Most of us will spend about 81,396 hours at work during our lifetime. How does being at work make you feel? Do you wake up excited about the long work commute, the micromanaging boss, the fake smiles and the extra hours without overtime pay?
Recent studies show that feelings of disengagement at work are only getting worse. A worldwide Gallup poll found that 60% of workers were detached at work, with 19% identifying as "miserable."
The figure dropped to 34% in 2021 and dipped again to 32% in 2022. As employees become more disengaged there is a greater chance of them putting in just enough effort to get the bare minimum done, also known as "quiet quitting." Chances are two or three people in your cubicle forest or on that video call have lost any sense of purpose and/or excitement about what they do.
What’s driving this growing disengagement? Some believe that rising levels of remote or hybrid work could be responsible. But it’s a little more nuanced than that.
A 2022 study conducted by Tracking Happiness found that remote employees were roughly 20% happier than in-person ones. The increase in happiness is likely due to improvement in areas such as work-life balance. A 2022 Cisco study found that over 78% of those surveyed said that hybrid work improved the balance, mainly due to the time saved commuting.
Yet other reports suggest that the bosses disagree. According to a 2023 survey by Robin, 67% of employers are mandating that employees work from the office two or three days a week, and 43% plan to introduce new mandates in 2023. More importantly, 62% of managers said in-office interaction with an employee was a key factor in whether that employee gets a raise or promotion.
In other words, too many bosses miss the days of peering over the cubicle wall at employees they treat like cookie-jar kids who can’t be trusted. And they wonder why their charges feel no sense of engagement: more hours, more meetings, more activity and yet, less faith.
Meanwhile, workers with a remote-capable job — yet forced to be fully on-site — saw the biggest engagement drop during this period: a five-point plunge, coupled with a seven-point surge since 2019.
Put simply, disengagement is rising across the board. Forcing people to report to the office when they truly don’t need to can put an even bigger dent in worker enthusiasm.