The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace report is a sobering read. Global engagement levels have fallen to just 20%, costing the world economy ‘$10 trillion in lost productivity’.
For the UK, productivity remains an ongoing challenge, with the ONS reporting the UK experienced the slowest G7 growth in 2021 (the most recent data available).
What’s causing the productivity crisis?
A 2019 study by the University of Oxford Said Business School in collaboration with BT found that workers who were happier at work were 13% more productive. Organisations have focused heavily on employee engagement, paying particular attention to wellbeing at work and DE&I initiatives to create inclusive, psychologically safe environments.
But when Gallup reports UK engagement at only 10% whilst Engage for Success calculates it at 65%, serious questions arise about what we are actually measuring. When organisations take such different approaches to the same issue – assessing a person’s commitment to their organisation – these widely varying numbers only undermine the argument for engagement, despite its importance.
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Almost every leadership development programme focuses on creating psychologically safe environments. But what if the reason for mistrust isn’t the way the leader acts, but who the leader is? The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer provides some compelling insights. Of 33,938 respondents across 28 countries, 42% would rather switch departments than work with a manager with different values, 34% would put less effort in under a manager with different beliefs, and 70% would be hesitant to trust someone with differing core values.
Despite all the focus on employee engagement, personal values appear to play a far more important role in productivity. Since the 2000s, organisations have invested heavily in DE&I – the World Economic Forum’s Lighthouse programme continues to highlight significant improvements in this space. Yet these initiatives fail to address the issue the Edelman data raises: people mistrust and work less efficiently when working with those who hold differing core values.
The role of human values
Schwartz carried out one of the most extensive studies into human values, validated across 82 countries with over 60,000 participants. Irrespective of country or culture, he found we share a common set of human values: Power, Achievement, Self-Direction, Stimulation, Security, Conformity, Tradition, Benevolence, Universalism, and Hedonism.
Crucially, these values exist in diametrically opposing pairs, meaning it’s difficult for a person to hold a strong orientation towards, for example, Stimulation whilst also holding one towards Tradition. This means that regardless of cultural background, we can share values with those who are culturally very different from ourselves. Values-based recruitment isn’t new – the NHS has used this approach for many years. But despite the research that exists, many organisations have yet to focus on personal values to improve alignment within the workplace.
When managers are promoted to lead a new team, at most they receive some people leadership training; more often though, they are expected to learn on the job. At no point will an organisation review the values orientation of the team against those of the manager. If a third of employees would work less for a manager who shared different beliefs, and 42% would switch departments rather than work with a manager with differing core values, one must question why personal values receive so little attention.
Values-led recruitment, where it exists, typically reflects what the organisation deems necessary rather than drawing on Schwartz’s framework. This can miss the critical point of the shared human values which have diametric opposites, resulting in real consequences for team harmony and cohesion. Organisations need to consider assessing values applied beyond recruitment, at the point of team creation could help organisations.
Diversity and values
As AI takes over more mundane and routine tasks, people are being moved towards more complex challenges, requiring greater collaboration, and deeper interaction than many previously siloed working arrangements demanded. As people work more closely together, values orientations will become more evident, and where misalignment is found to be strong, both trust and productivity could suffer.
An argument could be raised that values homogeneity conflicts with DE&I – do we want our organisations filled with people who share identical values? But Schwartz’s research makes clear that culturally and demographically diverse populations can absolutely share the same human values – these are not conflicting concepts but complementary.
Whilst evidence for the benefits of diversity is overwhelming, research by Bogaert and Vloeberghs, cited in the ILO’s ‘The Impact of Diversity on the Performance of Work Teams: A Global Study’, found that diversity may carry detrimental consequences for engagement, noting ‘people prefer to interact with other similar people’ – a finding that aligns closely with the Edelman data.
Diversity initiatives have focused heavily on demographic characteristics rather than personal values. A diverse and inclusive workforce remains critical, but organisations can achieve this without unintended consequences on engagement, by identifying culturally and demographically diverse populations that share similar personal values.
Direction for HR
HR must ask a harder question: are our engagement surveys measuring the symptoms of values misalignment, rather than helping us understand the values orientations of our employees? Organisations have been measuring outcomes – engagement scores, turnover, productivity metrics – without diagnosing the cause: values misalignment at the point of team formation and manager appointment.
Values-based assessments used beyond recruitment – at the point of team creation and during strategic collaborations, could help organisations understand where gaps exist and facilitate the support to bridge them. Engagement surveys should be reviewed and audited: are they measuring symptoms, or helping identify causes? Finally, values alignment built into DE&I initiatives is not a competing goal but a complementary one; Schwartz’s research makes it compelling that cultural and demographic diversity can coexist with shared values orientation.
The $10 trillion in lost productivity demands urgent attention. For years, organisations have measured outcomes without addressing causes. The focus on organisational values, which many organisations have struggled to truly embed, has diverted attention from the personal values of the people who make up our organisations. HR has the evidence and the mandate to change this. The question is whether it is willing to move beyond the engagement levers that have delivered so little, and start asking harder questions about the human dynamics that truly drive performance.
Amrit Sandhar founded &Evolve (formerly known as The Engagement Coach,) in 2015, and since then has worked with well-known UK brands including BUPA, ISG Construction, Asda, Dunelm, Chester Zoo and Network TV, by transforming workplace cultures, improving employee engagement and delivering top-class leadership development programs, to improve overall productivity of an organisation.
Underpinned by neuroscience and psychology to drive behavioural change, combined with his extensive experience in employee engagement and work culture, Amrit’s work uses a data-driven approach to identify the issues organisations are struggling with, to develop the right solutions to drive sustainable change.
Values-led, with a passion for developing people, Amrit believes that it is highly engaged leaders who drive better business performance, by getting the best out of their colleagues. In 2024 he launched the Values Alignment Index®, a revolutionary tool to provide businesses and organisations with the ability to measure values and to significantly improve productivity.
