worst in Europe with fewer than one in 10 UK employees feeling enthusiastic about their job.
Just 9% of UK workers surveyed for Gallup’s ‘State of the global workforce’ report felt enthused by their work and workplace in 2022, well below the European average of 14%.
Romania is home to the most engaged workforce, where 33% of workers felt enthused by their roles, but workers in Italy were the most dissatisfied (4%).
Employee engagement levels in the UK ranked 33 out of 38 European countries, and suffered a two-point drop in score compared with last year’s survey.
Globally, just 21% of employees are engaged at work and 33% are “thriving in their overall wellbeing”.
Pa Sinyan, Gallup‘s managing partner for EMEA, said: “Leaders can improve employee engagement and wellbeing by enabling frontline managers to understand their people better, including how they feel about life outside of work, and helping them focus on what they do best in the work environment.”
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Only 40% of UK workers felt it was a good time to find a job, compared with 69% of Danish workers. Falling UK confidence bucked the trend of growing job-climate confidence in Europe, which was up 16 points year-on-year.
Forty-one per cent of UK workers experienced daily stress, higher than other major economies including Germany (40%) and Norway (39%). Globally, this figure was 45%.
However, UK employees still felt they had a high quality of life; 60% said they were ‘thriving’ in life, higher than Germany (56%), France (43%) and Spain (41%), but below Europe-leading Finland where 84% felt they were thriving.
In his foreword to the report, Gallop CEO Jon Clifton said that business units with engaged workers have 23% higher profit than those with workers who felt “miserable”.
He said: “Additionally, teams with thriving workers see significantly lower absenteeism, turnover and accidents; they also see higher customer loyalty. The point is: wellbeing at work isn’t at odds with anyone’s agenda.”
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