Nike’s recent decision to eliminate its annual wellness week—part of a broader push to “get back to winning”—reignited a familiar conversation in HR circles. Not because organizations can’t revisit perks but because decisions tied to well-being land differently today. Burnout, mental-health strain, and change fatigue remain top of mind for employees and CHROs alike. When shifts feel abrupt or disconnected from what people are experiencing, reactions are quick, emotional, and often public.

But this moment isn’t really about Nike; it reflects a broader pattern playing out across industries. Over the past few years, organizations in technology, financial services, retail, and other sectors have found themselves in the headlines not because of what they changed but because of how the change was introduced. A clear example came earlier this year when Amazon announced a new return-to-office mandate. The policy itself was not exceptional, but the rollout created friction as employees raised concerns about space constraints and circulated petitions. Media coverage highlighted the gap between what leaders intended and what employees actually experienced.

When Trust Breaks Down, It Usually Starts Small

These reactions were not all about office policies, perks, or schedules. At their core, they were about trust and the gap that is formed when employees feel excluded from decisions that affect their well-being, workload, and day-to-day experience. A breakdown in trust rarely happens all at once; it usually builds when early signals aren’t fully understood or acted on.

HR leaders from many organizations often tell us that warning signals were present prior to the disruption, but existing listening tools did not surface them clearly or early enough. Although employees were asking more questions in town hall meetings, managers were expressing hesitation about new expectations, and survey comments hinted at strain even when scores looked stable, many organizations relied on what we often see in moments of pressure: a top-down announcement meant to provide clarity but experienced by employees as a decision made without their input. When that happens, it is evident that early warning signs largely went unnoticed, and small issues can quickly turn into outsized disruptions, reputational risk, or talent loss.

The Environment Is More Fragile Than Leaders Realize

Today, the stakes are even higher. Organizations are moving quickly to restore optimal productivity, accelerate AI adoption, manage costs, and make hybrid work function more smoothly. In an employer-driven labor market, many leaders feel they have more room to set expectations and move quickly. But the pendulum will shift again, and the way companies navigate this moment will influence whether their top talent chooses to stay when opportunities open up. Employees are already carrying heavy workloads, navigating uncertainty, and expressing growing concerns about mental health. That tension creates a fragile environment, and it becomes even more pronounced when companies push forward without fully understanding how changes will land with the people expected to carry them out.

Why Listening Needs to Look Different Now

This is where a more comprehensive listening approach can help leaders move with confidence and reduce unintended consequences.

Listening goes beyond measuring sentiment; it requires understanding the experiences and pressures shaping how people respond to change. We start by listening in ways that make it safe for people to be honest, giving leaders a clear view into what is actually getting in the way of their strategic priorities. That includes not just what employees say but also the frictions, gaps, and disconnects that determine whether an initiative gains traction or stalls. Assess360 surfaces the factors that can slow momentum and the conditions that can help change take hold. We then translate what we learn into practical guidance and focused priorities that help leaders communicate clearly and act with surety.

Organizations that navigate high-stakes decisions most effectively share a common approach: They bring employees into the process early. Whether the change involves benefits, hybrid expectations, productivity goals, or new technology, these organizations treat listening as part of the strategy itself, not a step that happens afterward.

When change makes headlines, it is often because employees felt blindsided, not because the decision itself was unpopular. Listening early and bringing people into the process reduces the risk of excluding employee input and creates the alignment needed for change to take hold successfully.

The Path Forward for HR

If HR leaders want to reduce backlash, strengthen trust, and ensure alignment and adoption of a given policy or decision, it begins with listening deeply before moving forward. Assess360 gives organizations the insight and guidance to make decisions that land well and will take hold.

If you want to understand how deeper listening can reduce friction, build alignment, and support successful change, please contact us.

The post Nike Sparked a Conversation. Here’s What HR Should Hear in It. appeared first on Seramount.

This public debate has collapsed two separate issues—productivity and physical presence—into one narrative. But the evidence tells a far clearer story.

