A workplace wellbeing diagnostic tool aims to change the question companies ask about burnout: not how each employee feels, but which institutional conditions make that wellbeing possible, or impossible, in the first place.
In 2019, the World Health Organization formally added occupational burnout to its International Classification of Diseases, describing it as the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. The organization characterized it through three signs: feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance or cynicism toward one's job, and a reduced sense of professional effectiveness. The WHO made a point that often gets overlooked: the phenomenon is specifically tied to the occupational context, not to a person's personal life.
That distinction matters because it places responsibility where it belongs. Burnout does not come from individual fragility alone. It largely comes from the environment an organization builds or neglects.
What the global data shows
The State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, published by Gallup in April of this year using data collected throughout 2025, offers a recent picture of that environment. According to the firm, in 2025 only 20% of employees worldwide felt engaged with their work. Global wellbeing improved for the first time in three years, though modestly, rising one percentage point to 34%. Meanwhile, the share of people who reported feeling a lot of stress, anger and sadness the day before being surveyed remained above prepandemic levels.
Within that same body of research, Gallup has documented for more than a decade a finding that rarely translates into concrete management decisions: managers account for at least 70% of the variance in engagement levels across different business units. In other words, the difference between a motivated team and one that is not depends, overwhelmingly, on who supervises it day to day, not on corporate perks or institutional talk about culture.
Taken together, these two findings describe almost precisely the variables an organizational diagnostic would need to measure to be useful: the real state of employee involvement and wellbeing, and the specific role that middle management plays in producing or eroding it.
Pro Evaluation System's answer
Well Working, a diagnostic tool developed by Pro Evaluation System, was built on that same ground to assess an organization's potential for wellbeing. It measures three dimensions that determine whether a person can reasonably integrate their work life with their personal and family life: organizational policies, the real support provided by direct leadership, and organizational culture, understood as the values that actually guide leadership decisions, beyond whatever any manual might state.
The questionnaire contains 31 questions and takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. The result is a report with visual, practical output, designed so a leadership team can pinpoint exactly which of the three dimensions is failing, instead of applying generic wellbeing programs that rarely touch the structural cause of the exhaustion. Among the benefits documented are increased productivity and job satisfaction, along with reduced stress and an improved organizational climate. The tool is aimed at companies, human resources departments, and consultants specialized in this field.
Why leadership matters more than people think
If Gallup's finding about the weight of the direct manager holds consistently over time, then any wellbeing diagnostic that ignores that factor risks measuring the wrong symptom. A climate survey that only asks whether employees are satisfied, without distinguishing whether the root cause is a missing policy, an unsupported middle manager, or a culture that in practice punishes anyone who sets boundaries, delivers an incomplete picture.
Well Working separates those three layers explicitly. That does not guarantee an institution will solve its wellbeing problem simply by completing the questionnaire. What it does offer is a more precise map of where to intervene first, which matters especially given that, according to Gallup's own data, direct leadership carries more weight than almost any other factor companies tend to prioritize in their wellbeing budgets.
Measure before you promise
In a market saturated with wellbeing solutions that promise transformation without any prior diagnosis, Well Working reverses the usual order: it measures first, using the organization's own data, and only then decides where to act.
With four out of five people worldwide still not feeling engaged with their work, according to the latest available global measurement, the question this tool raises stops being cosmetic. Does your institution know which of its three dimensions, policies, leadership, or culture, is really falling short? Learn more at proevaluationsystem.com.
Sources
- World Health Organization. Burn-out an occupational phenomenon: International Classification of Diseases. May 28, 2019. who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
- Gallup. State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report, Global Data Summary. Published April 2026, with data collected between January and December 2025. gallup.com/workplace/697904/state-of-the-global-workplace-global-data.aspx
- Beck, R., & Harter, J. Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement. Gallup Business Journal, State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders. news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx
- Internal technical sheet for the Well Working product, Pro Evaluation System.
