Inside Employees’ Minds 2025-2026: Building employee confidence in a changed world
Explore the latest insights into UK employee sentiment, wellbeing, and workforce confidence amid evolving workplace challenges.
Employee confidence in health, skills, and financial security is the defining theme of our latest report. After years of turbulence, UK employee sentiment has stabilised at a surface level. However, deeper challenges persist beneath this calm.
Wellbeing has overtaken cost of living as the foremost employee concern. With physical health, mental health, workload, and work-life balance at the forefront. Employees seek meaningful career progression and purposeful work, not just higher pay.
Job security and hybrid work arrangements have emerged as the strongest retention drivers, while fairness in pay remains critical to reducing turnover. Despite stable employee engagement scores, many employees are “job hugging” – staying in roles without thriving.
Employers who prioritise health as a business imperative, build financial confidence through education and access, and connect skills to opportunity and reward will be best positioned to retain talent and drive productivity, performance and success in the years ahead.
Key findings:
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What keeps employees up at night?Wellbeing challenges top the list, including physical and mental health, workload pressures, and financial worries.
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What makes employees stay?Job security, flexible work arrangements, and fair pay are the primary reasons employees choose to stay with their employers.
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What drives employees to leave?Unfair pay, excessive workload, and negative work culture are the leading causes of attrition.
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Engagement trendsEngagement remains stable but fragile, with a slight decline in overall satisfaction from 69% in 2023 to 67% in 2025. Many employees stay due to job market uncertainty rather than genuine positive engagement or fulfilment.
