According to a survey by Inpulse - employee engagement and survey experts - anxiety in employees has gone sky-high over the last year.
The survey - conducted over 3,441 UK employees - found that anxiety is the dominant negative emotion at work and has risen by 240 per cent over the same period as last year, to 17 per cent.
Other negative emotions for employees are stress and isolation, with stress rising to 11 per cent and isolation to 7 per cent. According to Inpulse, an emotion becomes dominant if it rises above 10 per cent - causing it to impact on the atmosphere and culture of an employer.
Internationally, 11,000 employees were surveyed with the results showing stress and isolation standing at 10 per cent and 7 per cent - but anxiety shows at 12 per cent - lower than that of the UK.
Matt Stephens - CEO and Founder of Inpulse and author of The Engagement Revolution - explained:
“Extreme negative emotions are being driven by fears of job security (24 percent) and high workload (16 per cent) and it simply is not sustainable for individuals to feel this for long periods of time. With so many people working from home, it has been harder to separate work life and personal life – for many of us the two have become intertwined. Therefore, as employers we need to go beyond only caring for employees’ work self and start to care for the whole being.”
Inpulse suggests that employers can take positive action to support their people with the issues of anxiety, stress and isolation in the following ways by:
Anxiety - with many people feeling unsafe after the pandemic, employers can give help by being aware of the issue and being sensitive to the situation, with managers being able to talk to their teams - giving support.
Stress - many people are now working from home, whilst also undertaking childcare, home-schooling and/or caring for vulnerable members of the family. Employers can help the situation by allowing flexible working hours.
Isolation - managers can organize social events by video call, where work is not discussed. Line managers should call each of their directly reporting employees once a week at least, or set up a network within the team allocating a phone call ‘buddy’ each week. Colleagues can also contact each other regularly.
Matt Stephens stated:
“To us, the future isn’t about helping humans thrive as a resource, it’s helping them thrive as human beings. Emotions of anxiety, stress and isolation will all be building to impact overall mental health. The mix could be causing irreparable damage not only to individuals’ own emotional health, but also the employer relationship.”
