More than a quarter of Japanese employees say they understand the term well-being when it comes to the workplace, an 11.2% increase from 2023, according to survey research from Japanese staffing firm Persol.
Furthermore, the percentage of people who have never heard of workplace well-being was 48.1%, less than half.
The data also found that the most recent wellness awareness rate (27.1%) is higher than that of engagement (24.6%), indicating that the term has become established to a certain extent.
Employees were asked about their sense of happiness/unhappiness as a subjective feeling related to their work. Compared to 2020, the percentage of people who felt happy decreased by 3.1 points to 40.8%, while those who felt unhappy increased by 2.3% to 22.5%. The percentage of people who answered ‘I do not feel happy’ is also on the rise. These findings suggest that subjective feelings of happiness/unhappiness related to work are on a slight declining trend, Persol noted.
To conduct the research on happiness/unhappiness, seven factor scores, which are the main factors that contribute to work happiness/unhappiness, were compared over time, according to Persol.
The results showed that work happiness factors were generally on a downward trend, with the exception of the role recognition factor.
In terms of work unhappiness, all factors were generally on a downward trend, with the exception of the evaluation dissatisfaction factor.