Surveys say business leaders are overwhelmed, workers are stressed out and unfulfilled, and managers are struggling to manage. My straw poll reveals why: they are frantically filling in questionnaires and participating in online surveys.

Many of these surveys are more marketing than market research: 68 per cent of companies are ill-prepared for new pension measures (from a firm of consulting actuaries); 60 per cent predict a decrease in the need for traditional offices (from a provider of flexible workspace); and 82 per cent do not measure employee engagement after big deals (from a consultancy that “pioneered” employee engagement measurement). Meanwhile, 100 per cent of a sample of chief executives I asked said they thought such polls were either tedious or extremely tedious.

“There’s huge survey fatigue,” admits Jonathan Spector, head of the Conference Board, which has been polling its US business members since 1916. It has redesigned its CEO surveys so they can be completed in four minutes – they used to take over an hour.