The Quiet Crisis Behind The Workforce: Why Employee Quality Of Life Should Be A Boardroom Priority

Forbes

2 days ago

Jaclyn Wainwright is the cofounder and CEO of Humankind.
We're facing a quiet crisis in today's workforce, and effectively addressing it could unlock your business's performance. It's not a shortage of talent or engagement or even burnout (though all three are symptoms). The real issue is that millions of people are coming to work in survival mode. They're navigating financial stress, mental and emotional exhaustion and food and housing insecurity while still trying to meet the expectations of a full-time job—oftentimes without a network to turn to for support.
And we're measuring the wrong things in response.
For decades, we've tried to assess workforce performance through absenteeism data, benefits utilization or engagement surveys. But these are downstream indicators. If we want to understand what's really driving turnover, productivity and growth, we need to get upstream. We need to start measuring and improving employee quality of life.
Survival Mode Is Not Sustainable
At Humankind, we support more than 2.5 million employees across large employer groups, helping to address root cause issues that drive overall well-being. We use the World Health Organization's Quality of Life (WHOQOL) survey to understand how individuals perceive their well-being across four domains: physical health, psychological health, environment and relationships. This isn't a satisfaction survey or measure of engagement or utilization; it's a validated, globally recognized tool that measures whether people feel well and capable in the context of their actual lives.
The key detail there is that it measures what people feel is true for them, not just what can be objectively observed from the outside looking in. That self-reported experience is crucial for understanding why people show up the way they do—and how we can help.
What we've found is sobering. When people score low in any of these areas (especially the environmental and psychological health domains), we see clear patterns emerge: Absenteeism rises, productivity drops and turnover increases.
But when we intervene early and support individuals in stabilizing the things that matter most to them, we see something remarkable happen. Motivation increases. They report better health, greater job satisfaction, and lower intention to quit.
According to the most recent CIPD Good Work Index:
• Engaged employees are far less likely to quit (13%-16%) than those who feel exhausted, miserable or lonely (32%-51%).
• Feelings of misery and loneliness are linked to lower performance and elevated attrition—those employees are up to four times more likely to quit than their enthusiastic peers.
• Job performance scores stay above 90% when employees feel positive (energy, enthusiasm, flow), but drop to 74% for lonely employees.
This is the future of workforce strategy, and it starts with rethinking what we consider a business issue.
Quality Of Life Is A Performance Metric
The truth is, many of the challenges we've categorized as 'social issues' are showing up on your shop floor, in your hospitals and at your help desks. According to recent studies, more than half of Americans are one crisis or missed paycheck away from being unhoused. Financial strain doesn't stay at home. These challenges don't disappear when people clock in; they follow them to work, impact their cognitive load and limit their ability to focus, collaborate or innovate.
In my conversations with HR leaders and C-suite executives, there's often an assumption that benefits (particularly health benefits) are already doing enough. But quality of life isn't about what you're offering on paper. It's about how employees perceive their reality. If a person has excellent medical coverage but is worried about eviction or can't afford groceries that week, that benefit is irrelevant to their current experience.
When people feel unsupported or lack the social support network that previous generations had, they disengage from their job and their potential. As I often say, people can't perform at their best when they're just trying to survive the day.
We're Paying For The Wrong Things
The irony is that many companies are already investing heavily in their workforce, but they've been convinced to invest in a checklist of services or products, rather than investing in supporting the individuals in their workforce. Between health plans, short-term disability, mental health programs and other wellness initiatives, the budget is there. What's missing is a strategic reallocation of those resources to address the root causes of poor performance.
In our work, we've seen clear correlations between quality of life improvements and reductions in medical claims. Take the physical symptoms of unresolved stress: headaches, back pain, digestive issues. When someone finally gets the behavioral health support they need, those symptoms often ease, and their reliance on high-cost medical interventions goes down. But those financial savings are just the beginning. The more transformative impact is cultural: Trust improves, loyalty increases and discretionary effort returns.
What Employers Can Do Differently
There's a better way forward, and it doesn't require a massive overhaul of your HR programs. Here's where I recommend starting.
Don't begin with the solution; start with the problem. What are your current pain points? Is it turnover, absenteeism, short-term disability or something else? Get clear on what success looks like before you invest in new tools or vendors.
Engagement surveys have their place, but they don't tell you if your people are surviving or thriving. To understand the lived experience of your workforce, move away from metrics that only indicate usage of benefits (such as enrollment, utilization and app downloads). Instead, focus on outcomes metrics that indicate how their people are actually doing. This can uncover gaps that traditional metrics miss entirely.
The most impactful interventions happen before someone asks for help. When employers proactively assess and respond to quality of life gaps, they send a powerful message: We see you, and we're here to help.
We often assume people have the emotional and mental bandwidth to meet job demands, but many don't. If your workplace is asking more than your people can give, it's time to revisit the equation.
Whether it's a benefits vendor or a mental health provider, ask the hard questions: What are you measuring? What outcomes will you guarantee? What's your impact on cost, performance and retention? This also means asking ourselves (as employers) the hard question: Which business outcomes would be most impactful to our business if we could address them?
A Call To The Boardroom
If you're a CFO, CHRO or CEO, I'm not asking you to become a social worker. I'm asking you to become a smarter investor. Every dollar you allocate to workforce strategy is either spent mitigating crises after they've exploded or preventing them before they derail your business.
Investing in quality of life is a business advantage. When people feel seen, supported and stable, they perform better. They stay longer. They unlock new potential. And that's the kind of ROI no spreadsheet can fully capture, but every bottom line will reflect.
It's time to elevate quality of life from an HR afterthought to a strategic priority. Because the real performance metric isn't just how people show up at work, it's whether they're in a position to show up at all.
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