Perhaps you’re back in the office four or five days a week. Possibly you’ve resumed your 9-5 grind, the leniency of working around your busy home life lost. And maybe Zoom meetings wearing a blouse with pajama bottoms feel like a lifetime ago. But whether or not you’ve fully reverted to pre-COVID work life, chances are your well-being on the job has suffered in recent years, a new report suggests.
As employers have scaled back the flexibility they offered during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, workplace well-being has diminished nationwide, according to a report published last month by the Human Capital Development Lab at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in partnership with Great Place to Work. The annual survey of more than 1.5 million people at over 2,500 firms showed that from 2019 through 2023, workplace well-being peaked in 2020 before dwindling in the last three years.
“The COVID pandemic heightened employers’ awareness of the importance of well-being, and many of the best organizations worked to create a positive work climate,” Michelle Barton, PhD, an associate professor of practice at Carey and coauthor of the report, said in a news release. “The challenge now will be to integrate those practices into everyday work life, rather than simply as a crisis response.”
Researchers used the following five criteria to measure each company’s “climate of well-being”:
- Financial health
- Meaningful connections
- Mental and emotional support
- Personal support
- Sense of purpose
Having steadily declined since 2020, overall workplace well-being last year was only slightly better than it was in 2019. By industry, companies in the health care and retail/hospitality sectors had the poorest scores. The report also revealed demographic disparities in workplace well-being, with white, male, and older employees faring better than their Black, female, and younger counterparts. Geographically, Southern employees had the highest average well-being score:
- South: 4.298
- West: 4.292
- Northeast: 4.25
- Midwest: 4.23
View this interactive chart on Fortune.com
One limitation of this research is that the thousands of companies analyzed chose to submit their data to Great Place to Work. Meaning, the sample likely represents firms confident in their HR practices, employee sentiment, and workforce relations, the authors noted. They predict even larger well-being gaps would be present between the best and the rest in a more diverse sample.
“Improving employee well-being can be complex,” Rick Smith, PhD, faculty director of the Human Capital Development Lab and coauthor of the report, said in the news release. “Our research highlights a need for leaders to address organizational culture factors coupled with a more nuanced management approach to create a climate of well-being for all.”
For more on workplace wellness:
- Unmotivated at work? Cutting back on screen time can help, new study shows
- Utah has the best work environment in America, including the fewest hours on the clock. Here’s where your state ranks
- Menopause stigma is impeding women’s career growth, survey says. Here’s how a lack of support is hampering ambition—and the economy
- Recruiters, beware: Narcissistic applicants are drawn to this kind of ‘seductive’ language in job postings
