Work Culture and Mental Wellbeing Report 2024 by Sapien Labs
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| Work Culture and Mental Wellbeing Report 2024 |
Work Culture and Mental Wellbeing Report 2024
"Summary
With the prevalence of mental distress on the rise around the world, especially in younger generations, mental health and wellbeing has increasingly become a topic of concern for employers. In order to become strategic about mitigating the risks, it is important for organizations to understand what is driving poor mental health and wellbeing in employees.
Using data from 54,831 employed, Internet-enabled respondents across 65 countries obtained in 2024, this study looks at multiple aspects of work culture and structure to determine how they relate to employee mental wellbeing which we define, and measure, as the ability to navigate life's challenges and function productively.
Here is what we find:
- Having poor relationships with colleagues and a low sense of pride and purpose in one’s work are associated with the biggest decreases in overall mental wellbeing, on par with having challenges with family relationships.
- Those who rated these factors poorly are more likely to have feelings of sadness and hopelessness, unwanted, strange thoughts, reduced energy, decreased drive and motivation, physical health issues and a sense of being detached from reality, even after controlling for other factors.
- ‘Work-life balance’ factors such as workload and flexibility over time are also important but less so. Excess workload, for instance, results in poor sleep, diminished self-worth, worse appetite regulation and even increased nightmares, while flexibility over time had much smaller impacts on similar factors.
- Those working remotely fared worse, on average, than those working in person or hybrid. Similarly, those working alone fared worse, on average, than those in larger teams, and those in jobs involving customer service and physical labor fared worse than those in human care, knowledge work and business management jobs.
- The 9 aspects of work culture that we looked at had a several-fold greater impact on mental wellbeing than aspects of work structure, such as whether one worked remotely or in person, alone or in a team and the type of job.
Altogether, these findings demonstrate the profound impact of work culture on mental health and wellbeing, defined in terms of capacity for productive function, and suggest that companies serious about employee wellbeing should invest in fostering teams with strong relationships and a sense of purpose."
Source: Sapien Labs (The Global Mind Project)
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