New survey finds workplace culture is top ask of our jobs

VIDEO: 'should we be optimistic about the future of work?'

New research* finds that the workplace culture remains the most important consideration for workers in the UK. 70% of respondents say the culture of their job is their top priority, with ‘feeling seen and valued’ the second most important factor (65%).

The shadow of the burnout epidemic looms large over the workforce, when asked to say what drives the success of their organisation 7 out of 10 workers say ‘wellbeing’, more important that the second placed consideration ‘individual expertise’. Wellbeing has grown substantially in importance since 2020. Work-life balance is seen as the biggest challenge to having impact at work, cited by 72% of the sample.

The research, specially commissioned for this newsletter comes from Early Studies who describe themselves as a signals intelligence company. It uses their Future Perfect Methodology (you can read more about that here. The survey sampled 500 full-time workers, equally split between the UK and the US, over this weekend (February 8-9 2025).

We wanted to explore the changing attitude to DEI programs in both the US and the UK without being too overt. (We didn’t want someone’s reaction to be triggered by hearing mention of the headline, rather to see what their own views were). In the US we saw surging importance of having diverse representation in leadership. 48.6% of respondents said that this representation would be important for organisational success by 2028. Almost half of all respondents felt that talent diversity was also important today (48.6%). These numbers were higher than for the UK (36.4% and 40.7%).

We asked ‘what makes you proud of your workplace?’ 71.6% of US respondents said ‘employee treatment’. This is seen to be becoming even more important by 2028 (73.6%). In the UK employee treatment was also the top factor (albeit with a lower score of 62%), followed by individual recognition. In both the UK and the US the importance of ‘inclusive practices’ is seen to be growing in importance. 39.3% see it as valuable for future success in 2028 the UK (38.5% in the US).

The demise of workplace DEI schemes doesn’t seem to be causing wide scale alarm for most employees, in the UK a quarter of employees brought up ‘workplace equity’ as a challenge to colleagues’ work. In the US this was mentioned by a third of workers but in both countries it was significantly less important than future career uncertainty (UK 40.7%, US 45.9%) and economic concerns (UK 49.3%, US 60.8%).

*You can read more about the research - and gain access to all of the data - on this link. (You need to request access with a Google account but it will be immediately emailed to you).

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Last week I spoke at a conference answering the question ‘Should we optimistic about the future of work?’

The whole event was on the subject of optimism, hosted by the media agency PHD.

Watch the whole presentation here - and let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments.

And follow the hosts PHD Media here.

• Citi bucked the RTO trend sweeping through the finance sector by re-committing to its hybrid working practices. (Coincidence that it’s CEO is a woman and she can see how gendered these decisions are?)

• Big tech firms might have indulged their workers for a long-time, but the falling need for employees means they’re starting to turn the screw to make their culture tougher, says Emma Jacobs in the FT

• David Mitchell complained that young people are losing faith in democracy, as this TikTok explains that’s because modern society feels like it has the economic unfairness of authoritarianism to them. (Also goes for this brand new research saying that 41% of young people would not fight for the UK. I wonder how many pensioners would fight for the UK? You don’t have to be young to drive a tank)

• Someone in my LinkedIn comments recommended the Eleven Labs app to me a couple of weeks ago. It can turn any PDF into an audio book (for free) and it has been my most used app for the last seven days.

• I chatted to Becky Norman from HR Zone about the HR trends of 2025

• I'm participating in a Management Today webinar with Virgin Media O2 Business in a few weeks. You can sign up for free here.

• Thank you to the team at reMarkable who gave me one of their incredible reMarkable Paper Pro devices - it's outstanding for taking notes on it but in fact I've spent the whole weekend using it to draw cartoons while I watched Severance

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