Globally Grounded: Episode 27
🎧 TUNE IN on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you listen to podcasts).
In this episode, Kyra digs into Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace Report and what it reveals about stress, thriving, and the complicated relationship between the two. Being engaged at work and completely exhausted at the same time isn't a personal failing, but it is a global pattern. Kyra takes a look at the data, from the cultures with the richest lives outside of work, to the regions where loneliness is climbing, to the workforces under the most strain right now. She also shares three things countries should probably put on their national action plans, and three creative practices to try personally. This is Part One of a two-part series. Part Two drops next week, and it's all about the managers.
Episode Takeaways
Being engaged at work and actually thriving are two very different things. You can be deeply invested in your job and still be running on empty. Engagement measures your attachment to work. Thriving measures how you're actually doing. And around the world, those two things are telling very different stories.
The cultures with the highest wellbeing aren't necessarily the most productive ones. Some of the happiest workforces in the world aren't the ones working the hardest. They're the ones with the richest lives outside of work, where community, family, and rest aren't afterthoughts.
When work identity and economic pressure collide, something has to give. In regions experiencing rapid workforce disruption — e.g., tech restructuring, shrinking teams, shifting workplace expectations — the emotional toll shows up fast, engagement drops, and thriving craters. And the people holding it together are often the ones closest to the edge.
Workplace loneliness is a genuine problem. Across multiple regions, loneliness at work is climbing. And where it's highest, thriving is lowest. Connection isn't a nice-to-have. For a lot of workers around the world, its absence is the whole problem.
Stress is a signal about how work has been designed, not a reflection of who you are. The places with the lowest stress tend to have one thing in common: work doesn't define the whole person. When your job is something you do rather than everything you are, the daily stakes shift.
Sources
