44% of employees who work in the transportation industry admit that they don’t feel in control, and a similar number – 45% – confess there are times they’ve felt like running away.
These findings are from O.C. Tanner’s 2022 Global Culture Report, which analysed the perspectives of over 38,000 employees and leaders from 21 countries around the world, including almost 900 from within the transportation sector.
With such a large number of employees feeling out of control, together with high levels of mood swings, this indicates that workplace stress within the transportation sector is becoming cause for alarm. In fact, 40% of transportation employees feel miserable for no reason and 49 per cent experience frequent ‘ups and downs’ in their mood.
Despite these worrying figures, it appears that employees within the transportation industry aren’t as stressed as workers in other industries. Of the 35 industry sectors analysed, transportation workers are the third least stressed, with chemical industry workers and bankers most stressed. Those within the recreation and leisure industries experience the least stress out of all 35 sectors.
“Stress is clearly on the rise, with burnout, in which workers feel utterly exhausted and overwhelmed, an increasing concern”, says Robert Ordever European MD of workplace culture expert, O.C. Tanner. “Tackling the causes of stress and burnout must be urgently addressed to avoid broken company cultures.”
O.C. Tanner highlights the link between a negative company culture and increased incidents of burnout, with organisations that lack purpose, are slow to recognise achievements, have poor social connections and don’t practice modern leadership more likely to experience high levels of burnout. In fact, burnout increases by 664 per cent when employees have weak connections to their colleagues.
Ordever says, “Leaders must become mentors and lead with compassion, finding ways to connect their people to organisational purpose, their accomplishments and each other, thereby strengthening workplace culture and employee wellbeing. There’s a direct link between organisations that have a strangulation hold over their people and high levels of burnout - by controlling workers and not giving them opportunities to thrive, stress becomes inevitable.”
O.C. Tanner’s report reveals that when employees feel less connected to their workplace, culture and purpose, burnout increases by 11 times. And it’s not just levels of burnout that are impacted, the likelihood of great work falls by 90 per cent and employees are six times’ more likely to leave the organisation within three years.
Ordever adds, “These findings need to be a wake-up call to organisations that are experiencing high levels of stress and burnout. Leaders can’t stand by and ignore the facts. Failure to repair broken cultures will simply see burnout and staff turnover levels escalate. And so finding ways to bring employees together, while nurturing a compassionate and recognition-led culture with an inspirational purpose at its heart, must take priority.”
About O.C. Tanner’s 2022 Global Culture Report
The O.C. Tanner Institute uses multiple research methods to support the Global Culture Report, including interviews, focus groups, cross-sectional surveys, and a longitudinal survey.
Qualitative findings came from 16 focus groups and 85 interviews among employees and leaders of larger organisations. Each group represented various types of employers, including both private and public entities.
Quantitative findings came from online survey interviews administered to employees across Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The total sample size is 38,177 workers at companies with 500+ employees, including 2,527 from the U.K.
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