Only 39% of employees believe they can be their “authentic self” at work, and less than half (46%) believe their managers would take a harassment complaint seriously.
This is a markedly higher number than in 2020, when just 41% of workers believed their managers would not take a harassment complaint seriously, according to research carried out by eLearning platform Emtrain. Three-quarters (75%) of employees said their managers don’t grasp that it’s hard for them to refuse an inappropriate request, slightly lower than in 2020’s 80%.
Additionally, 27% of employees in 2022 said workplace conflict has caused them to leave a job; a slight improvement on 2020 when that figure was 29%. These are a few of the key findings from a recent analysis of data from more than 90 million responses from 300,000+ employees at 350+ organisations released by Emtrain.
“The entire nature of work has changed since our Workplace Culture Report 2020,” explained Emtrain CEO Janine Yancey. “We wanted to see how culture dynamics have changed as well. The data tells an interesting story in that we found some signs of encouragement, but still lots of room for improvement.”
SKILLS TO CREATE RESPECT, INCLUSION, BELONGING & ETHICS
So many of the cultural challenges identified in this analysis stem from a lack of emphasis on pro-social skills that create respect, inclusion, belonging, and ethics in the workplace, according to Yancey. “This presents a tremendous opportunity for people leaders to use training to help develop these skills in employees,” she noted.
Earlier this year, Emtrain developed a skills framework that identifies 16 specific skills employees can learn in order to enhance the employee experience and manage business outcomes like productivity and attrition.
“You can’t fix what you don’t measure,” she concluded. “Our research shows that by benchmarking how well employees know these skills, people leaders can track progress, identify tricky culture issues before they become more serious problems, and dramatically improve the workplace environment for all workers.”
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