Well-designed hybrid work consistently improves engagement, retention, and, in many cases, productivity itself. Employees report they are able to work more efficiently, protect focus time, and better manage their energy when given flexibility in where and when they work.

For HR leaders, this disconnect presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The debate isn’t really about where people sit; it’s about how organizations define, measure, and experience productivity. And no one is better positioned to lead that redefinition than HR leaders.

Hybrid Didn’t Create a Productivity Problem—It Revealed a Measurement One

Most anxiety surrounding hybrid work stems from measurement systems built for another era. As the research shows, many organizations still rely on legacy metrics—time in seat, output volume, visible activity—systems built for an in-office world that can’t capture how value is created in a distributed one.

When those signals stop working, leaders understandably look for the most visible cue to latch onto, usually attendance. But visibility is not value. And surveillance is not measurement. Monitoring keystrokes, scanning badge data, or tracking idle time won’t restore productivity; it will erode trust.

Research continues to show that cultures built on trust outperform cultures built on visibility. Stanford researchers found that hybrid employees not only maintained productivity but had one-third higher retention rates, a clear sign of what’s possible when autonomy and clarity reinforce one another. When employees feel trusted, engagement rises and teams bring more energy to their work. Strengthening productivity, in other words, comes from setting clearer expectations and building the alignment people need to do their best work.

This is where HR leadership becomes essential: making productivity transparent by defining clear outcomes and the behaviors that drive them, and doing so with employees at the table.

What HR Leaders Must Do Now to Redefine Productivity

Redefining productivity in a hybrid era starts with transparency—making expectations visible, shared, and grounded in how work actually gets done today. Research from Deloitte and RAND shows that sustainable performance comes from clear outcomes supported by engagement, autonomy, and well-being. To sustain excellence within flexible work arrangements, business leaders must redefine productivity through the following interconnected outcomes:

• Business impact measures the results, quality, and innovation that advance strategic goals.
• Collaboration captures how teams connect, share knowledge, and generate new ideas across locations.
• Engagement reflects the energy, focus, and well-being that enable long-term efficiency and effectiveness.

But transparency only works when it’s grounded in employee experience and input. In one mid-size organization we supported, the CEO wanted to make “Boosting Productivity” a top priority for 2026, driven by a lingering belief that performance had never fully recovered post-COVID, even with new tools, hybrid flexibility, and larger teams.

Before introducing any new expectations, leaders needed to understand how these norms would land and what was actually hindering productivity in the day-to-day. With Seramount’s support, they brought roughly 1,000 senior leaders together for an Employee Voice Session to pressure-test a draft of their new “Ways of Working That Strengthen Performance.” Leaders were asked directly: What feels clear? What feels unclear? And what won’t work, given the reality of how your teams operate today?

Instead of resistance, employees surfaced practical friction points—meeting overload, unclear priorities, inconsistent modeling—that would have quietly derailed the rollout. Their input allowed the company to refine expectations around impact, collaboration, and engagement so the standards were clear, usable, and culturally aligned.

This is the work HR must lead: co-creating outcome-based standards and the everyday behaviors that bring them to life. When employees help build the system, expectations gain credibility, trust strengthens, and productivity becomes something people can meaningfully achieve—not something measured through outdated proxies.

The Enablers of a Modern Productivity System

Once productivity standards are clear and co-created, HR leaders must ensure the rest of the system reinforces them.

Managers must lead with consistency, connection, and fairness.

In hybrid environments, proximity should not determine opportunity. Yet research shows remote employees remain less likely to be promoted or recognized. Managers must support their employees by communicating expectations, mitigating bias, and maintaining meaningful weekly conversations that anchor performance and well-being. These habits are what create equitable, high-performing hybrid teams—not physical visibility.

AI must be implemented in ways that protect human engagement.

AI can accelerate output, but research from Nature and the Harvard Business Review shows it can also dampen employees’ sense of ownership and connection if introduced without intention. HR leaders can guide organizations to adopt AI through structured experimentation, transparent communication, and the reinforcement that AI augments—not replaces—human judgment and creativity.

Well-being must be treated as a performance system, not a perk.

