Every three years Foothold undertakes a wellbeing survey of our community to understand how they are feeling physically, mentally, and financially.

This information helps inform our thinking about whether our existing support is relevant, and how we may need to evolve our support in the future.

Previous surveys led to us expanding our focus from providing financial support, which started when we made our first grant 125 years ago, to building resilience in our community. This led to the development of our digital health and wellbeing and neurodiversity tools and resources.

Foothold truly is a global community, and we were grateful to everyone who took the time to respond, all 469 of you, from 37 different countries!

We used a combination of demographic questions alongside the WHOQOL-BREF and Secondsight financial wellbeing formats to collect the results.

And the results were enlightening – while more than half were generally doing well or OK, a significant proportion were finding life challenging in a variety of areas.

Key findings

Health and disability

• Almost 40% of respondents were either dissatisfied with their health, felt they had a poor quality of life, or both.
• Over 30% declared a disability, with mental illness being the most declared and physical impairment the second.
• Over 30% needed at least a moderate amount of medical treatment to function in their daily lives. A similar number reported that pain often prevented them from doing what they needed to do.

Mental wellbeing

• Over 40% said they often, or always, have negative feelings such a despair, anxiety or depression, which is why we launched tools such as our Mental Health Check-In. Younger respondents were the most likely to be struggling in this area, but we also saw 36–45, 46–55, and 86+ age groups struggling too.

Financial wellbeing

• 29% of respondents have poor financial wellbeing, and 32% are living on less than the Minimum Income Standard. This feeling was particularly acute amongst younger respondents, with almost 40% of 26–35 year olds saying they didn’t have enough money to meet their needs.

Housing

• 5% were homeless, couch surfing, or in temporary accommodation. This was most common amongst younger respondents, but we also saw higher prevalence among people aged 46–55 than in other age groups. This is why we continue to work closely with housing charities like Shelter in the UK, to refer people for support and bring updates on key housing issues such as the Renter’s Rights Act.

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You can find out more about how our work addresses these areas in our impact report.

We are continually reviewing our existing support and developing new ways to support our community’s health and wellbeing. Feedback from our community plays a key role in that, such as in helping us choose our monthly webinar topics.

Thank you again to everyone who took part in the survey. Your feedback helps us to make sure we’re offering the right support for engineers and their families worldwide.