The closing keynote panel at HR Tech Europe 2025 was (from left) Bo Vialle-Derksen, SyngularEdge; Uzair Qadeer, BBC; Wouter Hol, Netflix EMEA; Jodi Slomp, Mollie. (Photo credit: HR Executive)
While I love to report on new HR technology for the sake of tech and innovation, the true reason any new platform or feature is invented is to solve a business problem. So, what are the meta-problems that truly required to be solved?
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace spans over 160 countries and includes insights collected from around 141,000 employees. With HR Tech in Amsterdam coming up this month, findings from Europe can set the stage for the most pressing topics. Here are some of the key issues that I predict will surface at HR Tech Europe.
Europe’s employee wellbeing challenges
According to Gallup, Europe is facing an engagement challenge, with only 13% of employees in Europe stateing they are engaged. This is the lowest globally, with 73% not engaged and 15% actively disengaged. Compare that to 31% engaged in North America or 26% in South-East Asia, and it is clear that Europe faces a gap in this area.
Meanwhile, employee wellness seems to be degrading. Nearly half of employees in Europe are struggling, with only 47% thriving and 5% suffering. This puts Europe below global peers like Australia/New Zealand and Latin America, despite being among the world’s wealthiest economies.
But it is not all bad news. Europe has some positive material to work with. It is tied for the lowest rates of daily loneliness and daily anger across all regions, according to Gallup. Stress is also lower, at 38%, compared with 50% in North America. Additionally, only 30% of employees in Europe state they are watching for or actively seeking a new job, a figure that is the lowest of any region Gallup examined.
The data sets up several high-stakes conversations for the conference:
Engagement tech ROI
Low job-seeking indicators combined with low engagement are a tricky combination for HR leaders becautilize employees are staying but may not be contributing. With 88% of employees in Europe either not engaged or actively disengaged, according to Gallup, there is a massive business case for tools that assist employees feel more connected to their jobs and workplace.
“If HR can’t clearly connect the dots between engagement, retention and contribution to EBITDA, it’s not a business case,” according to Rebecca Wettemann, CEO of Valoir, who will be speaking at HR Tech.
Manager effectiveness
Gallup’s broader research consistently links engagement to the quality of managers. The data suggests that organisations in Europe may have a structural gap in manager development that technology alone cannot repair. “Managers are human beings, as well,” Todd Davis, Senior Consultant at FranklinCovey, informed HR Executive. “They’re anxious about their futures and their roles, but when they took those on, they knew they had an additional responsibility to those team members.”
Wellbeing investments
The lower stress and anger numbers suggest employees in Europe may respond differently to wellbeing interventions than employees in North America. Programmes designed to address burnout may miss the mark if employees appear calm yet remain disconnected. HR Executive found that local expressions of disengagement matter. As I wrote previously, HR leaders managing a global workforce may not be able to rely on a single mental health strategy across the business markets.
The data on European workforce engagement suggest HR leaders have an opportunity. HR Tech Europe, April 22-23 in Amsterdam, is where HR leaders respond. Register now.
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