Workplace stress at record levels, Gartner survey finds

As workers suffer record low levels of mental, physical and financial health, it’s the more traditional workplaces like banks and insurers that are getting it right for employees.

When foosball at the office is no longer enough.

Tech companies face a “Kodak moment” as they struggle to attract top talent in the fourth wave of the pandemic and a wellbeing crisis in Australian workplaces. And as workers suffer from record low levels of mental, physical and financial health, it’s the more traditional workplaces like banks, insurers and “toothpaste” companies that are getting it right for their employees.

That’s the view of Aaron McEwan, vice-president of research and advisory at Gartner, who says the many tech companies trying to reimpose pre-Covid work arrangements – such as a return to the office – are taking a “dangerous gamble”.

“You can’t just rush back to what work was like,” he says. “The pandemic was essentially a pause that gave us all an opportunity to look at work and ask, is work actually designed for the future? And clearly it wasn’t.

“This is a Kodak moment really for many organisations, this idea of trying to go back to the past is the equivalent of Blockbuster sitting there saying, well people like coming in with their kids to pick videos out off the shelf …”

McEwan says the priority for boards and chief executives is digitalisation but they need workers to be “digitalised” for that to happen. The pandemic had provided a fast track from analog to online and trying to unwind that by bringing people back to the office is a direct threat to digitalising operations.

Gartner’s latest Global Talent Monitor tracks mental, physical and financial wellbeing over the last three months of 2022 and found overall wellness was 35.5 per cent compared with 42.6 per cent in the first three months of 2021.

Says McEwan: “Overall wellbeing is now at record levels since we’ve been tracking it. It’s lower than it was before the pandemic and even during the pandemic. We’re really heading towards a wellbeing crisis. This of course comes at a time when businesses thought: we have got the worst of the pandemic behind us, we can all get back to making money, growing faster.”

McEwan says the fourth wave of a health epidemic is characterised primarily by psychological trauma, burnout and economic injury: “It’s the long tail and it’s usually the biggest, the most impactful and the longest lasting. It looks as if Australia is rushing towards that fourth wave right now. You’ve got this massive impact on wellbeing across all of the measures that we’ve looked at. And then at the same time, you’ve got organisations doing a combination of, the worst is behind us, let’s get back to it – and we’re going to ask you to come back to the office as well.

“I’m just not sure that leaders understand that when any group of people go through a collective trauma, there’s a recovery period that has to happen. You can’t just go from, we’re feeling terrible to just picking ourselves up by the bootstraps and getting on with it.

“It’s a danger to organisations if they are relying on their workforce just picking up the slack and pushing through this next period. There’s a recovery period required and people are looking for empathy and understanding.”

McEewan says there’s a division emerging between companies based on how they are managing their work.

“You have got some organisations today, which, ironically, appear to be mostly in the tech sector, and the reason I say ironically, because these are the companies that killed Kodak, right, these are the companies that led the digital revolution.

“What they’re doing now is that they’re failing to realise that we’re in a different revolution, the human centric revolution.

“They’re sitting there doing things like, we’re going to force you back to the office, we’re going to make sure that you can’t talk about your political opinions at work, we’re going to make you adhere to a cult-like organisational culture (in which) you worship the CEO.

“They’re also aggressively laying people off at the moment. They might have to, but you don’t have to do it over an email.

“On the other side of the fence, you’ve got these companies that don’t have sexy products, they’re not into AI, maybe they sell toothpaste or toilet paper and they’ve always struggled to compete against these big tech companies for talent.

“So what have they been doing for 10 years? They’ve been investing in their values, into what we call human leadership, they take a different approach and they’re (saying) we want to attract and retain our talent by offering flexibility and autonomy and growth.

“These companies are slowly cutting the tech sector’s lunch, and taking all their talent at the moment because they’re (the tech companies) are not looking at everything that they can do as an alternative to laying people off.

“It’s not that they’re (the traditional companies) are not tightening their belts, they’re just thinking through the implications of some of their decisions. So they’re taking a more human centric approach.

“We’re already seeing evidence that some of the most in-demand tech talent in the world are proactively seeking out these types of companies – banks, insurance companies, toothpaste makers – for jobs. In the past, the tech companies had the foosball tables, the 24-hour cafeteria and the crushing work schedules. And that’s the clear thing that’s changed: the pandemic made employees go, I want to be treated like a human being, not a widget, not a piece of furniture. What we’re starting to see now is that the companies that treat their employees like human beings are winning the war for talent.

“And guess what? They’re not waging a war for talent. Even that language is problematic. They’re not engaged in a war for talent, they’re just quietly going about running a business in a way that’s humane.”

McEwan says, however, that most companies have decided not to match inflation with wage rises, adding to the anxiety of workers.

“Some organisations are extending financial support in the form of access to financial planners or financial counsellors, particularly to help people with things like mortgage stress in terms of mental wellbeing,” he says. “Others approach it by saying, hey, we’ll have some yoga classes and guess what, they will be held during your lunch hour, which is exacerbating the problem.”

He says a more effective way to help workers’ wellbeing is to focus on proactive rest, for example by adopting a four-day week or encouraging people to take leave.

“But I think the real trick is around looking at workflows and the way jobs are structured to ensure they’re designed so people are not running from meeting to meeting to meeting, from objective to objective to objective,” he says.

McEwan says organisations that mandate time in the office are adding significant costs in commuting, parking, costs of dry cleaning and so on, whereas working from home offers cost savings for the average family, as well as autonomy over how people manage their work and adopt their own strategy of proactive rest.

McEwan stresses this doesn’t meant a sleep during the day: “There’s no evidence to suggest that people are sleeping at lunchtime. But not having to commute, being able to get the kids’ dinner ready at 5.30 instead of seven, getting them washed and into bed and then having time to relax, that does flow directly through to things like sleep habits. But probably more importantly, being able to work from home means that you can balance your domestic duties.

“I talk a lot with clients in regards to executives. The average executive outsources their domestic duties, they pay people to do it. They’re sitting there in their offices going, hey, I’ve got all this energy and I’m totally dedicated to work. Well, it’s easy to be dedicated to work when you don’t have to do anything else.

“So the opportunity to work flexibly gives employees the chance to manage their domestic affairs effectively without tearing themselves apart. It also allows them to focus on health and wellbeing activities. So you can go for a walk at lunch, you can get in a quick gym session.”