What’s keeping you awake at night?
The biggest concerns
Share this
Focus
Financial health is the biggest concern for employees, more so than mental and physical health. We know they are all connected and that they all affect productivity, so do you know how your employees are feeling? How many of your employees are feeling this way and what are you doing that is helping or hindering?
Our findings showed the biggest concerns for organisations are health and safety, and employee recruitment and retention. So how can you address their concerns and set yourselves apart when recruiting and retaining your talent? Now is a great time to review your reward and recognition in line with employee needs.
Employees
Financial health returns as the top concern, overtaking issues associated with the pandemic. Concerns around mental health have seen a significant increase rising to the second biggest worry.
Question: Have you been affected by any of the following in the last 12 months and if so, for what reason?
Looking at how this impacts employees directly, we see a huge increase across all areas with more than 3 in 4 saying they’ve felt stressed in the last year and more than 2 in 3 losing sleep through worry.
The scale of increase across all of these areas is really worrying. Financial health and mental health were the top reasons across all of these impacts.
Employers
Organisations have a lot to juggle and pressures vary from one industry to the next. However, recruitment and retention has become a significant issue for many and some industries are seeing huge vacancies that they are struggling to fill. With 43% of employees planning to change the company they work for in the next 12 months this concern is likely to worsen.
Employer question: Which of these are the biggest concerns for your organisation currently?
Many employees remained in their role during the uncertainty of the pandemic to maintain their job security. As the economy opens up, employees are thinking about their future work situation more deeply.
Asking on their plans in the in the next 12 months, a large proportion said yes they were planning to change :
- The company I work for – more than 2 in 5 (43%)
- The industry I work for – almost 2 in 5 (39%)
- My job role for less responsibility – more than 1 in 3 (34%)
- My job role for more responsibility – more than 2 in 5 (42%)
This will further compound the recruitment and retention challenge many organisations are facing.
The main reasons given for those changes:
- To increase earnings – more than 2 in 5 (43%)
- For my mental health – 1 in 3 (33%)
- For my work-life balance – more than 1 in 4 (28%)
- More job security – 1 in 4 (25%)
- Unhappy with my current employer – almost 2 in 5 (18%)
- To obtain better workplace benefits – almost 2 in 5 (18%)
LCP viewpoint
Gordon Watchorn, Partner & Head of Corporate Consulting, LCP
It is great that we are able to see this relevant data, and analyse how things have changed over recent years. We all know about the staff shortages in certain industries, and the pressure this puts on employees...
...It is not surprising that employee recruitment and retention features near the top of biggest company concerns in the chart above. What does surprise me is that 2 of 5 people are looking to change the industry they work in – this is not simply a case of choosing employers who look after colleagues better, it is a complete shift in career and possibly lifestyle. Covid-19 clearly forced a huge proportion of the country’s workforce to reconsider their objectives and priorities and you could say these figures suggest that is a good thing to avoid people working in industries or jobs which do not fulfil them. Of the reasons given for wanting to change jobs, again there are not too many surprises. I would worry if employers did not engage with their employees to understand how they could better offer what employees want, and appreciate that this may have changed over recent years due to the pandemic or a different demographic.
The most worrying figures of all for me are those showing just how many people have been affected by mental and physical health challenges as shown above. It really is alarming that the proportion of employees affected by each has increased over 2022 compared to the previous year. Given the challenges we all faced in 2021, one may have thought 2022 would offer new hope of getting most things back on track and reducing general anxieties, but clearly these results do not show that. It’s imperative that employers are engaged and understand, otherwise the staff shortages are sure to worsen. I hope we see more positive figures in 2023 and beyond – this will benefit both employees and employers with better outcomes for all.