Burnout is one of the most expensive drains on productivity. Gallup estimates global burnout costs $8.9 trillion annually. Seramount research shows burned-out employees are 2.6 times more likely to leave. HR leaders can redesign work to sustain energy, protecting focus time, balancing workloads, and supporting caregivers and historically marginalized groups who benefit most from well-designed hybrid flexibility.

These are not “extras”—they are the conditions that enable people to meet the outcome standards business leaders set.

The Step Leaders Still Underestimate: Listening as Strategic Infrastructure

Even the best-defined standards will fail if employees don’t see their experiences reflected in them. What matters isn’t just listening—it’s structured listening that feeds directly into change management. When organizations gather real insight through voice sessions, focused dialogues, and ongoing feedback, then use those insights to shape decisions, productivity stays grounded in reality and employees trust the process.

Listening shows employees they are partners in shaping how work evolves. It reduces skepticism. It surfaces friction early. And it turns productivity from something policed to something co-owned.

Listening is the system that keeps transparency alive.

Redefining Productivity Is HR’s Leadership Mandate

The future of productivity will not be restored by mandates, monitoring, or nostalgia for pre-pandemic norms. It will be shaped by whether organizations define productivity with clarity, measure it transparently, and refine it continuously with their people.

HR leaders are uniquely positioned to lead that shift—not by choosing sides in the hybrid debate, but by establishing the frameworks that move the conversation beyond presence and toward performance.

Hybrid work can expose fractures or fuel transformation. The difference depends on whether HR leads the redefinition—or lets legacy assumptions write the next chapter.

The post The Productivity Strategy That Actually Boosts Performance: Build It with Your People appeared first on Seramount.

Recruitment is particularly difficult as HR leaders are struggling to fill open positions, spending considerable time, money, and recruiter capacity to reduce high-impact vacancies. This increase in spend is primarily driven by an increasingly selective talent pool and a low-hire/low-fire employment environment.

The challenges don’t end there; retention is also causing headaches as HR leaders are facing a workplace culture crisis. Since 2020, Gallup has found a 36 percent decrease in job satisfaction, a 20 percent decrease in connection to mission, and an 18 percent decrease in engagement. These considerable dips are driving rising attrition rates.

Within this ambiguous talent market and amid a culture crisis, one thing is clear: Employers need to invest in building stronger workplace cultures.

Three Questions to Ask About Your Culture Value Proposition

In recent years, cultural factors have significantly shifted for both the workforce and the workplace. Friction points between what employees (both prospective and current) want and the value employers are offering are causing many HR leaders to question their existing EVPs.

Below are three questions HR leaders should ask when assessing the strength of their current culture.

1. Do our material offerings meet employee flexibility priorities?

Traditional preferences such as commute distance and office perks have declined in importance. As more employees live farther from the office, remote flexibility has become one of the most attractive benefits.

2. Are we offering the developmental opportunities our employees need?

Professional development has become a key lever for improving engagement and job satisfaction metrics. However, HR leaders often struggle to ensure their organizations can accurately assess performance and provide timely developmental interventions.

3. Do our community-building efforts balance inclusion and flexibility?

Community-building has declined in many organizations. Although remote and hybrid work models are attractive benefits, they have diminished day-to-day connections. Many HR leaders are caught between prioritizing the flexibility their employees want and the community-building teams need for success.

Employee Benefits That Improve Culture

In response to workforce and workplace shifts, many HR leaders are exploring ways to increase cultural value. The goal of these levers and unique policies is to make roles more attractive to prospective candidates and to improve engagement for current employees. These efforts include changes to:

• Formal Learning Opportunities: Job seekers and current employees increasingly want structured professional development and upskilling. Visible investments such as financial support for continuing education or an internal gig program can improve engagement and commitment, addressing challenges that affect workplace satisfaction.

• Benefits and Rewards: Unique and personalized benefits can strengthen engagement and serve as key differentiators in talent attraction. Expanded mental health support, additional PTO, experiential rewards, and flexibility related to different life stages reflect organizational trust and responsiveness to evolving employee needs.

