Employees get less freedom, say employers themselves

Employers have paid less attention to the mental well-being of their employees in the last two years. Their staff has been given less freedom to organize their work in their own way. Employers also took fewer measures to prevent overload.

This is apparent from a long-term survey among 4,500 Dutch employers by research agency TNO. The results for 2021 were published on Thursday.

Only 38 percent of employers said that their employees are “to a (very) large extent” allowed to decide for themselves about the way in which they carry out their work. In previous years, about half of employers gave this answer.

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The ability for staff to determine their own working hours and breaks also declined. In 2019, 45 percent of employers reported this freedom, compared to 36 percent last year.

TNO researcher Gerben Hulsegge calls this a ‘worrying development’. “A good balance between sufficient autonomy and the amount of work is necessary to prevent a high workload.” If employees experience more freedom, the chance that they will become overloaded decreases.

Employers in the construction, IT, healthcare and transport sectors saw the greatest decline in the autonomy of their staff.

Employee is more positive

Strikingly enough, employees themselves are much more positive about their autonomy.

This is apparent from the large employee survey conducted by TNO published earlier this year with statistics bureau CBS. Nearly 61 percent of employees said they feel great freedom in the way they do their job. That percentage has been virtually stable for years.

Hulsegge cannot explain why employees are more positive. Maybe it’s because of the corona crisis, he suggests. Employers may have thought that the crisis has reduced the freedom of choice for their staff. “While certain groups of employees themselves experienced more autonomy, for example because of the option to work from home.”

The TNO researcher also mentions corona as an explanation for the decrease in measures to prevent overload and work stress. “Other things had priority. Many employers had to focus on measures to keep things going at all.”