Workers feel employers don’t care about them and it’s worse since COVID, survey says

Less than one in four workers in the U.S. feel that their employers care about their well-being, the lowest percentage in nearly a decade, according to a new Gallup survey.

That number was significantly higher at the start of the pandemic, when about 49% of people said their employers responded to the spread of COVID-19 “with a plan, communication, and what many employees believed was genuine concern for them, their work, and their lives.”

But the number has plummeted since then.

The findings, based on a February survey of 15,000 full and part-time employees throughout the country, come at a time when many workers are being asked to return to their offices as COVID-19 protocols are lifted. They also come amid the so-called “Great Resignation,” during which workers have quit their jobs over low pay, no opportunities for advancement, feeling disrespected at work, and other concerns, according to the Pew Research Center.

The decline in employees’ perceptions of their companies was “generally consistent across employee types — from production and front-line to white-collar professionals,” Gallup said. It was notably higher among managers, who experienced a decline of 11%, according to Gallup.

The drop could be due in part to the inconsistency workers have experienced during the pandemic. Between COVID-19 surges and difficulty with staffing, employers may have had a harder time creating a “predictable course of action” for the workplace, Gallup said.

But it could also be a result of workers’ own changing definitions of what makes them feel cared for by their employers, Gallup said.

“Employee expectations of work may have fundamentally changed after the experiences of 2020 and 2021,” Gallup said. “Many learned new ways of working and may have an updated definition for what an employer caring about their overall well-being means.”

Workers who feel their employers care about their well-being are 69% less likely to actively search for a new job and 71% less likely to report experiencing significant burnout, Gallup said.

The findings come shortly after the nation’s “quit rate” reached a 20-year high last November, according to the Pew Research Center.

Researchers noted that employers who managed to make workers feel cared for did so by improving their workplace cultures, even amid the chaos of the pandemic.

Some of the methods they used included making sure employees felt heard, embracing flexible work environments, and tailoring communication methods to employees’ various work-life situations, according to Gallup.

“Since work and life are blended for many, consider the demands of life inside and out of the workplace,” Gallup said.

This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Workers feel employers don’t care about them and it’s worse since COVID, survey says."