A new report highlights the gap between leaders who think they are doing a good job of supporting their employees during the pandemic, against workers who actually feel that way.
According to a February survey of 2,100 people at Deloitte and Workplace Intelligence, more than 8 in 10 global executives believe their people feel “excellent” or “good” in their physical, mental, social and financial well-being. However, employees rate how well they perform in each category much lower. With one big discrepancy, although 81% of C-suite leaders think their employees are doing well with their finances, only 40% of employees actually feel that way.
About 9 out of 10 executives believe they understand what their employees are going through during a pandemic and have made the best leadership decisions for the company. On the other hand, approximately half of the workers agree.
The break shows that “what we need to see is a C-suite and a workforce to come together” to understand the root causes of employee stress and turnover, said Jen Fisher, Deloitte’s chief welfare director.
One factor contributing to the difference may be that “many C-suite leaders have not worked with wellness and well-being programs that have historically been the responsibility of human resources,” Fisher said. “Now they are being told that this is the responsibility of every C-Suite leader.”
One thing that managers and their employees agree on is that their current job is not good for their personal lives and they can just leave for better. About 69% of C-suite leaders and 57% of employees “are seriously considering quitting a job that better sustains their well-being.”
Managers admit that they have not taken enough action to support the health of employees
Almost all C-suite executives report that they feel responsible for the well-being of their teams, but 68% admit that they do not take enough action to protect the health of employees and stakeholders. Only 1 in 3 employees believe that their work has a positive impact on their physical, mental and social well-being.
Without listening to employees, companies invest in resources that do not adequately meet their needs, Fisher said. For example, the pandemic has led many companies to provide new and improved health benefits such as teletherapy and wellness scholarships.
But employees say the biggest barrier to improving their health is the work itself, especially managing stress and long hours.
Here are the biggest ways leadership can improve well-being in the workplace, according to employees:
- Adopt new standards that support the social determinants of health (such as setting a minimum wage)
- Focus on employee health in general (such as offering flexible working arrangements or supporting childcare)
- Challenge what is considered “normal” (such as accepting a 4-day work week or creating non-Zoom meeting days)
- Share public health information with employees (such as detaining Covid’s safety halls)
- Shape the future of health in coalition with others (such as by publicly publishing and measuring the organization’s well-being indicators)
Will it take the health of employees into the background of the cooling labor market?
Institutional change managers can do a better job of researching what employees really have to feel supported, Fisher said. Workers, meanwhile, need to understand that big changes will not happen overnight. “We are all responsible for the cultures we create,” she said.
It is possible that workers’ confidence to leave work will cool with a potential recession, but the damage to the health of their workplaces will not go away. If nothing else, Fisher hopes the continuing instability will boost the company’s investment in employee health and sustainability.
“We continue to live in a world that is disrupted and insecure, which is another signal to me that prosperity is not good to have, but should be from the C-suite down,” says Fisher.
“I hope that will not happen if there is some kind of economic downturn, it does not reduce the company’s focus or investment in the welfare of the workforce,” she said. – That would be a completely wrong answer.
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