• Workplace Communities: Although flexibility remains highly valued, remote work can lead to isolation, and hybrid schedules can be difficult to work around. Customizable digital collaboration spaces and purposeful in-person gatherings help sustain community and belonging across dispersed teams. Investment in employee resource groups can serve as a strategic initiative to promote community-building and belonging.

Embedding Culture Across the Employee Lifecycle

When implementing new culture initiatives, HR leaders should ensure those efforts shape every stage of the employee lifecycle—from a candidate’s first impression to their long-term connection with the organization.

For example, your company has a strong culture of professional development. You’ve identified it as a talent differentiator, and you want to incorporate it more into talent branding and employee experience. How might you embed that across the different touchpoints HR has with the employee?

Attraction and Recruitment

During attraction and recruitment, the culture of professional development should be clearly visible across all talent materials. Career sites and job descriptions can highlight internal mobility pathways and tuition assistance. Articles on the talent page or LinkedIn posts should highlight employee stories that demonstrate how growth is supported in practice. Recruiters and hiring teams should be trained to speak authentically about these programs so candidates see professional development as a lived part of the culture.

Onboarding

Onboarding should make the culture of professional development more tangible. New hires can hear from colleagues who advanced through learning programs or internal promotions. Early feedback conversations help employees plan to participate in professional development opportunities and connect them to their individual goals. Mentorship and skill-building programs can reinforce professional development as an ongoing expectation.

Growth

In the growth phase, performance reviews and recognition programs should emphasize continuous learning. Highlighting achievements such as completing certifications or mentoring peers helps employees see how their growth supports the organization’s success. Opening pathways for team leaders to nominate employees for professional development opportunities in the review process can acknowledge efforts and show further investments. Regular feedback sessions can then capture employee insights on these programs, ensuring that developmental efforts evolve alongside both personal and organizational priorities.

Retention and Offboarding

Done right, a more intentional culture of professional development will improve satisfaction and retention, delivering measurable savings in attrition costs. 

However, if an employee departs, off-boarding should continue to reflect the same commitment to culture. Use the time during an exit interview to collect feedback on professional development experiences and surface insights employees may share only after leaving. Those findings can inform future initiatives and sustain organizational health.

The Bottom Line—Culture Drives Performance

When HR leaders focus efforts on culture, it does more than just support talent acquisition and retention efforts. By identifying culture strengths and opportunities, HR leaders have the opportunity to drive impact on KPIs across the organization. Why?

Strong cultures encourage and equip people to do their best work.

Investing in culture is an investment in the long-term productivity and development of an effective workforce. However, it’s not enough to simply build a great culture. HR leaders need to implement elements of culture across the employment lifecycle to impact recruitment and retention in an increasingly difficult labor market.

Given their ability to address current culture challenges and incorporate culture across the employee lifecycle, HR leaders are uniquely positioned to motivate and prepare employees to do their best work and contribute to a culture of success.

The post How Do You Make Culture a Talent Differentiator? appeared first on Seramount.

At the Think Bigger Summit in Chicago, Seramount brought together inclusion and talent leaders to confront today’s most pressing workplace challenges. Across sessions, one theme was clear: Inclusion leaders must rebalance defensive risk management with forward-looking, business-aligned strategies. Each session surfaced not just insights but concrete steps leaders can take to strengthen inclusion and culture strategies for 2025 and beyond.

The Summit also coincided with Hispanic Heritage Month, a reminder of the importance of celebrating cultural heritage as part of a year-round commitment to belonging.

The State of Workforce Today

The opening session highlighted the four mega-trends most reshaping the workplace: AI, hybrid work, mental health, and a shifting employer-employee compact. The good news is that research shows that trust in employers is growing. This is a great privilege and opportunity for businesses to build on the trust and create a thriving company culture.

Action:

• Reinforce trust through micro-acts of inclusion: regular, visible signals that every perspective matters.
• Create space in leadership agendas to focus on essential cultural foundations, not just urgent tasks.
• Become a “student of your craft.” Curate internal resources so leaders can learn quickly.

