Good morning.
A company can’t exist without talent. So, prioritizing employee health and well-being is not only the right thing to do, it’s a business imperative.
“The stressors on employees are at an all-time high,” said Stephan Scholl, CEO of Alight, a provider of benefits administration and cloud-based HR and financial solutions. At a roundtable discussion, sponsored by Alight, during the Fortune CEO Initiative event on Tuesday, Scholl along with Tom McInerney, CEO of Genworth Financial, and Jami McKeon, chair of the global law firm Morgan Lewis, gave some insight on what's on the minds of chief executives when it comes to employee engagement.
Scholl shared some statistics from Alight’s new research that should signal an alarm. Three-quarters of U.S. employees report they are experiencing moderate to high stress levels, and that rises to 80% among Gen Z and millennial workers, Scholl explained.
The research also found just half (51%) of the workforce reported positive feelings across their mental, physical and financial well-being in 2023, compared to 53% of employees in 2022. In fact, personal finances (56%), job challenges (52%) and physical health (32%) rank as the top three sources of stress.
“Seventy-five percent of them are looking to their employer to actually give them more support in these moments that matter around health-related dynamics,” Scholl said.
“How willing are you as a CEO to break down some of those barriers?” Scholl asked the attendees. “It takes willingness from the top to undo 40 years of how things have been done.” And a big part of that is having useful data, he said. However, often companies have siloed systems when it comes to HR, employee benefits and engagement, Scholl explained. “It's huge buckets of data that sit across business units that no CHRO knows the entirety of,” he said.
“As I became more senior in the organization, and started managing people, I really had an epiphany that it's all about relationships,” McKeon said. When she became chair of the firm almost 10 years ago, that became a prioritized focus, she said. “We created the position of chief engagement officer,” McKeon said. “And we hired a director of applied positive psychology to be our first well-being director. I really feel that carried us through COVID. We have very low attrition.” However, she said the firm still has challenges that all companies face. “Not everybody's dancing a jig every day,” she quipped. But the efforts in engagement have “made a material difference,” she said.
“If I stratify the workers that we all have—between baby boomers, nearing the end of their careers and then Gen Z, millennials, and all the others—I do think the mission statement and the purpose is incredibly important today,” McInerney said. “Our thousands of employees really care about that mission statement.” However, “if you can't engage your employees, you can't have them embrace the mission and the purpose,” he said. “We look at our employees at each stage of their life with a holistic approach, and Alight has brought technology platforms to make it easier.”
Scholl said there’s often a disconnect in employer perception of what employees are thinking. “You meet with CEOs, and you sit down and say, ‘Do you think you’re doing right by your employees in moments that matter?” Scholl said. “The first answer is, ‘Of course we are.’” But it’s important to really get to the heart of what employees are experiencing because during times of need, they’re increasingly going to their employers for help, he said.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
