Corporate workplace culture has been impacted by recent world events, including the coronavirus pandemic and the #BlackLivesMatter protests, in several significant ways, according to new data released today by HR compliance training and data analytics company Emtrain.
In a comparison of responses collected from more than 100,000 employees at 145 companies prior to March 15th (and presented in the Emtrain Workplace Culture Report 2020) to over 20,000 responses collected from after March, 15, Emtrain found:
- A 15% drop in the likelihood that employees would say “no” to an inappropriate request from a manager.
- A 7% increase in people having to minimize their heritage or personal identity to fit in at work
- A 9% decrease in employees who say their workplace culture is “healthy” in the area of harassment
- 7% fewer employees reporting “strong and respectful relationships” between age groups
- A 10% decline in people who say behavior in their workplace is governed by “well-understood norms”
On a positive note, since we’ve all moved to remote work and Zoom meetings, 8% more people say that their coworkers can accurately pick up the mood in the room.
“These changes may not sound dramatic, but believe me they are,” said Emtrain founder and CEO Janine Yancey. “To have employee attitudes shift this much on such key culture issues in just a few months means there are some major disruptions happening in the workplace and corporate leaders should see this as a wakeup call, particularly the decrease in people believing there are strong, well-understood norms of behavior in their workplace. This is one of the number-one indicators of overall workplace health and to see that drop is a red flag.”
More About the Data
Emtrain compared responses from 100,000+ employees collected in the year prior to March 15th, 2020 with the responses from 20,000+ employees collected after that date. The data specifically focused on revealing changes to key indicators first shared in the Emtrain Workplace Culture Report.
Emtrain’s workplace culture platform reinvents compliance training with provocative content that sparks dialogue and unique culture analytics that drive individual and organizational behavior change. Emtrain.ai allows you to benchmark your culture against our global community to identify issues before they become toxic problems that become compliance issues and destroy culture. Emtrain partners with industry experts and uses current events to teach on topics such as sexual harassment, unconscious bias, and ethics. Emtrain’s innovative platform is used by more than 800 companies, such as Netflix, Yelp, Dolby, LiveNation, and others. Recognized by Fast Company as an Honorable Mention in its “World Changing Ideas 2020” list, Emtrain is a woman-owned and women-led company.