Inclusion at a Crossroads

Seramount’s research showed a retreat from bold inclusion commitments, leaving employees—particularly vulnerable groups—feeling less psychologically safe and less like they can be themselves. Only 13% (down from 24% in 2024) of employees say they feel psychologically safe in the workplace in 2025, and only 70% (down from 83% in 2024) said they can be themselves at work. This work is more critical than ever, and the importance of creating an agile, sustainable, and future-proof strategy is paramount.

Action:

• Double down on ERGs. They remain the lowest-risk, highest-value tool for belonging.
• Reframe programs as “open to all” while preserving equity goals.
• Communicate consistently that inclusion is a business imperative, not just a values statement.

Making the Case in a Challenging Climate

The conversation turned to how inclusion leaders can influence C-suite decision-makers. While many make the case for inclusion work through moral or even the business case arguments, few link inclusion initiatives to balance-sheet outcomes. Inclusion leaders must align with shareholder priorities—such as cost containment, retention, or business expansion efforts—and present specific, measurable asks backed by data. Without this financial alignment, C-suite support is difficult to sustain.

Action:

• Utilize Seramount’s Science of Influence four-step framework: Identify business priorities, define a measurable ask, defend with data, and tie to financial metrics.
• Pilot one initiative tied directly to a bottom-line goal (e.g., reducing turnover in a key unit).
• Track and share early wins in financial terms to strengthen the case for scaling.

What Do We Measure Now?

With legal and political scrutiny rising, traditional inclusion metrics may no longer be legally compliant. Yet data has never been more important; without it, it’s impossible to know where you are or where to go.

Seramount’s surveys and benchmarking offer early signs of what the next generation of inclusion metrics may look like; join our upcoming webinar, Measuring Inclusion in Today’s Legal Landscape, to get a taste of what’s to come.

Action:

• Connect your inclusion metrics back to what the definition of an inclusive organization is.
• Benchmark with peers to identify emerging practices and track your own progress.
• In your next employee survey, pilot one new inclusion measure, such as belonging or psychological safety.

Solving Today’s Inclusion Challenges

In peer breakout discussions, inclusion leaders tackled four of the most urgent challenges facing inclusive workforces today: political pushback, talent lifecycle disruption, redefining the role of inclusion leaders, and responsible AI integration.

One area of particularly fruitful conversation was “how much the inclusion role and how we show up in them has changed in the past nine months.” Participants emphasized that inclusion leaders must be recognized as business partners with access to data and decision-making. Without visibility into organizational priorities, inclusion leaders struggle to demonstrate impact or align initiatives with strategy.

Action:

• Secure monthly touchpoints with at least one C-suite leader.
• Use those moments to connect inclusion initiatives directly to organizational strategy.
• Build an internal coalition of business-unit allies to strengthen influence beyond HR or inclusion.

ERGs as a Strategic Lever

Employee Resource Groups are among the lowest-risk, highest-value inclusion programs available today. They can serve as trusted communities for employees while also providing insights into customer segments, emerging talent, and business opportunities.

Leaders discussed where their ERGs land on Seramount’s ERG maturity model to help them determine not only what their groups are currently capable of but also if they are ready to tie back to the business priorities, moving beyond community-building to offering measurable business value.

Action:

• Take Seramount’s Employee Resource Group Maturity Assessment (SEGMA) to evaluate the current state of your ERGs and chart a path to greater strategic impact.
• Position ERGs as business drivers by linking efforts to customer or market outcomes.
• Launch one ERG pilot tied directly to revenue, retention, or customer engagement.

Think Bigger: Stories of Innovation

The closing spotlights showcased how organizations are rethinking inclusion across industries. The lesson: Inclusion efforts that are embedded in the culture of the organization and/or connected to broader organizational goals are most likely to endure in today’s climate. The leaders shared a variety of their programs, from how they’ve pivoted supplier diversity efforts in the new legal landscape to using more accessible topics, such as multigenerational diversity, to open the movable middle’s eyes about the real work we are doing.

