If you’ve been following workplace news lately, it’s easy to assume that many employees have largely checked out. But new research from Wiley Workplace Intelligence surveyed more than 1,600 employees and found something different. Most are still hopeful, motivated, and find genuine joy in their work despite everything the workplace has been through in recent years.

In fact, 91% feel motivated to do their best work, and 76% say they regularly experience joy. In a time when workplace conversations often revolve around what’s broken, that’s a meaningful place to start.

However, motivation and joy don’t automatically mean people are thriving. For many employees, there’s a gap between knowing what their role requires and feeling like it genuinely brings out their best.

This gap, between clarity and fit, turns out to be one of the most significant drivers of whether hope and joy at work can actually last.

Motivated Isn’t the Same as Thriving

The data paints an encouraging picture. 93% understand how their role contributes to the organization and 85% feel connected to the people they work with. By most measures, purpose and connection are alive and well.

91% of employees feel motivated to do their best work.

But there’s a gap worth paying attention to. Only 75% say their role plays to their natural strengths. That's an 18-point difference between understanding the job and feeling like you're well-suited to it.

It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. Understanding your role gives you clarity. Feeling like your role fits who you are gives you confidence. It’s the difference between simply completing the work and doing it in a way that feels natural. And that feeling it turns out, is one of the most significant drivers of whether hope and joy at work are sustained over time.

This fit gap isn't evenly distributed. Individual contributors, the people with the least ability to reshape their work or advocate for role changes, show the widest gap between role clarity and role fit, at 22%. For many, the work isn’t bad. It just requires more energy than it should, leaving less room for growth, creativity, or recovery. Unlike leaders or managers, they also have the fewest options to change that on their own.

The Real Benefit of Job Fit

Employees in good-fit roles report joy at work at 84%. In poor-fit roles, that number drops to just 42%. That’s not a minor difference. Poor fit nearly cut joy in half. The same pattern holds for feeling valued, feeling hopeful about the future, and motivation. It’s easy to think of job fit as a nice-to-have or something that will work itself out over time. The numbers suggest it’s anything but.

84% joy in good‑fit roles vs. 42% in poor‑fit roles.

When stress enters the picture, the gap widens even further. Employees with good role fit and low stress report joy at a rate of 89%. Employees with poor role fit and high stress report joy at just 32%. That 57-point difference isn’t something a team-bonding activity or a culture initiative can close if the underlying mismatch is left ignored.

Hope and joy at work are deeply personal. They’re rooted in whether the day-to-day work feels like a match—whether people spend their time doing things that come naturally, stretch them in the right ways, and allow them to show up as their best selves. The 17% of employees who say their role always plays to their strengths report 92% joy, 96% motivation, and 89% hope.

When fit is right almost everything else follows.

Hiring Is Where It Starts

If fit has such a powerful impact on hope and joy at work, the natural question is where does the fit problem begin? For many employees, the answer comes before their first day on the job.

20% are confident their organization hires for strong job fit.

Only 20% of employees are very confident that their organization hires people who are a strong fit for their roles. More telling still, the most common response isn’t confidence or skepticism, it’s uncertainty. 30% of employees landed right in the middle, unsure whether fit is even a meaningful part of hiring decisions. When nearly a third of the workforce can’t tell whether the right people are being brought in, it’s a sign that fit isn’t showing up clearly enough in the hiring process to leave any impression at all.

Getting fit right starts with who you hire. When organizations do it well, hope and joy don't need to be manufactured later. They're already built into the role.

What Organizations Can Do

The fit gap is solvable and closing it doesn’t require a full organizational overhaul. The shift is simpler, and more fundamental. The opportunity is to stop treating fit as a byproduct of hiring and start treating it as the point of it.

That means going beyond skills and experience alone. Understanding how someone naturally thinks, the behaviors that come easily to them, and the type of work that energizes rather than drains them is what separates a good hire from one who can truly thrive.

It also means treating fit as an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time hiring decision. Managers who regularly check in on whether work is playing to their people’s strengths, and make small adjustments when possible, do more to preserve hope and joy than almost any other action available to them.

Hope requires a clear path forward. Joy requires feeling like you belong in the work you’re doing. Organizations that hire with fit in mind create the conditions for both.

A More Hopeful Workplace Starts with the Right Fit

Most employees still show up to work with hope and motivation intact. That’s the good news. The harder truth is that for many, the role they’re in isn’t quite the right fit, and over time, that mismatch slowly erodes joy, performance, and resilience.

Organizations don’t have to choose between caring about people and caring about results. When people are in roles that fit who they are, they’re more motivated, more hopeful, and more likely to stay. That’s good for people and good for business.

That kind of workplace is built when hiring decisions are grounded in fit from the start. PXT Select^® assessments give leaders and managers clear, data-driven insights into strengths, fit, and performance patterns so the people coming through the door are set up to do their best work from day one.

Wiley Workplace Intelligence conducts in-depth research on key workplace issues by gathering insights from individual contributors, managers, and leaders. Wiley Workplace Intelligence then analyzes these findings to provide actionable solutions that are shared in our blog.