We’re delighted to share our new Mid-Year Report: Exploring Workplace Happiness in 2025! Featuring data-driven analysis of workplace trends, employee experiences and emerging challenges from over 30,000 organisations worldwide so far in 2025.
Our employee engagement data across industries and geographies provide a detailed insight into employee sentiment. Notably, Technology with an engagement score of 80% emerges as the global front runner, consistently achieving the highest engagement scores across nearly all countries surveyed.
When looking at the best-performing industry in the UK, Technology mirrors the global trend with an impressive engagement score of 84%. Comparatively, the Retail industry was the lowest-scoring with an engagement score of just 66% followed closely by Travel and Leisure and Defence, which both scored 67%.
Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive at the British Retail Consortium comments on these concerning findings:
“The retail industry faces significant headwinds, with the last Budget adding over £7bn to their bills in 2025. This will have implications for investment, hiring, and pricing decisions, as retailers adapt their businesses to remain competitive.
“Retail is the largest private-sector employer, providing flexible and locals jobs for millions of people in all corners of the UK. Increases to employer National Insurance will have a disproportionate impact on both retailers and their supply chains, who together employ 5.7m people. Ultimately, it will cost jobs and push up prices for everyone, with food inflation estimated to hit 5% by the end of the year.
“With the industry navigating choppy waters, and operating on wafer-thin margins, leaders need to ensure transparent and honest conversations are ongoing with colleagues about some of the more difficult decisions that may need to be made as well as building consensus and alignment about the opportunities in the future. Decisions by government impacting retail affect us all: through prices in shops, availability of jobs, or the health of our local high streets. We must ensure they don’t weigh heavy on the morale of the people who keep our industry going day in, day out.”
Read the full report here or by clicking the image below!
Other key findings of the report include:
- Disabled employees in the UK are at risk: Disabled staff in the UK have a lower confidence in management score than the global benchmark and also report an elevated level of flight risk.
- Technology leads in engagement: Technology consistently ranks as the highest-performing sector globally and in the UK for both engagement and confidence in management, highlighting strong trust in leadership within the industry.
- Sector and regional disparities: UK sectors like Retail and Hospitality underperform compared to global averages, influenced by local challenges such as regulatory changes and economic pressures.
- Workplace flexibility impacts engagement: Globally, employees who work from home frequently report higher engagement.
- Pay and financial benefits: Reflecting upon the responses to the question “What 3 changes would improve your workplace happiness?” the most frequently cited area was ‘Pay and Financial Benefits’ as stated by over 10,000 individuals.