Action:

• Reach out to a peer or two to find a program they are still successfully driving today.
• Identify a program and a C-suite leader who sees the value and bring it “to market” together.
• In the next 90 days, launch a small-scale experiment that links inclusion directly to a core business outcome.
• Capture impact data from pilots and share results widely to demonstrate proof of concept.

Implementation Considerations

Taken together, the Summit’s sessions reinforced a central truth: Inclusion leaders must balance reactive adaptations to today’s environment with proactive innovations that build trust and belonging in the workplace while driving measurable business impact. Success requires discipline and consistency: clear priorities, precise asks, and visible alignment with organizational goals.

The path ahead for inclusion leaders is demanding, but the conversations in Chicago showed that peers are finding creative ways forward. Leaders who refine their strategies now and embed them across the business will be best positioned to navigate both risk and opportunity in 2026.

The Think Bigger Summit underscored that inclusion is not optional—it is a core driver of business success.

The post A New Roadmap For Workplace Culture appeared first on Seramount.

Given the current state of workplace mental health, this may not be a difficult scenario to imagine. In fact, when Seramount spoke with more than 100 CHROs, workplace mental health emerged as one of the top challenges across industries and function areas. Too often, the conversation on employee well-being begins and ends with burnout. However, when interventions to combat burnout aren’t working, we have to look to other factors that may be impacting employees’ mental health.as

Seramount research shows that although burnout is a major concern, the mental health puzzle is much broader, spanning financial stress, return-to-office pressures, and even political and economic uncertainty.

Three Additional Factors Impacting the Mental Crisis

When addressing obstacles to employee mental health beyond burnout, we often need to look at factors outside the domain of everyday work. Although these may not be driven directly by company policy, they significantly affect employee well-being, productivity, and retention.

1. Change fatigue

 A combination of personal and work events, change fatigue is caused by interconnected challenges. From life milestones like becoming parents or taking care of aging relatives to political shifts, our lives are rapidly changing outside of work. Added changes at work can further strain our ability to adapt and perform. Leaders should be mindful of this and the strain it can cause as organizations change priorities, react to policy updates, or adjust work modalities.

2. Financial stress and economic instability

Economic instability and personal finances are key social determinants of mental health. At work, perceived economic instability is driving stress about job security—54 percent of U.S. workers say that job insecurity is affecting their mental well-being. Outside the workplace, the growing burden of debt is another factor that impacts employee mental health. Recent Seramount research explored how new models for financial wellness benefits can play a critical role in employee well-being, particularly as debt relief support becomes a highly sought-after benefit for job seekers.

3. Stage-of-life obstacles

From Gen Z’s entrance to the workforce to Baby Boomers’ exits, employees face significant pressures across the age spectrum. For Gen Z and many Millennials, loneliness is widespread, leading to higher risks of anxiety, depression, and other negative health outcomes.  For Baby Boomers, the approach to retirement often brings financial and identity struggles that affect engagement at work. In between, elder Millennials and Gen X—often called the “sandwich generation”—are increasingly balancing caregiving responsibilities for both children and aging parents. These stage-of-life obstacles complicate work-life balance, affect attentiveness, and challenge employees’ ability to fully participate in the workplace.

Three Recommended Interventions

Seramount has identified several interventions that balance both personal and workplace challenges and provide a holistic approach to employee well-being. Below are a few strategies with strong ROI potential:

• Improve managerial training and resourcing to normalize mental health discussions. Nearly half of employees report feeling uncomfortable discussing mental health at work. To reduce stigma, managers and leaders need to be equipped to handle difficult conversations and spot the signs of mental health factors beyond burnout.
• Reassess Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to expand mental health benefits. Offering virtual and telehealth options can improve benefit usage and feedback. Additional wellness programs like sleep support or resiliency training have shown promise in reducing health care costs and improving mental health outcomes. Adding financial wellness programs can also help address money-related stress, such as debt management and financial literacy concerns.
• Expand volunteer opportunities. Research has found that a culture of volunteerism strongly correlateswith higher job satisfaction and can support employees through stage-of-life challenges like loneliness or isolation.

