Experts Say We’re In Our ‘Great Gloom’ Era—Employees Are Really Unsatisfied With Their Jobs

Workers are unhappy with their jobs in a way that experts haven’t seen in years.

According to a new report from human relations SaaS company BambooHR, Employee satisfaction has consistently tumbled since 2020.

The biggest decline is a fairly recent one, in which oerall satisfaction scores fell 11% from June 2022 to June 2023. The dataset underscores that employee happiness is worse now than during the height of the pandemic which may partially be due to workers’ struggle with remote options, flailing economy and high unemployment forecasting.

“The new norm of ‘unprecedented times’ is causing enormous stress,” Brad Rencher, CEO of BambooHR, said in a news release. “Today’s complex problems will require leaders to be proactive, adaptive, and data-informed to beat back the Great Gloom. To succeed in a rapidly evolving world, businesses will need to prioritize employee experience in real, meaningful ways like never before. Anything less than a holistic approach to developing the mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing of each employee, in addition to their skills, will fall short.”

The company says the onus of dealing with this issue is one employers should own.

“HR is often viewed solely as a tactical administrative function without any meaningful metrics,” Anita Grantham, head of HR, explained. “However, any leadership team that is only tracking sales and marketing performance is being irresponsible and overlooking their largest cost center: their people. eNPS is one of many tools businesses need to track their organization’s health and catch problems quickly and thoughtfully. When margins shrink, it’s easy to get reactionary, but playing the long game and taking care of your employees is always good business.”