Aussie spirit shines through in workplace happiness and engagement

Rising interest rates and ballooning energy bills haven’t dented the Aussie spirit, keeping Australia in the third place for workplace happiness and engagement.

Australia is in third place for workplace happiness and engagement in a global survey. Picture: iStock

Rising interest rates and ballooning energy bills haven’t dented the Aussie spirit, keeping Australia in the third place for workplace happiness and engagement in the global survey by employee ­experience platform WorkL.

Ranked after the US and New Zealand, Australians are happier at work, with an engagement score of 73 per cent, than their counterparts in Britain (72 per cent).

WorkL analysed data from a workplace happiness test of more than 300,000 people in 30,000 organisations in 105 countries.

“An ideally happy workplace is a journey,” says WorkL founder Mark Price. “It’s hard to achieve it, with the constant churn of managers and employees. It’s one of those things you constantly have to measure and work on.”

In his view, the ideal workplace gets the balance right ­between the six criteria WorkL measures about the workforce: rewards and recognition; information sharing; empowerment, wellbeing, instilling pride, and job satisfaction.

Considering the economic turmoil of inflation and talent shortages many businesses were going through, they had a great deal of work to do on workplace happiness, which was directly correlated to productivity, revenue generation and profits, Lord Price said, speaking on the eve of the The Australian Best Places To Work 2024 survey.

The Australian is partnering WorkL on the survey, open to businesses and their individual staff members in Australia.

Improve employee experience and business performance

WorkL provides participating organisations with a dynamic dashboard of granular data about the engagement and happiness levels of key segments of their workforce.

The biggest hurdle that organisations face on the road to their own happiness and economic success, is flight risk, or the proportion of employees wanting to leave the organisation, WorkL’s global survey shows.

The flight risk in Australian organisations collectively is 43 per cent, which means nearly half the employees are at risk of leaving in the next six months. Flight risk is a cost imposition for businesses, as recruiting new talent and keeping them engaged at the workplace is an expensive exercise.

“Organisations must address how they can reduce flight risk to retain talent,” Lord Price said.

“High levels of staff turnover leads into a vicious cycle. There is a lot of evidence to say happy and engaged workforces are more successful.”