Employers Grossly Overestimate Employee Well-Being, Annual Study Shows

Plan sponsor benefits are not meeting the personal and household needs for employees to an increasing degree, new MetLife data show.

Employers are facing a growing gap between the actual satisfaction of employees and employer perceptions of worker well-being. The difference between the groups increased to 22 percentage points in 2023 from just 3 percentage points in 2018, the annual MetLife U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study found.

“The study focuses on the concept of employee care, revealing the profound and measurable impact it has in the workplace,” says Bradd Chignoli, senior vice president of group benefits national accounts and financial wellness and engagement at MetLife, via email. “Feeling cared for at work is a key driver of employees’ holistic health and happiness, which are strongly connected to employee productivity and job loyalty.”

Employee satisfaction with employer benefits stood at 61%, based on the survey, compared with 83% of employers that say employees are satisfied with the benefits they receive, MetLife found.

The granular data for specific health measures show that employers overestimate employee well-being across several aspects, MetLife found.

• For financial health, 55% of employees say they are financially healthy, versus 83% of employers reporting their employees are financially healthy;
• 65% of employees say they are mentally healthy, versus 85% of employers reporting their employees are mentally healthy;
• 67% of employees feel they are physically healthy, compared to 87% of employers reporting their workers are physically healthy; and
• 67% of employees say they are socially healthy, versus 86% of employers reporting their workers are socially healthy.

Employee social health was defined as the ability of workers to form satisfying interpersonal relationships with others, according to a spokesperson.

More than half, 55%, of workers surveyed reported living paycheck-to-paycheck, up from 43% in 2022; 55% of workers reported feeling in control of their finances, down from 61% in 2022; and 52% of employees reported a three-month saving cushion, down from 62% in 2022, according to the benefit trends data. Employees citing financial concerns as a cause of lower mental health increased to 48% in 2023, from 31% in 2022, driving down lower rates of holistic health, the data showed.

“The report [also] shows that employees who feel cared for when working are three times more likely to report feeling holistically healthy,” Chignoli said.

Long-Term Job Satisfaction Declines

Employee job satisfaction rates ticked up in 2023 to 69%, from 66% one year ago, which was the lowest recorded job satisfaction rate since 2002, the first year of the study.

The job satisfaction rate has trended down in the recent past, from about 74% in 2019 to below 70% in 2020, data shows.

The research supplemented the quantitative data with quotes from employees.

“I think it’s job security, and also knowing what to expect in this position instead of the uncertainty of going to something else,” said an employee who expected to still be working at the same organization in 12 months.

“Some management thinks staff should almost feel fortunate to work here,” an employee said. “We do, don’t get me wrong; but that’s not to say it can’t be improved, whether it’s in the realm of compensation or benefits.”

Greater employer attention to employee care is one likely means to restore holistic worker health, according to MetLife’s findings.  

MetLife recommends plan sponsors explore demonstrating care for employees across core experiences and via compensation, the report stated.

“Plan sponsors have a real opportunity to demonstrate care through benefit offerings and, in particular, support employees’ financial wellness,” Chignoli added. “Plan sponsors can consider increasing contribution levels to help alleviate employees’ financial pressures, offer resources to reduce financial stress, including group legal plans with access to attorney and estate planning [and] no-cost tools … to build healthy financial habits and access to student loan forgiveness and repayment options.”

Employers may invest in several efforts for employees.

• Career development and training;
• Purposeful work, partly demonstrated by their employer acting on environmental or sustainability issues or taking a stand on social or political issues;
• Social and supportive cultures;
• Flexibility and work-life balance (or work-life integration, as it’s sometimes known); and
• Wellness programs and benefits.

“By demonstrating care effectively across these elements, employers will also find themselves with a happier workforce, and individual workers who feel more successful, more appreciated and a greater sense of belonging,” the report stated. “We can make this claim confidently because the predictive, analytical models we developed, based on Bayesian statistical techniques, show strong correlations between employee holistic health, happiness and job satisfaction.”

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. operates as MetLife and affiliates as a global provider of insurance, annuities and employee benefit programs, with 90 million customers in more than 60 countries.

The MetLife study was conducted in November 2022 and consists of two distinct studies carried out by Rainmakers CSI. The employer survey included 2,840 interviews with benefits decisionmakers and influencers at companies with at least two employees. The employee survey consisted of 2,884 interviews with full-time employees ages 21 or older at companies with at least two employees in the U.S.

For additional context to the quantitative findings, researchers conducted 24 employee telephone interviews between December 2022 and January 2023. Participants were recruited to ensure a spread of demographics, incomes, worker types, industries and business sizes.