UK data presents a clear contradiction: 49% of people are thriving in life, yet only 10% are engaged at work. Given that work consumes over half of our waking hours, this appears illogical.
The most common explanation is that people tolerate work and source their wellbeing elsewhere — through relationships, family, hobbies, purpose, and positive emotion outside the workplace.
However, a deeper issue sits underneath the data.
People are far more skilled at evaluating work than evaluating wellbeing. We talk about work daily, reflect on it constantly, and have language, opinions, and reference points to judge it accurately. Wellbeing, by contrast, is rarely discussed, poorly observed, and often loosely defined at an individual level.
As a result:
Engagement scores reflect high awareness and frequent reflection
Wellbeing scores often reflect a broad, under-examined sense that “life is OK”
This does not mean the wellbeing data is wrong — but it is less mature.
For leaders and organisations, the implication is clear:
measuring wellbeing without helping people develop awareness of it will always produce shallow insights. Improving engagement and wellbeing is not just about interventions — it is about building people’s capability to notice, articulate, and understand their own experience.
Until that gap is addressed, high life satisfaction and low work engagement will continue to coexist — and continue to confuse.
According to Gallup, around 49% of people in the UK are classified as “thriving” in their overall life evaluation. Yet only 10% of UK employees are engaged at work.
At first glance, this doesn’t add up.
If we spend 50% or more of our waking hours at work, how can half the population be thriving while nine out of ten people feel psychologically disconnected from what they do all day?
Something doesn’t quite sit right.
The UK numbers at a glance (State of the Global Workplace 2025)
Life evaluation (UK):
Thriving: 49%
Struggling: 46%
Suffering: 5%
Employee engagement (UK):
Engaged: 10%
Not engaged: 71%
Actively disengaged: 19%
Same country. Same people. Very different story.
The obvious explanation — we tolerate work
The simplest answer is also the least controversial:
most people tolerate work rather than draw wellbeing from it.
Work pays the bills. It provides structure. Sometimes it’s mildly interesting. Often it isn’t. For many, it’s something to be managed rather than enjoyed.
Wellbeing, then, is sourced elsewhere:
relationships
family
friends
hobbies
exercise
faith or spirituality
moments of meaning outside work
simple pleasures and positive emotion
From this angle, the data makes sense. Work is a cost we absorb in order to live the rest of our lives.
But that explanation only gets us so far.
A more uncomfortable possibility
There’s another explanation that’s harder to swallow — and more interesting.
We are far more skilled at evaluating work than we are at evaluating wellbeing.
Think about how often you are asked about work.
You finish the day, walk through the door, and someone asks:
“How was work?”
And off you go.
You talk about:
meetings
people
frustrations
wins
systems that don’t work
the metaphorical (or literal) broken water cooler
You have language for it.
You have opinions.
You’ve thought about it — often obsessively — for years.
Now compare that with this question:
“How was your wellbeing today?”
How many people are asked that?
And even if they are — how many can answer it with any confidence?
We don’t talk about wellbeing in the same way
Very few people come home and say:
“I was in flow for most of the afternoon.”
“I felt a strong sense of purpose today.”
“My energy was steady and calm.”
“I felt connected and grounded.”
Not because those things didn’t happen — but because we don’t habitually notice them.
We don’t have a shared language for wellbeing.
We’re not trained to observe it.
We don’t routinely reflect on it.
So when someone is asked to score their wellbeing, what are they actually scoring?
Often, it’s a vague sense of “life is broadly OK”, rather than a precise assessment of how they’re functioning day to day.
Engagement is concrete. Wellbeing is fuzzy.
This is the key asymmetry.
When Gallup asks about engagement, people respond with confidence. They know what work feels like. They know when they’re bored, frustrated, ignored, or over-managed.
When Gallup asks about life evaluation, many people are answering from a much less mature internal model.
They haven’t spent years reflecting on:
what “thriving” really means for them
what high-quality attention feels like
how purpose shows up in daily life
the difference between pleasure, satisfaction, and meaning
So the score is not wrong — but it is coarse.
The real gap isn’t work vs wellbeing — it’s awareness
The UK data doesn’t necessarily tell us that people are happily thriving despite disengaging work.
It may be telling us something more subtle:
We scrutinise work relentlessly.
We barely examine wellbeing at all.
One domain is over-analysed.
The other is under-developed.
That imbalance alone can explain how these two numbers coexist.
Why this matters for leaders and organisations
This isn’t an argument for turning work into forced happiness programmes.
It’s a reminder that:
disengagement at work is real and measurable
wellbeing is often reported without the same depth of reflection
surveys capture perceived understanding, not just lived experience
If organisations want better data — and better outcomes — they need to help people develop the skill of noticing wellbeing, not just measure it.
Because until people can recognise flow, purpose, energy, and meaning in their own lives, they’ll continue to answer wellbeing questions with far less precision than they answer questions about work.
And the numbers will keep looking contradictory — even when they aren’t.