According to one global study, Gen Z were more vulnerable; but in general, employers need to start listening to the signals, employee burnout and career dissatisfaction
While the current COVID-19 pandemic has created an imperative for companies to reevaluate their priorities, an opportunity lies for them to transform their digital journey and rethink their approaches to cohesion and collaboration through hybrid work.
Incidentally, employee burnout has become an often-noticed phenomenon. To gain insights into this and other work-related trends, a survey was commissioned by Adobe involving 5,500 people in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Japan between 30 Apr and 28 May this year.
The 20-minute survey included 300 leaders and around 400 to 500 enterprise workers from organizations ranging in size from micro businesses to medium-sized business in each country.
Three major findings
With the pandemic putting personal time at a premium, some of the key insights pulled from the survey included the following:
- Gen Z was the primary driver of the great resignation
a. More than a third of the workforce surveyed—and half of Gen Z—had plans to switch jobs in the next year, especially employees struggling with time and productivity pressures.
b. Gen Z in the survey were also the least satisfied with work-life balance (56%) and their jobs overall (59%), feeling the most pressure to work during ‘office hours’ (62%), despite a quarter of them citing that they worked best during outside of the standard nine to five window. Nearly half of Gen Z in the survey said they often worked from bed. - Time pressure exacerbated employee burnout
More than half of enterprise workers in the survey who worked longer than they would like to, blamed their company’s work culture, administrative processes, and growth strategy. Leaders of small- and medium- sized enterprises (SME) were also feeling the impact, as one out of three had struggled with employee burnout or attrition this past year; two in three had made changes to improve retention and recruitment of employees. - Workers called for technology to help
a. While the forces behind these trends were large and complex, there were indications that workers in the survey had higher expectations for technology to help them work faster and more efficiently. This was especially true for low-effort manual tasks such as managing files, forms, contracts, payments and so on.
b. Workers in the survey cited that they spent a third of the workweek on mundane and repetitive work, with 84% of SME leaders citing that these tasks got in the way of job effectiveness. Some 91% of workers surveyed said they were interested in tools that would make tasks and processes more efficient.
To retain and attract talent, employers may consider these findings as factors influencing how they embrace user-friendly technology tools to support cultural change, monitor staff well-being and help them balance work and personal life in the future of work.
