WorkL’s Employee Experience Report- Retail- comment from Lord Mark Price and Baroness Martha Lane Fox
A report published by WorkL today (29th November 2022), on employee engagement has revealed that minority workers have a higher risk of leaving their current role and have a significantly higher wellbeing risk.
WorkL’s Employee Experience Report 2022, which has pulled data from its employee experience database- the world’s largest- shows that the flight risk for people with a disability is 34% compared to 26% for those who are non-disabled. The Wellbeing risk for disabled employees is 40% compared to 32% for non-disabled people and disabled people also score 5% points lower when asked if they feel fairly paid compared to non-disabled people.
The report is a review of the last 12 months and also looks back to 2018 before the Covid pandemic to draw comparisons. Baroness Martha Lane Fox has provided the foreword to the report, which highlights women in tech. Over 300,000 employees haveindependently entered their employer via WorkL’s Happy At Work Test, a free test to help individuals measure, track and improve their workplace happiness. The data reveals trendsacross 26 industries on over 27,000 organisations.
Nick Bacon, Professor in Human Resource Management at Bayes Business School who was recently a guest on WorkL’s Webinar comments;
“Lockdown was not a working at home wonderland for many disabled people- in reality, disabled people were more likely to be furloughed than non-disabled people.”
Kamran Mallick, CEO of Disability Rights UK who is on WorkL’s Employee Experience Report panel hosted by WorkL Founder, Lord Mark Price comments;
“It’s 2022 and I started in my career over 20 years ago with the desire to bring about change that led to society embracing the idea that all of us have something valuable to bring. Disability is not about them and us, it is about all of us. Our workplaces benefit when we look through the lens of intersectionality and value the lived experience we bring. It’s right for business, it’s right for the country, it’s right for all of us.”
Findings in the report also highlight that employees in the LGBTQ+ community are significantly more at risk in work compared to employees who identify as heterosexual. Their flight risk is 6% higher than heterosexuals (32% compared to 26%), their Wellbeing risk scores were higher (39%/32%) and they are three points behind on pay.
The Chartered Management Institute’s (CMI) Workplace Inclusivity Illusion Report, supports WorkL’s finding. Their data showed that 65% of those who identify as LGBTQ+ reported feeling overlooked for opportunities due to their identity. Their report also showed that over half of employees (52%) – or an estimated 10.6 million people in the UK – felt they had been overlooked for opportunities in the workplace because of their identity over the course of their career.
Belton Flournoy, a founding member of the Protiviti UK LGBTQ+ network who founded Pride in the City for Pride in London says;
“While Diversity & Inclusion has been a focus for a number of years, companies are now placing a large amount of effort on the inclusion aspect of it. When we work to make sure our diverse employees feel included, their productivity increases. WorkL’s State of the Nation annual report highlights the need for organisations to focus on increasing feelings of ‘inclusion’ as they make their teams more diverse, rather than just trying to increase organisational diversity.”
Other findings in the report reveal that:
· Women in tech feel more empowered today than 5 years ago. In 2018 our data showed that in Technology men felt more empowered and trusted in their jobs than female employees (60% in men vs 54% in women). In 2022, this gap stabilises as both men and women score 74%.
· Retail has fallen to the bottom of the table this year having shown poor results even since before the pandemic. Back in 2018 employees in the retail industry felt they were underdeveloped, unhappy in their jobs and their Wellbeing was being cared for less than other sectors. 58% when asked if they feel happy at work compared to the global average of 64%.
· Undoubtedly the sector that was most impacted by the pandemic is Health and Social Care. Back in 2019 employees working in healthcare in the UK rated their wellbeing at work as poor, scoring an average of 45% when asked if they rarely feel depressed or anxious at work; 29% lower than employees in the Legal Services industry.
· Management engagement scores dropped 10% in the immediate aftermath of the lockdown announcement (from 75% in March 2020 – 65% in April 2020). The ‘engagement gap’ between employees and managers has significantly decreased from its greatest March 2020 (15%) to <3% in 2022. Managers are also clearly offering effective support to their teams as non-management flight has decreased by 18%, whereas potential strain or lack of support in management has led to Flight Risk rising 1%. Similarly, non management Wellbeing Risk has decreased by 17% and management Wellbeing risk has increased by 5%. Despite management engagement scores dropping significantly at the beginning of the pandemic, Management engagement has risen 10% in the last 4 years.
The Founder of WorkL, former Trade Minister and former Managing Director of Waitrose, Lord Mark Price, comments on the report’s findings; “Our report provides a very detailed analysis of the last five years on employee experience, and I urge employers to have a read to understand how they can improve their employees’ experience at work. I hope that organisations over the next 12 months will focus on nurturing a positive and sustainable workplace culture, help their employees with the cost-of-living crisis, put more resources into career development and focus on continuing to balance office working and home working to help keep Wellbeing scores high.”
The full report is available to download here.
Methodology
The data used in this report is from WorkL’s Workplace Happiness Test which includes crowdsourced employee experience data on over 300,000 individuals across 26 industries on over 27,000 organisations. This test gives participants a score based on six key principles, crucial engagement indicators as well as qualitative results. In this analysis, ‘post-covid’ is all the results collected after the 15th of March 2020, when UK legislation and restriction were fully implemented and had a significant impact on the workplace.
Responses