Workplace insight: State of the American workplace

While the findings of Gallup's state of the American workplace report are great tools for creating productive and innovative workers, company-level assessments are necessary tools as well.

By Aisha Leverett, CannonDesign June 12, 2017

State of the American Workplace is Gallup’s cross-industry report that features data from over 31 million respondents about their attitudes toward work. In April, a seminar at Gallup’s Chicago office discussed some of the report’s more compelling findings:

  • Respondents’ priorities have shifted from wanting a job that provides clearly defined, objective measures of success to jobs that provide emotional measures of support, well-being, and professional progress.
  • Only a third of employees (33%) described themselves as engaged in their jobs and approximately half (51%) are actively looking for a new job. While overall engagement numbers have held steady since 2006, great organizations boast 70% of employees describing themselves as engaged.
  • By 2020, Millennials will be the majority of the workforce. They are also the least likely to be engaged in their work.

How do workplace strategists and designers use these data when advising clients? By understanding broad trends in areas of employee priorities, engagement and demographics we have a better idea of who is in the workforce now (and how that may shift) and what space-based solutions can keep workers productive and innovative.

For example, Leadership Hubs may make executives more visible and accessible-increasing engagement across professional levels and allowing good, profitable ideas to get to decision makers quicker.

And while comprehensive, nationwide reports like Gallup’s State of the American Workplace are great tools for identifying the big ideas, company-level assessments touch on the issues included in the Gallup report but are customized to provide specific, actionable data that will improve clients’ workplace for their people.

Aisha Leverett is author for CannonDesign. This article originally appeared on CannonDesign. CannonDesign is a content partner of CFE Media. 

Original content can be found at www.cannondesign.com.