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At Agenda Consulting, we have extensive experience working with leaders of national and domestic not-for-profit organisations around the world.
Through numerous surveys with many international government organisations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) we can present a breakdown of employee engagement for 91 countries around the world.
In this blog we present our global heatmap of engagement – i.e., the percent (%) of employees engaged at work – and the breakdown of differences across countries.
How do we measure engagement?
At Agenda Consulting, we measure engagement as the percentage (%) of respondents who agree or strongly agree to the statement: “I would recommend this organisation as a good place to work”.
When producing this global engagement heatmap, we looked at all countries where we have at least 50 engagement survey respondents from at least 5 different organisations. The final dataset included 75,117 respondents. This data has been collected from 44 not-for profit organisations with staff located internationally who have completed a survey with Agenda in the last 5 years.
Where in the world has the highest engagement?
Employee engagement varies considerably by country location with engagement ranging from 58% to 99%.
The 10 countries with the highest levels of employee engagement, i.e., at least 9 in 10 respondents are engaged, are:
The 10 countries with the lowest levels, i.e., less than 7 in 10 respondents are engaged, are:
Where does this variation come from?
Could these findings be due to the country’s political climate, or the countries work culture overriding the organisation’s own unique culture?
Could it be the type of work being conducted in the country – office-based vs field work?
In our experience working with International Government Organisations and International Non-Government Organisations, we consistently find respondents in field-based duty station countries, (e.g., Rwanda and Nicaragua) are more engaged than respondents in headquarter duty station countries (e.g., United States and Switzerland).
This dynamic may explain some of the variation in the map but with variation between countries classified as Field or Headquarters, for example between South Sudan and Libya (both field, the ‘country effect’ has its own influence.
Looking at how engagement varies across the world may be useful when assessing the engagement of your own team or organisation.
Where are you located and how do these findings resonate with you?
If your team or organisation has conducted an engagement survey recently, how do your scores compare to the country you are situated in?
Europe
Asia
Africa
Oceania
South America
North America
