In Europe, only 13pc of employees are engaged in their work, dropping to 11pc for Irish workers. The global average was 23pc.
In 2022, employee engagement and job opportunities increased globally, falling back in line with pre-pandemic economic development and growth. But there was a cost: worker stress remained at an all-time high.
That’s according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023 report, which contains data from responses of employees from countries all over the world.
On average, Gallup polled around 1,000 workers per country – although this was sometimes adjusted for larger, more populated countries and smaller countries to achieve a more accurate sample size.
In total, Gallup surveyed more than 120,000 people. Its report was broken down into different regions. The European data showed that Europe had the lowest regional percentage of engaged employees at just 13pc. For Irish employees, this was marginally lower at 11pc.
The global average for employees who said they were engaged in their work was 10pc higher. While 23pc is not a wonderful stat either, the results indicate that European employers need to think more about employee engagement.
Almost three-quarters (72pc) of European workers are not engaged in their work and 15pc are “actively disengaged”. This was in comparison to a global average of 18pc who said they were actively disengaged, while 59pc globally said they were not engaged.
But while Europeans scored the worst for employee engagement, they scored below average on stress, anger and wanting to find a new job. More than half (51pc) of the world’s workers said they were looking for a career change compared to 34pc of Europeans.
Only 14pc of European workers said they felt angry at work compared to 21pc globally, while 39pc of Europeans feel stressed compared to 44pc of workers globally.
Irish workers reported that 42pc feel stressed daily, while 18pc feel angry at work indicating that we are more placid than most of our European counterparts.
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