Research Highlight #003
The Well-being Perception Gap
Most executives believe their people are doing better. Most of their people say they are not. A four-country survey measured the distance between the two views.
What the research found
Deloitte and the research firm Workplace Intelligence surveyed 3,150 C-suite executives, managers and employees across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The headline finding is a gap in perception. Most employees said their well-being had worsened or stayed the same over the past year, and only around one-third said their health had improved. Meanwhile, more than three out of four executives believed their workforce's well-being had improved.
The same gap appears elsewhere in the survey. Eighty-four percent of the C-suite said their company had made public commitments on workforce well-being, but only 39% of employees agreed. Seventy-two percent of executives said they always or often share information about their own well-being with employees, yet only 16% of workers said they see that level of transparency.
The survey also shows what is at stake. Around half of workers said they always or often feel exhausted (52%) or stressed (49%). And the main obstacles are not personal: heavy workloads, stressful jobs and long hours topped the list of what gets in the way.
Why this is a human performance question
At SALUZ, we read the perception gap as a measurement problem before anything else. If leaders believe their people are doing better while their people report the opposite, decisions about workload, programmes and investment are being made on the wrong data.
Managers sit in the middle of this gap. Nearly all employees (94%) feel their manager should carry some responsibility for their well-being, and 96% of managers agree. But 70% of managers point to organisational barriers: rigid policies, heavy workloads, unsupportive culture and a lack of the right skills. Only 42% said they feel completely empowered to help their company meet its well-being commitments.
The implication for organisations: before designing any intervention, measure how people are actually doing, and measure it from their perspective rather than the executive team's.
A note on the evidence
These are self-reported survey data from four English-speaking countries, and more than half of the respondents were in the United States. Respondents received a small incentive. The survey was conducted in March 2023, so the picture may have changed since then, and it should not be extrapolated directly to Spain or other European markets.