How Are We Doing, Europe?: A Look at Stress, Engagement, and Wellbeing in the Workplace

By Dr Mike Talbot

How is the European workforce doing? Are we stressed? Engaged? Are we thriving? A new report from Gallup surveyed responses from workers across 160 countries, asking about these very aspects of their working life. The results are a mixed bag: European workers are less stressed than many regions of the world, are less engaged, but ultimately are thriving far better than the global average.

How does this matter? Well, according to Gallup, stressed and disengaged workforces can affect productivity by up to 9% of GDP. So yes, it matters a lot to ensure that employees are not over-demanded, disengaged, or suffering any ill-effects from their working life.

In terms of how these effects pan out over different European nations and regions, Gallup reports that Southern Europeans are handling the pressures of work least well, with stress levels for Greeks at 61%, Maltese 57%, Cypriots 56%, Italians 51% and Spaniards 47%. This compares to workers who are experiencing less pressure such as Danes (19%), Poles (22%) and Lithuanians (23%).

The report also highlights a concerning ‘engagement slump’, where self-reported rates of engagement barely hit double digits in several countries, from Croatia (7%), Poland (7%), France (8%), Switzerland (8%), Luxembourg (9%), Ireland (9%) and Austria (9%). If we are looking for more engaged employees, however, we can turn to countries such as Albania (32%), Romania (31%), Sweden (25%) and Malta (25%).

It all makes for concerning reading, of course. But of particular interest to organisations such as EU Mediation is that, around the engagement question, a further 15% or respondents in Gallup’s survey reported not just being "unengaged", but "actively disengaged": purposely and consciously detaching themselves from their work, team and employer. Elsewhere, this has been referred to as ‘Quiet Quitting’: workers are physically present in their job, put in a just-acceptable performance, but have no psychological or emotional investment in achieving highly or even in being there.

For us, this is where the Confident Conversation comes in: that difficult chat with an employee who appears fed-up, unbothered, or generally demotivated, and with whom we need to express our concern and get a response that goes beyond them just telling us, ‘Yeah, things are fine’, ‘No, there’s no problem’, or even ‘No. Why? Who’s been saying something?’

How do we broach this? Well, we have trained dozens of organisations in how to do just that! It’s hard to capture the training in a few sentences, but one tip would be not to leave things to fester. Act early and courageously; drive quite directly into difficult situations like this, listening first, suspending judgement, and expressing empathy for whatever is going on for a worker who has clearly checked out. If you fail to address the needs of an actively disengaged worker, they remain unhappy, you remain dissatisfied and, just as importantly, the active disengagement can spread. Disaffection is very contagious and soon you may see the negative effect on the whole team and on the bottom line.

And so, back to the good news for Europe. Despite our poor engagement record, in measures of well-being (or ‘thriving’ in the Gallup survey), we are doing quite well. Against a global average of 34% for ‘thriving’, Europeans come in at 49% overall, with Iceland and Denmark both at 78% and Finland at a whopping 81%. So, for a second tip today, if you want to really feel good, think about moving North!