Only 14% of Thai workers 'engaged' in their jobs: Gallup poll

Worldwide, only 13 per cent of employees are engaged at work, meaning that roughly 180 million employees in the countries studied by Gallup are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making contributions to their organisations.

Gallup surveyed 142 countries for its State of the Global Workplace report. 

Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore have among the highest proportions of “not engaged” employees in the world, suggesting an abundance of opportunities to fully engage many more employees through targeted workplace interventions and employee-focused management training. 

Among employees in the nine Southeast Asian countries surveyed in 2011 and 2012, 12 per cent are engaged, 73 per cent are not engaged and 14 per cent are actively disengaged. 

These aggregated figures put the percentage of engaged employees in the region close to the global results (13 per cent), but they also indicate that Southeast Asia has a relatively low proportion of actively disengaged employees compared with the global figure of 24 per cent.

The Philippines emerges as having the highest proportion of engaged employees in the region. Thailand and the Philippines have among the highest ratios of engaged to actively disengaged employees among all countries worldwide for which individual results are reportable.

The bulk of employees worldwide – 63 per cent – are “not engaged”, meaning they lack motivation and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organisational goals or outcomes. 

And 24 per cent are “actively disengaged”, indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to co-workers. 

In rough numbers, this translates into 900 million not engaged and 340 million actively disengaged workers around the globe.

The 13 per cent of engaged employees in the 2011-12 study has ticked upward from the 11 per cent in Gallup’s global workplace assessment conducted in 2009-10. Those who are “actively disengaged” have dipped from 27 per cent to 24 per cent. 

 

Hindrance 

However, low levels of engagement among global workers continue to hinder gains in economic productivity and life quality in much of the world.

As in Gallup’s previous employee study, engagement levels among employees vary across global regions and countries within those regions. 

At the regional level, Northern America has the highest proportion of engaged workers, at 29 per cent, followed by Australia and New Zealand, at 24 per cent.

Not all economically developed regions fare as favourably. Across 19 Western European countries, 14 per cent of employees are engaged, while a significantly higher 20 per cent are actively disengaged. However, the highest proportions of actively disengaged workers are found in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa regions at 35 per cent and 33 per cent.

 

Negative experience 

Gallup’s finding that the vast majority of employees worldwide report an overall negative experience at work – and just one in eight are fully involved in and enthusiastic about their jobs – is important when considering why the global recovery remains sluggish, while social unrest abounds in many countries.

Business leaders worldwide must raise the bar on employee engagement. Increasing workplace engagement is vital to achieving sustainable growth for companies, communities, and countries – and for putting the global economy back on track to a more prosperous and peaceful future.

For the current workplace study, employee engagement results were collected among 73,752 respondents 18 and older in 141 countries via the Gallup World Poll, and 151,335 US respondents using the Gallup Daily tracking survey. 

Employee engagement questions were asked only of those respondents who indicated they were employed for an employer, either full or part time.