The reports are unanimous: the mental health of workers continues to deteriorate. If this phenomenon crosses borders, it does not affect employees in the same way depending on the country where they live, as a new global study reveals.
The McKinsey Health Institute surveyed more than 30,000 employees from 30 countries to gain insight into their well-being, taking into account their physical, mental, social and spiritual health. Overall, respondents seem to be doing well, even if the institute noted strong disparities depending on the territories.
Thus, Japanese workers are particularly unfulfilled. Only a quarter of them consider themselves in good health, which is the lowest rate recorded by the McKinsey Health Institute as part of this study. Japanese dissatisfaction may be linked to the fact that the Land of the Rising Sun is known for its culture of hard work. Exhaustion-related suicides are a public health problem that the government takes very seriously. This is why it introduced an overtime cap of 100 hours per month in 2018, in order to prevent the risk of overwork.
Japan is followed in the McKinsey Health Institute rankings by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Some 43% of British workers say they are in good health, compared to 44% of their Dutch counterparts. It is interesting to note that the top of the ranking is occupied by developed countries such as France (No. 4), New Zealand (No. 5) and Canada (No. 6).
Surprisingly, China is one of the territories where employees seem to be doing the best. In fact, three-quarters of them say they are in good mental, physical, social and spiritual health. This statistic is all the more surprising given that the Middle Kingdom is currently going through an unprecedented employment crisis, especially for young people. The latter are faced with such mass unemployment that local authorities have decided to stop publishing figures by age group.
If, globally, 57% of workers say they are in good health, the McKinsey Health Institute noted a lack of energy within its panel of respondents. More than a third of employees surveyed in 29 of the 30 countries analyzed feel exhausted.
Discover the ten countries where employees are least satisfied with their general health below:
1 – Japan
2 – United Kingdom
3 – Netherlands
4 – France
5 – New Zealand
6 – Canada
7 – Australia
8 – South Korea
9 – Poland
10 – Central Europe
