2026年职场状况报告

A Report by Worktech Academyin Association with SPS APRIL 2026 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INTRODUCTION KEY FINDING 1 KEY FINDING 2 Organisations are increasingly retainingemployees through uncertainty ratherthan engagement. The biggest barrier to workplaceperformance is friction in everydaysystems, tools and processes. KEY FINDING 4 KEY FINDING 3 The workplace is a performance lever—butmany employees do not believe organisationsare investing in the right solutions. Organisations are measuring productivitythrough output and efficiency, while employeesdefine performance through experience. KEY FINDING 5 CONCLUSION AI adoption is accelerating across theworkplace, but its impact is perceiveddifferently across the workforce. The workplace as an ecosystem forperformance. APPENDIX Methodology. Demographics. Experts. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Over the past year workplace strategy appears to have stabilised. Employees arecoming into the office largely for the same reasons—to collaborate, access resourcesand spend time with colleagues—and labour markets have slowed enough to reduce Yet beneath this stability, a different picture is emerging. The findings from this year’s State of the Workplace 2026 survey, conducted with 679 officeworkers and executives across eight global markets, suggest that many organisations areretaining a workforce that is physically present but psychologically disengaged. The proportionof employees who describe themselves as highly engaged has fallen from 42% in 2025 to 36% in To add to this, disengaged employees are staying put in their current roles. According to Gallup,just over a quarter of workers (28%) say now is a good time to find a quality job, down from 70%in 2022. This 42-percentage-point decline represents the steepest drop in job market confidence This matters because engagement shapes how employees thinkabout performance. Across the survey, employees broadly agreed that being productive means getting work done.However, the least engaged employees describe productivity in transactional terms—stayingbusy, getting through the day and avoiding mistakes. Whereas the most engaged employees At the same time, there is growing agreement about what enables productive work. Employeesagree that the ability to focus without distraction, access to the right tools and technology, easyaccess to colleagues and decision-makers, and environments that support both concentration The problem is that many workplaces are still failing to provide these conditions. Everydayfriction from limited flexibility to lack of focus space and time lost navigating systems continues Despite this, many organisations are still measuring productivity through traditional indicatorssuch as utilisation, task completion and output. Nearly a quarter of executives say theyeither do not have formal productivity KPIs or are not aware of them. This suggests that many The result is a growing workplace performance gap which highlights a disconnect between howorganisations define productivity and how employees actually experience it. Artificial intelligence is beginning to intensify this challenge. While AI adoption has acceleratedrapidly, employees are using these tools in very different ways. The most engaged employeesare more likely to use AI to improve quality, remove friction and focus on higher-value work. Theleast engaged are more likely to use it defensively, driven by anxiety about future relevance and To understand true workplace performance, organisations need tounderstand the full spectrum of what can influence human performance.High performing workplaces should connect space, technology, cultureand work processes to help people do meaningful work more effectively. INTRODUCTION For much of the past five years, workplace strategy has been shaped bydebates over where work should happen. Organisations experimented withhybrid models, office mandates and flexible working policies while trying Those debates are now beginning to settle. Across most organisations, hybrid patterns havestabilised and office attendance has become more predictable. At the same time, labour marketshave cooled and fewer employees are leaving their jobs. At first glance, this could suggest that However, the findings from this year’s research suggest that behind these stable attendancefigures and lower employee mobility sits a workforce that is increasingly disconnected fromwork. The proportion of employees who describe themselves as highly engaged has fallensignificantly over the past year, yet employees are less likely to look for alternative employment This creates a challenge for organisations. Employees broadly agreeon what productive work looks like, but many do not believe their Instead, they describe spending too much time navigating systems, searching for information,dealing with distractions and overcoming unnecessary barriers. At the same time, organisations are under increasing pressure to prove the re