State of the Global Workplace: How does Australia stack up?

Gallop surveyed over 122,000 workers globally to understand how employees are feeling at work.

For Australian small business owners, the results provide a helpful snapshot of how their workers might be feeling.

What should I know?

• Worker engagement was up globally, however, in the Australia/New Zealand region it is still only at 23%. The remaining workers are either ‘quiet quitting’ (67%; i.e. disconnected and not putting in effort) or ‘loud quitting’ (11%; i.e. taking actions that harm the organisation), which tells us most people just aren’t satisfied or engaged with their jobs.
  
  
• 47% of workers in Australia and New Zealand are stressed at work each day, above the global number of 44% and has been rising steadily over the past decade. High stress levels were also more common among workers actively disengaged at work (56%) compared to those actively engaged (30%).
  
  
• Globally, over half of employees expressed some level of intent to leave their job and are either watching or looking for a new job. This is slightly lower in Australia and New Zealand with 43% looking for a new job. Disengaged employees were more likely to be looking for a new job (61%) than engaged employees (43%).
  
  
• There is not much difference in stress levels between those working from home, working hybrid and working onsite. In fact, not being engaged, involved, and enthusiastic about work had a much larger impact (3.8 times more) on employee stress levels.

What can I do?

If you’re worried about your workers’ engagement, stress and intent to leave, the report looked into what employees said they would change about their workplace. The top three responses were:

• Engagement (41%): This includes things like recognition, approachable managers, autonomy, learning opportunities, respect, fairness, and clear goals and guidance. Ahead for Business has a great resource on creating a mentally healthy small business which provides some tips on keeping you and your employees happy.
  
  
• Pay and benefits (28%): Many people thought they were not paid enough for what they do. They also commented on things like being paid on time, getting petrol vouchers or reimbursements, giving rewards to hard working employees, and good facilities within the workplace. The Fair Work Ombudsman has some great tips on paying wages to help keep you on track.
  
  
• Wellbeing (16%): Comments around wellbeing focused on work-life-balance, with things like less overtime, shifts planned well in advance, longer breaks or the ability to take a break, a place to relax, and for workers health to be taken seriously. You can find out more about work-life balance here.