Wellbeing and engagement 2023

Key facts

The key facts are for the Victorian public sector.

Overall, work-related wellbeing rose to 47% from 44% in 2021.

Employees who experienced high to severe stress:

How work made employees feel often, very often or always:

55.9% of employees agreed their organisation and leaders support their psychological and physical safety.

Employee engagement fell to 67.6 index points from 69.6 in 2021.

Work-related stress describes an employee’s stress response to work-related factors.

Most jobs involve some level of stress.

Moderate stress can improve performance and resilience. However, high levels of stress can:

Emotional effects of work are the positive and negative feelings employees experienced in the 3 months before the survey.

Positive feelings may lead to higher wellbeing and job satisfaction and a lower chance of burnout.

The results combine the answers of often, very often or always.

A safe workplace is a key outcome of Leading the way and the Victorian public sector mental health and wellbeing charter.

The results combine agree and strongly agree answers to these statements:

Senior leaders show support for stress prevention through involvement and commitment
Senior leaders consider the psychological health of employees to be as important as productivity
In my workplace, there is good communication about psychological safety issues that affect me
All levels of my organisation are involved in the prevention of stress
My organisation provides a physically safe work environment
My organisation has effective procedures in place to support employees who may experience stress.

The employee engagement index is a weighted score out of 100.

A high employee engagement rating indicates employees are enthusiastic, motivated by and committed to their work.

The engagement statements are:

The weightings for each engagement response are:

The index is the average of these scores.