Europe Gets Life Right But Work Wrong

What Great Managers Do

Life in Europe is good. According to the World Happiness Report (WHR), no one feels better about life than Europeans. For 10 years in a row, European countries have topped the list of happiest places on Earth. And in the WHR 2022, the eight happiest countries in the world are located in Europe. Europeans rate their lives so well that Gallup finds almost half of the region's entire population is thriving in life.

Europe's frustration at work isn't new. In 2005, Princeton economist Alan Krueger wrote in The New York Times, "European workers are united in at least one respect: They have reported declining levels of job satisfaction to pollsters over the past three decades." Even in 2005, Krueger noticed a stark difference in worker satisfaction between Europe and the United States.

Culture is often used to explain Europe's abysmal employee engagement scores. But if Europeans cared so little about work, why would they continue to work even if they didn't have to? In 2015, almost three-quarters of German workers said they would keep working even if they inherited so much money they never had to work again. Slightly fewer American workers (68%) said yes to a similar question in August 2013.

And if European dissatisfaction at work is truly cultural, then why are there so many European organizations with thriving workplace cultures? Some European organizations have engagement rates that are three times the regional average and more than double the global average.

Employee engagement is ultimately not about being obsessed with work or living to work. It's about having clear expectations, feeling connected to and supported by your team, and finding purpose in your work. These are universal human needs. The fact that they are not met for millions of European employees is not a cultural badge of honor, but a sign of poor leadership and people management.

So, what's the problem?

Some critics might argue that there is no problem. Europe has some of the world's most successful companies -- who needs employee engagement? But Gallup's analyses of engagement in Europe have found across industries that engaged teams in Europe are significantly more productive and profitable than disengaged ones. Many European companies are leaving wealth and innovation on the table, while their competitors are winning on talent and productivity.

In a study of burnout in the U.S., Gallup found that the biggest cause was "unfair treatment at work." It was followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure. Those five causes have one thing in common: your boss.

Get a bad one and you are almost guaranteed to emotionally disconnect from your job. A bad boss will ignore you, disrespect you and never support you. Environments like that can make anyone miserable. A manager's effect on a workplace is so significant that Gallup analytics reveal that 70% of the variance in a team's engagement is explained just by who their boss is.

And Europe is plagued with bad managers. While 97% of German managers think they are good managers, 69% of German employees think they have bad managers. Europe's managers aren't completely unaware of this problem. They know they need better training. Sixty percent of German managers say they've never received training for people management skills. This gap shouldn't be hard to close.

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