Effective Implementation Is Key to ROI

The right interventions can have a powerful impact on morale, productivity, and attrition. Employees who believe their organizations care about their well-being are 4.4 times more likely to be engaged, 73 percent less likely to be burned out, and 66 percent less likely to leave their job. With those figures in mind, it’s no surprise that organizations are making large investments in employee mental health resources—estimated at $94.6 billion globally by 2026. However, Seramount has found that employers are not always seeing the results they expect.

This is driven by lack of clarity around mental health benefits and resources. Many employees are unaware of available benefits, don’t know how to access them, lack time to participate, or are worried about costs.

Two ways to make sure your investments in mental health resources have the desired outcome are consistent communication and comprehensive manager training. That way, managers whose teams are struggling have a place to start and an awareness of the resources at their disposal.

The Bottom Line—An Investment in Talent Acquisition and Retention

We can continue to center burnout in our conversations on mental health, but HR leaders must also recognize the broader factors affecting employees, particularly as these pressures reach well beyond productivity.

Expanding mental health resources to address factors beyond burnout is also an investment in long-term talent acquisition and retention. While today’s labor market favors employers, building strong mental health resources now will strengthen your employer brand for the future.

When the pendulum swings back to a more employee-favored labor market, a strong record of employee well-being will be a powerful differentiator.

The post Beyond Burnout: What Are We Missing in the Workplace Mental Health Crisis? appeared first on Seramount.

Whether your score rises, flatlines, or dips, the number alone won’t protect you from losing top talent, productivity, or credibility with the C-suite. If you stop at the score, you’ll miss the signals that could help avoid a costly performance or retention crisis.

High Score ≠ Low Risk

Whether scores look strong or start to fall, the number alone can be misleading because scores never explain the why, and employees don’t always tell the full story. Organizations with high scores still battle quiet quitting, stalled change efforts, and lost productivity. Why? Surveys only capture surface-level sentiment, and actions are rarely taken once the data comes in.

Even when scores look strong, many employees don’t believe surveys are anonymous. They hold back, give “safe” answers, or click through quickly because they don’t expect follow-up. Others tell leaders what they think they want to hear. That means your score may reflect disengagement as much as engagement. What’s left unsaid has greater implications for emerging challenges and impending disruptions you need to get ahead of.

A falling score may feel like a red alert, but how do you explain what’s driving the decline? Is it burnout, a breakdown in trust, or career stagnation? Numbers don’t tell you where to focus, which leaves HR leaders reacting to symptoms instead of addressing root causes. Without context, a dip could create panic instead of progress.

The Real Benchmark: Action, Not Numbers

IIf you miss the signals hiding in your survey results or fail to close the loop with employees you asked for input, you risk losing your top talent and having to explain “what went wrong” to your board or CEO.

What separates thriving workplaces from those that stall? It’s the honest conversation about “what now” after the survey is done. However, understanding and anticipating what’s needed to keep talent disruptions from derailing business success is easier said than done. When you dig deeper into survey results, you often find that the barrier isn’t a lack of data, but a lack of direction.

That’s why the most effective people leaders focus on closing the gap between how things look from your engagement score and what employees experience at every level. Instead of asking, “Did we score high enough?” savvy HR leaders ask:

• Where are we seeing turnover despite a good score?
• Which teams or employee groups are consistently less engaged?
• What stories are employees telling us in open comments, exit surveys, or focus groups?
• Are we closing the loop and following up on feedback?

This is the hard, unglamorous part: translating ambiguous, sometimes messy feedback into concrete steps that move your organization forward. It takes intentional effort, time, and support. That’s why Seramount’s approach isn’t just about collecting data. We help HR leaders make sense of it, prioritize what matters, and build a strategy that sticks.

Make Surveys the Starting Line, Not the Finish Line

Engagement survey should be the starting line, not the finish line. Real impact is determined by what you do after Real impact is determined by what you do after results are ready, not the number on your dashboard. So, if you’re about to review your results, don’t just ask “How did we do?” Challenge your team to dig deeper:

• “What does this number miss?”
• “Where is our risk building?”
• “How are we communicating next steps?”

