Why Do 90% of UK Employees Feel Disconnected?
Why Do 90% of UK Employees Feel Disconnected?
BY CMP RESOLUTIONS
With a recent study finding that 90% of UK employees feel disconnected from work, says CMP Resolutions, mediation emerges as a powerful tool to rebuild enthusiasm and commitment. By providing a safe space for open conversations and resolution, mediators foster trust and understanding, nurturing a culture of resilience and purpose. The transformative impact of mediation has the potential of creating more harmonious and engaged workplaces.
A new Gallup survey points to hard evidence of what many in HR will already suspect: attitudes to work in the UK have changed dramatically in recent years: 90% of employees said they felt no enthusiasm for their work or their workplace. Engagement and commitment look to have drained away, like sand through employers’ fingers.
How can this have happened? The survey authors point to the wider context, the mass of negative events leading to feelings of “worry, stress and anger” that have come in response to an “avalanche of negative news”. Inflation and the cost-of-living crisis; fears around climate change and damage to the environment; global conflicts; a lack of access to NHS services; concerns over diversity and equality. In other words, a sense of fatalism and lack of control. And perhaps most insidiously, after so many decades (or even centuries) of belief in the idea of progress, there’s a sense that things won’t always get better.
Another worry linked to the lack of engagement is that while in the past it would be a signal for employees to move on, now staff are staying put anyway, because they don’t feel anything will necessarily improve for them somewhere else. The potential for recession has made people cautious.
But it’s important that HR and employers don’t just blame the external situation for what’s been happening to engagement. It only means organisations need to work harder and be more attentive to their internal culture, and how it works for people through our difficult times. What makes it human. What’s really valued. Where the sense of belonging, the sense of purpose comes from. Because there’s no doubt that the past three years or more have accelerated trends towards detachment, more remote and hybrid working, more reliance on digital communications, more IT and AI across workplace systems. All different kinds of ways in which work has become less about people working together.
