Worker Disengagement Is Real—How to Improve Employee Well-Being 

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he gave employees an ultimatum: either sign up for “long hours and high intensity” or leave. Hundreds quit. 

Work environments that largely stress efficiency while devaluing employee well-being are contributing to an epidemic of worker disengagement. Where there’s disregard for employees’ needs or opinions, people feel frozen out, and therefore feel no allegiance to the company.

The worldwide cost of employee disengagement in terms of lost productivity has reached $8.9 trillion a year—equal to 9 percent of global GDP. Conversely, organizations with engaged workers report 23 percent higher profits. 

Today’s intense focus on personal well-being at work began during the Covid pandemic. The simultaneous impact of change, loss and uncertainty triggered workers to reassess their personal values and objectives. Employees had time for reflection and realized they were both disengaged from and unhappy in their jobs. 

Less than one year into the pandemic, a recorded 47.8 million U.S. workers had quit their jobs. Some 93 percent of employees stated that their well-being at work was as important as their salary, and “the organization cares about employees’ well-being” was in the top three criteria among all generations when looking for an employer—and first among Millennials and Gen Z workers.   

Businesses that hope to survive disruption and retain a skilled workforce must recognize that their survival depends upon healthy, productive employees—and therefore that employee well-being needs to be a central focus. 

In particular, leaders must address four identified causes of disengagement, including:

1. Having to do more with less. The mantra “doing more with less” came to dominate company culture following the global financial crisis in 2007, and it lingers to this day. Many organizations focus exclusively on targets and performance, and individuals are expected to keep up. Being asked to do more with less in the interest of efficiency becomes incrementally more difficult. Organizations that do more taking than giving are exhausting the asset they most depend on—their skilled workers. When employee well-being is overlooked in favor of long hours, little flexibility, and poor work-life balance, stress and fatigue are inevitable.

A healthier, more meaningful approach involves reimagining company culture so that it enables psychological safety, fosters engagement in ways that are both energizing and rewarding, and puts employee well-being into practice. It also allows room for workplace learning and professional development so that workers feel valued enough for their employer to invest in them.  

2. A lack of workplace humanity. Humans are fundamentally social animals. We feel a need to belong. Yet speedy and strictly functional interaction compromises the meaningful personal connections we depend upon for our mental health. Reduced face-to-face contact has made it so that building relationships at work is much harder and this contributes to isolation at work. When our social nature is dismissed by leaders, fatigue, disengagement and reduced efficiency result.

By disregarding the humanity of people and ignoring human elements of work—such as personal fulfillment and team collaboration—leaders alienate people and sideline satisfaction. Upper management must restore a meaningful sense of connection by recognizing and supporting our human need for authentic social connection.

3. The rise of tech. Businesses are in constant competition, urgently seeking an edge over their rivals. Many organizational leaders believe they can achieve that edge via technology. Granted, in recent decades tech has enabled businesses to work faster. At the same time, this approach to work squeezes out breathing space and critical thinking. Now, as AI establishes itself in the workplace, employees are anxious about job security. Additionally, lack of familiarity with technology has proven daunting for many. 

The rise of workplace AI, if not carefully managed, leads to an erosion of trust. While much of tech is valuable and necessary in today’s workplaces, leaders must ensure they don’t leave people behind. Helping people adjust involves more than just training them in technical know-how. There’s a concurrent need to prioritize and value humancentric contributions—such as communication and creativity, along with critical thinking and emotional intelligence.

4. The lack of employee autonomy. Workers’ need for personal autonomy in their jobs requires employers to accept, value and trust individual workers. High-trust companies hold people accountable without micromanaging them. They treat people like responsible adults. 

Companies that ask people to do more with less in a workplace with less humanity than is healthy, while favoring tech over employees and eroding autonomy, struggle to attract people to corporate well-being offerings.

But companies that are authentically committed to employee well-being create a healthy workplace with a culture built on belonging and trust. In turn, they create a motivated and engaged workforce that is reliably creative and resilient, as well as skilled in self-management and communication. In such an environment, people feel “re-humanized,” trusted and ready to fulfil their potential.