Commitment to employers has decreased by a third since before the pandemic

• Workplace happiness has fallen by 75% since 2019
• Employee motivation has dropped by nearly a fifth since this time
• Employee anxiety has increased by 78%
• Thousands of employees surveyed

New findings from Inpulse, the employee engagement experts, show that levels of commitment to employers have decreased by nearly a third (32.5%) since before the pandemic. In 2019, the average level of commitment to employers, as stated by respondents, was 43% compared to just 29% from those in 2021. Inpulse’s surveys reach thousands of employees across the UK and globally.^[1]

The data also shows that employee happiness has decreased by 75% since 2019 while employee anxiety has shot up by 78% for those who answered surveys where these emotions were included. Employee motivation also dropped by nearly a fifth over the past two years, from an average score of 21% to 17% in 2021.

Matt Stephens, Founder and CEO of Inpulse, said:

“For the past year, we’ve seen how the impacts of COVID-19 have taken a toll on employee anxiety and stress levels. But we are now seeing the fallout of this – how employee emotions are having a direct impact on employee connection, focus and loyalty to businesses. Worryingly, despite the incredibly high anxiety levels employees are feeling, negative employee emotions are still increasing and levels of commitment, motivation and focus are falling”. 

Insight from the survey data appears to show that stress levels in the UK are less than in other regions. In the UK, stress levels increased by 23%, compared to a 39% increase for global respondents. 

Stephens explained:

“Though at first glance the data suggests that UK businesses are currently handling employee stress better than their foreign counterparts, in reality, UK stress levels were already higher than the global average pre-pandemic. In 2019, UK stress levels sat at 22% compared to just 18% for global respondents. Because of this, even with this smaller increase, UK stress levels are still 2 percentage points higher than global levels in 2021.

“We can see from this that businesses really are experiencing negative emotions like never before and employers must take care to address the burnout and resilience problems of their workforces by accurately measuring and responding to employee sentiments. Without a timely response, these problems will detrimentally impact engagement, productivity, absence, and retention.”

– Ends –

^[1] Data taken from 192 employee emotion surveys between 2019 and 2021, with 201,619 respondents. In 2019 there were 54,645 respondents, in 2020 there were 138,567 respondents, and up to the current period in 2021, 8,407 respondents have taken part. Respondents are from the UK and across the globe, with 142,073 UK respondents and 59,397 global respondents across the three year period.

For media enquiries contact: Kay Phelps, PRinHR, Email: kay.phelps@PRinHR.co.uk +44 (0) 7710 043244, or Kendall.Knight@PRinHR.co.uk

About Inpulse

Inpulse provides real-time emotion-driven employee insights that improve engagement to help increase the performance of a company. The Inpulse team provides support including analysis of data to bring unbiased perspective to decision-makers. T: +44 (0) 1582 818343; tellmemore@questagency.co.uk.