Employees report spending an average of 48.5 days a year unable to work effectively because of exhaustion or stress, according to research from employee engagement platform thrive at work.
The company’s first Scientific Foundations White Paper examines “capacity” - the energy, recovery, focus and resilience people have available to sustain performance - alongside employee engagement.
Its analysis suggests capacity is a stronger differentiator than engagement alone when explaining why some employees report more days of ineffective work than others.
“What separates the best and worst off is less how engaged people are than how much capacity they have: the energy, recovery, focus and resilience a person has available to sustain performance.”
Jerry Fišer, Founder, thrive at work
Largest gap is between high and low capacity
Employees in the lowest-capacity quarter reported an average of 85 days each year when they felt unable to work effectively because of exhaustion or stress. That is equivalent to 39% of a 220-day working year.
By comparison, the highest-capacity quarter reported 14 such days, or 6% of the working year. The research frames the difference as a question of whether employees have the resources to recover, concentrate and remain resilient under pressure.
Engagement alone does not explain the difference
According to the white paper, employee engagement on its own accounts for around one sixth of the differences seen between employees. Adding capacity increases the share explained to more than four in ten.
The findings challenge a narrow focus on engagement scores, arguing that organisations also need to understand the conditions that affect people’s ability to keep performing sustainably.
Methodology
thrive at work says the research is based on a 12-month study of 100 employees across 20 organisations, supplemented by three further datasets covering nearly 7,000 employees. Ineffective working days were self-reported: participants were asked how many days in a year they felt unable to work effectively because of exhaustion or stress.
The company says the average of 48.5 days represents around 22% of a 220-day working year. The figures should therefore be read as employees’ reported experience rather than a measure of recorded absence.
Read the full research findings from thrive at work.
About thrive at work
thrive at work is an employee engagement platform focused on helping organisations understand and improve the factors that support sustainable performance.
