Three year study | UK HR's wellbeing yet to return to pre-pandemic levels

The wellbeing of HR professionals has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, with UK HR workers in particular lagging at times behind their global counterparts when coping with today’s challenging economic and operating conditions.

This is according to a three-year comparative research project by Culture Amp, an employee experience platform and Thrive at Monash Business School, which found that in 2020, when the pandemic was first starting to bite, 45% of global HRs felt equipped to manage their own personal and work life demands.

This figure dropped to 40% in 2021 and 2022 - during the height of lockdown and the build-up to return to the office - before rising to 44% worldwide in 2023 yet, at only 40% in 2023, UK HRs still lack the confidence of their international counterparts when it comes to balancing out the different work and life demands being made of them.

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The data, gathered from 9,900 responses from HR professionals around the world - including 856 from the UK - between 3 June 2020 and 4 June 2023 , also found that UK HRs’ own sense of purpose is lower than that of other countries. In 2023, 57% feel that their work is making a positive difference to their company compared to 61% globally - a figure which itself remains below the 62% average of the pandemic years (2020 - 2022).