This article is featured as part of our week-long series looking at awareness and practical advice to support the Mental Health of those working across the financial services sector.
58 per cent of employees who work in the financial services sector admit that they don’t feel in control. Plus, 46 per cent 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 over 1,000 from within the financial services industry.
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 financial services industry is becoming cause for alarm.
In fact, of the 35 industry sectors analysed, employees from the financial services sector are the 11th most stressed, with 43 per cent feeling miserable for no reason and almost half (49 per cent) experiencing frequent ‘ups and downs’ in their mood.
“Financial services professionals are clearly struggling, displaying high levels of stress. And this stress might well turn into burnout, in which workers feel utterly exhausted and overwhelmed”, 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.”
