Employee confidence continues to drop: Report

Fewer employees have confidence in their employers these days, according to data from Glassdoor.

Specifically, 47.6% of employees report a positive six-month business outlook for their employers as of July 2023.

That is down from 49.8% in June 2023 and down significantly from 53.4% in July 2022.

“Our data points to an economy that has made substantial strides in recovering from the pandemic, but is now facing strong headwinds,” say Daniel Zhao, lead economist and senior manager on Glassdoor's Economic Research team, and Lauren Thomas, economist and data scientist at Glassdoor. “Industries like tech that exploded during the pandemic are now facing a hangover as employees report waning confidence in their employers’ business outlook.”

Employee confidence varies across seniority levels at American employers. While 68.4% of directors and executives report a positive business outlook for their employees, just 50.4% of mid-senior level employees and 52.1% for entry level employees do the same.

“Notably, employee confidence has diminished much more for mid-senior level employees, falling 6.2 percentage points year-over-year as of July 2023, than for either directors and executives or entry level employees which both have seen little change over the last year (-0.1 percentage points),” say Zhao and Thomas.

Remote employees’ connection with their organization's mission and purpose has hit a new low in the second quarter of 2023, according to a previous report. Overall, only 28% of employees strongly agree that their company's mission or purpose is making their job feel important.

Confidence difference by sector

Among industries, fewer workers in construction (61.2%) have confidence in their employers in July 2023 compared to July 2022 (60.4%). The current number, however, is lower than the data recorded in June 2023 (61.7%).

In retail trade, the employee confidence number in July 2023 (41.5%) is slightly higher than what was recorded the previous month (41.3%), but is lower compared to the number from July 2022 (45.5%).

The number of workers who express a positive six-month business outlook for their employers has dropped compared to the two previous period for the rest of the industries:

“Most notably, the information sector has seen the steepest drop with the Employee Confidence Index for information falling to 48.6 percent in July 2023, a whopping 11.9 percentage point decline from 60.6 percent in July 2022,” say Zhao and Thomas. “This is a fall from grace as information nearly had the highest employee confidence of any industry in February 2022 when it peaked at 65.5 percent.”

A previous poll by Heidrick & Struggles among 500 chief executive officers from 10 markets revealed that culture is the top factor making a positive impact on retention.

Improving workers’ confidence on employers

“When employees trust their employers, they are much more likely to work together towards achieving the same ultimate business goals,” says Kristina Martic, of employee communications platform Haiilo.

“Yet, such organizational alignment is not easy to achieve, especially in large enterprise organizations with offices around the world. In order to have all the employees on the same page, organizations must do a much better job communicating their core company values, mission and vision to their employees.”

Here are some ways to employers can build trust in the workplace, she says:

1. Encourage employees’ share of voice.
2. Create a better company culture with open and transparent employee communications.
3. Share important information with your employees.
4. Employ authentic and approachable leadership.
5. Engage your employees in change management and digital transformation efforts.
6. Adopt the human-centric approach and enhance employee empowerment.