Sapien Labs Releases Rapid Report on Work Culture & Mental Wellbeing
October 10, 2024
Arlington, VA – Today, Sapien Labs released a rapid report looking at multiple aspects of work culture and structure to determine how they relate to employee mental wellbeing. The findings are based on data from 54,831 employed, Internet-enabled respondents across 65 countries obtained in 2024 as part of the Global Mind Project. Here are the key findings:
- Having poor relationships with colleagues and a low sense of pride and purpose in one’s work are associated with the biggest decreases in overall mental wellbeing, on par with having challenges with family relationships.
- Those who rated these factors poorly are more likely to have feelings of sadness and hopelessness, unwanted, strange thoughts, reduced energy, decreased drive and motivation, physical health issues and a sense of being detached from reality, even after controlling for other factors.
- ‘Work-life balance’ factors such as workload and flexibility over time are also important, but less so. Excess workload, for instance, results in poor sleep, diminished self-worth, worse appetite regulation and even increased nightmares, while lack of flexibility over time had much smaller impacts on similar factors.
- Those working remotely fared worse, on average, than those working in person or hybrid. Similarly, those working alone fared worse, on average, than those in larger teams, and those in jobs involving customer service and physical labor fared worse than those in human care, knowledge work and business management jobs.
- The 9 aspects of work culture that we looked at had a several-fold greater impact on mental wellbeing than aspects of work structure, such as whether one worked remotely or in person, alone or in a team and the type of job.
“We’ve been conditioned to think that there is a separation between our work and life, implicit in the term work-life balance. Instead, what we find here is that our work life is every bit as personal as our home or family life. The relationships and meaning we find – or fail to find – at work are every bit as important to our mental wellbeing as our relationships at home,” says Sapien Labs Founder and Chief Scientist Tara Thiagarajan.
About the study:
This study is part of the Global Mind Project, an ongoing survey of global mental wellbeing, conducted by Sapien Labs. The project acquired data through an assessment that queries 47 aspects of mental function on a life impact scale to create an aggregate mental wellbeing score, the Mental Health Quotient or MHQ, as well as scores of various dimensions of mental function. The assessment can be taken here. In addition, the data from this project is freely available to researchers for noncommercial purpose and access can be requested here. The Global Mind Project also publishes the annual Mental State of the World Report which can be found here.
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