![Bar chart showing barriers to employee participation in social and environmental impact at work, with lack of decision‑making power (47%) [HS Note: Shouldn’t we use the exact phrasing as the chart here, for example, “No decision-making power”?] as the top barrier, followed by limited resources or budget (29%), company not prioritizing sustainability (23%), and lack of leadership guidance (22%).](https://globescan.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Insight-of-the-Week-Barriers-to-Impact-Work-from-Employees-Jun-24-scaled.webp)
Key Takeaways
- Structural barriers dominate: The most commonly cited barrier is the lack of decision-making power at 47 percent, followed by no resources or budget at 29 percent and company not prioritizing sustainability at 23 percent.
- Not a motivation or awareness issue: Most employees already believe they can contribute to improving impact. The constraint is not a lack of willingness or awareness, but the inability to act. Skills and understanding matter, but play a secondary role at 20 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
- Design over messaging: Employee participation is less about inspiring people and more about enabling them with the right organizational design. To unlock employee contribution, companies need to redistribute decision-making, align incentives, and embed participation into how work gets done, moving employees from support roles to active shapers of sustainable outcomes.
Why Organizational Barriers Are Holding Back Employee Participation
A new report from GlobeScan and Ashoka establishes that employee participation can strengthen motivation, loyalty, and purpose, while at the same time tapping into a largely underused resource to help solve our greatest social and environmental challenges. This second finding from the same research helps explain why so many organizations still struggle to unlock that value. Drawing on the voices of 8,865 corporate employees across 33 countries, Building Human Change Capability in Times of Disruption examines how organizations can build future-ready workforces by enabling and embedding participation into everyday work and decision‑making.
The research shows that the central barriers are overwhelmingly organizational. By a wide margin, the most cited reason employees say it is difficult for them to personally help their company improve its impact on society and the environment is a lack of decision-making power, reported by 47 percent of employees who say they are not able to help their companies contribute to positive impact. This is followed by lack of resources or budget at 29 percent, company not prioritizing sustainability at 23 percent, and no guidance from leadership at 22 percent. Skills and understanding matter, but they sit below these structural obstacles, with lack of the right skills at 20 percent and limited understanding of social and environmental issues at 18 percent.
This pattern is highly significant because in many organizations, limited employee participation is often interpreted as a problem of awareness or communication, but the evidence instead points in a different direction. The larger GlobeScan and Ashoka report argues that many efforts fail to engage the people closest to the work, and that the challenge is frequently structural rather than motivational. While 82 percent of employees globally believe they can help improve their organization’s impact on society and the environment, many lack the authority, support, and pathways needed to translate that belief into action.
This reveals an important tension at the heart of many corporate transformation efforts, as organizations often ask employees to care about social and environmental outcomes yet stop short of embedding the practical conditions that would allow employees to influence those outcomes in a meaningful way. Where employees lack decision making power, where resources are unavailable, or where leadership does not provide clear guidance, participation will remain symbolic rather than operational.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Unlocking employee participation is an organizational design challenge, not an engagement one. The issue is not whether employees want to contribute, but whether they are enabled to do so.
To translate intent into impact, companies need to redistribute decision-making, align incentives, and embed participation into how work gets done. This means moving employees from support roles to active shapers of outcomes. In practice, this requires expanding decision rights, backing initiatives with resources, strengthening leadership guidance, and integrating participation into core processes rather than treating it as an add-on.
Organizations that make this shift can unlock greater employee initiative while strengthening adaptability and resilience over time.
How This Insight Was Generated: This analysis draws on the voices of 8,865 corporate employees, defined as those working for companies with more than 1,000 employees, as part of a larger representative online survey of over 30,000 people across 33 markets tracked over time. It draws upon GlobeScan’s extensive global public opinion research which spans more than two decades of insights.
Survey Question: Which of the following makes it more difficult for you to personally help your company improve its impact on society and the environment? Please select up to three main reasons.
Countries surveyed: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Türkiye, UK, USA, and Vietnam.
