A new survey of workers and human resources leaders sheds light on attitudes related to changing work environments, including such things as burnout levels, how many days a week in an office make sense and whether vaccine mandates are preferred.
TINYpulse, the Seattle startup which specializes in quick employee surveys and feedback, released its State of Employee Engagement report for the third quarter on Thursday. The company, which was acquired by Bellevue, Wash.-based Limeade in July, surveyed 100 employees and over 600 HR professionals and leaders around the world.
TINYpulse founder and CEO David Niu, who analyzed the results alongside industrial-organizational psychologist Dr. Elora Voyles, said the report highlights a main theme — “leaders aren’t as tuned into their employees as they think they are.”
“The data highlights a few major disconnects on employee emotional exhaustion, which workplace arrangement is most productive, and vaccine mandate support,” Niu told GeekWire. “The way HR is viewing these issues does not accurately reflect how employees are viewing them.”
That disconnect could lead to workplaces implementing programs that are skewed to HR’s point of view versus what employees really want, and Niu said it’s more critical than ever to “get a pulse on employee sentiment via regular 1-on-1’s, meetings, and surveys.”
Employers across tech and a multitude of industries impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic are trying to get a better handle on what the future of work looks like, even as we approach two years since many workers were sent home to do their jobs. A study of Microsoft workers released in September, for instance, found that a companywide shift to remote work has hurt communication and collaboration among different business groups inside the company, threatening employee productivity and long-term innovation.
Here are a few highlights and graphics from the TINYpulse report:
Vaccine policy: A majority of employees (74%) would support a vaccine mandate, which is higher than the 68.1% of HR leaders who feel the same way. The trend toward mandating vaccines at workplaces jumped 74.3% from Q2 to Q3.
Return to work: Three days a week in the office was the most preferred option for both employees (44.6%) and HR leaders (36.2%). Four days a week in the office was viewed less favorably than five. Employee reasons for returning to work are varied, with the top explanations being work efficiency and productivity (19%) and money (13.5%). The state of the pandemic only factored in 2.4% of responses as worker attitudes appear to be less about the health crisis and more about whether they prefer in-person or remote work.
Employee burnout: HR leaders over-reported by 18.3% that employees were “quite a bit” and “a great deal” burned out in Q3. TINYpulse says that this can bias decision making, so HR should survey workers before implementing significant programs related to burnout. HR also missed when estimating the level of employee exhaustion for remote work (80.8% vs. 37.9%). “Another reason to ensure that management has a frequent pulse on how their employees are feeling,” the survey said.
Read the full report for more insight on return-to-work preferences, compensation, onboarding and more.
