Working for a company that supports work-life balance, having managers who acknowledge good work and getting the right training to work effectively are the three top reasons for employee engagement, we discovered in the Qualtrics Employee Pulse Study.
In this study we found, 53% of workers in Asia-Pacific are engaged, broken down into 57% for New Zealand, 56% for Australia, 51% for Malaysia, 45% for Singapore and 40% for Hong Kong.
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Employees in both healthcare and travel & leisure are 60% engaged. Least engaged are those in media & advertising and in public relations, where just 40% of workers are engaged.
Given these, some 15% of workers in the Asia-Pacific are looking to leave their current jobs in the next two years. The number is highest in Hong Kong, with 21% looking to leave. Per industry, retail workers are also most likely to look for a new job (21%) followed by media & advertising (20%) and finance (18%).
On the other hand, 70% of healthcare workers are likely to stay on.
Those intending to stay cite their employers’ support for work-life balance, the right level of training, and the trust they have for their colleagues.
One of the biggest trends to come out of the data is the link between an organisation’s perceived support of work-life balance and engagement. We should be note that contemporary work-life balance is not about a 50-50 split - it’s about understanding all these experiences where the workplace and personal life intersect with each other and determine where you want to spend your limited energy.
Here are some more interesting findings:
- Nearly a quarter, or 24%, of workers in the region are stressed or emotional because of work. Most stressed are those in the telecom sector (44), while least stressed are those in manufacturing (19%).
- Forty-five percent of Asia-Pacific workers look forward to going to work, with New Zealand workers the most driven (54%) while those from Hong Kong the least (34%). Those in utilities (56%) look forward to going to work the most while those in the public sector and in retail (both 28%) the least.
- Again, work-life balance is a factor in looking forward to going to work, followed by a manager that helps with tasks, the ability to try out new things on the job, and having a manager who helps resolve work-related issues.
Meet the Workaholics:
There were plenty of people globally who said they worked more than 60 hours a week. Let’s look at who those workaholics and how they felt about their jobs:
- They were younger workers in more senior roles, in particular the majority were under 34 years old.
- 25% said they do felt overwhelmed by the work compared to 6% of the global data set and 20% of the felt emotional or stressed because of the work.
- They really do go the extra mile – nearly 50% of them always check their emails on the weekend and nearly 25% of them will commute for over 2 hours to get to work as opposed to 3% of average globally.
And what’s important when it comes to engagement they don’t seem to mind the long hours. This group is the most likely group to recommend their company to people they know as a place to work. They are more willing to stay in their roles compared to others. Over 25% said they nearly always look forward to going to work.
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It’s clear from this study that there are a number of drivers that contribute to engagement in the workplace and it might have been surprising to some of us too hear that those under the age of 34 like to work extremely hard and they love it.
It leaves me wondering do you know how engaged your employees are and what keep them going each day.
The data points above come from information from 4,505 workers in various industries around the world was used for the Qualtrics Employee Pulse Survey.
Qualtrics is a rapidly growing software-as-a-service company and the leader in experience management. More than 8,500 enterprises worldwide, including more than 75 percent of the Fortune 100 and 99 of the top 100 U.S. business schools, rely on Qualtrics. Our solutions make it easy to measure, prioritise, and optimize the experiences organisations provide across the four foundations of business: customer, product, employee and brand experiences. To learn more, and to request a demo, please visit https://www.qualtrics.com/au