Many American Workers Are Discontented

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index® is the first-ever daily assessment of U.S. residents' health and well-being. By interviewing at least 1,000 U.S. adults every day, the Well-Being Index provides real-time measurement and insights needed to improve health, increase productivity and lower health care costs, according to the sponsors.

Now the collective 2010 data is in, and it doesn’t bode well for the workforce. 

Newly released city, state and congressional district rankings show the

the Work Environment Index, as a subset of the Well-Being Index, fell to a low of 48.2 out of a possible 100 last year. This continues an annual downward trend that indicates increasing discontent with the U.S. work environment, declining job satisfaction and a lack of trust in employee/supervisor relations, researchers said.

The Work Environment Index measures Americans' perceptions in four categories:

• Job satisfaction 
• Ability to use one's strengths at work
• Supervisor's treatment (a boss or a partner?) 
• Supervisor creates an open and trusting work environment

Among the findings, unionized federal, state and local government workers, as well as unionized private-sector workers, have a lower Work Environment Index score than their counterparts who are not in a union. Workers who are unionized are more likely to consider their supervisor to be a boss rather than a partner, and less likely to say their supervisor creates a trusting and open work environment.

In addition, Gallup-Healthways reports that American workers who are emotionally disconnected from their work and workplace (known as "actively disengaged" workers) rate their lives more poorly than do those who are unemployed: 42% of actively disengaged workers are thriving in their lives, compared to 48% of the unemployed. At the other end of the spectrum are "engaged" employees who are involved in and enthusiastic about their work, 71% of whom are thriving.

Incidentally, other widely publicized studies have shown that one of the leading causes of absence and disability following a work-related injury is the lack of a supportive supervisor.