Seramount’s employee voice platform is built for the “what now.” Assess360 helps you answer these challenging questions by contextualizing survey results, digging deeper via anonymous voice sessions, and providing change management support to work on solutions with you.

Key elements of our approach:

• We do the heavy lift. We take work off your team’s plate by analyzing and prioritizing the findings and helping you close the loop with your stakeholders, saving you time, money, and resources.
• Unlimited expert support. You don’t have to become a data scientist or change management expert overnight. Our team partners with yours for every phase to translate insights into strategy.
• One holistic approach. Instead of hiring multiple employee engagement vendors, you get an all-in-one solution. So, you never lose time chasing disconnected data.

With our support, you can move from “what’s the score?” to “what’s our strategy?” Our partnership gets to the heart of the issue, reduces talent risk, and maintains momentum while ensuring employees see and feel the change. Surveys alone can’t shield you from turnover or disengagement. What you do next determines whether those signals fuel strategy and give your leaders a clear path forward.

Ready to connect the dots and turn your signals into strategy with Assess360? Schedule a call with one of our experts to move beyond your score to implement the listening strategy your organization needs to stay ahead of disruption.

The post The Real Benchmark of Employee Engagement Isn’t the Survey Score appeared first on Seramount.

In today’s workplace, employee expectations are shifting. More than ever, people are prioritizing both their professional goals and the needs of their lives outside of work. That’s why care benefits have moved from the margins to the center of workforce strategy. These programs not only support working parents but also a broader population of caregivers—those tending to aging family members, managing pet care, or navigating financial and educational responsibilities.

To better understand this evolution, we spoke with Stephanie Rose, Vice President of Client Relations at Bright Horizons, about how companies can meaningfully support their people while staying competitive in a changing labor market.

A Broader Definition of Care

To start, Rose explains that care benefits cover more ground than many realize.

“Care benefits encompass support for anyone with caregiving responsibilities—children, aging loved ones, pets, or even self-care,” says Rose. “It’s about meeting people where they are in life and in their careers.”

Rose shares that Bright Horizons got its start by supporting working parents through accessible, affordable, and high-quality child care—a commitment that remains central to the organization’s mission. “Over time, our services have expanded to reflect the evolving needs of today’s workforce.”

That evolution has shaped Bright Horizons’ broader ecosystem, which includes not only traditional child care but also on-site and in-home back-up care, elder care, pet care, and educational advising for college-bound students as well as working professionals continuing their education.

Organizations that are most effective, Rose says, are the ones that regularly reassess and adjust their offerings to align with employees’ lives. “They ensure services are geographically accessible, and they proactively adapt based on workforce needs.”

Supporting Presence, Performance, and Trust

Family care benefits do more than help employees manage their lives—they also shape how people experience the workplace. When companies go beyond offering the basics, they send a clear message: Your time, responsibilities, and well-being matter.

“Organizations that truly commit to care benefits are deeply attuned to their workforce’s needs,” Rose shares.

She points to healthcare employers who provide back-up care so that frontline staff can consistently show up for critical responsibilities such as surgeries and bedside care. The result is fewer callouts, improved morale, and a culture where employees feel genuinely supported.

This type of investment also plays a role in advancing equity. When caregiving demands are acknowledged and addressed, companies help level the playing field between employees with and without dependents—building a more fair and inclusive environment.

But the impact doesn’t stop at attendance. Care benefits also influence how effectively people work once they’re on the job.

“Reliable care allows employees to be fully present at work,” says Rose. “It’s not just about showing up. It’s about showing up with mental clarity and focus.”

Industries with demanding physical or emotional workloads—such as healthcare and manufacturing—see significant gains from on-site child care and emergency back-up care. These services not only improve attendance but also concentration and overall performance.

As expectations around work continue to evolve, care solutions are evolving alongside them—adapting to support both the daily realities and long-term well-being of employees.

Meeting Evolving Workforce Expectations

Today’s workforce brings a wide range of life experiences, responsibilities, and expectations to the table. From early-career professionals to working parents and those caring for aging relatives, employees are looking for benefits that reflect their diverse needs.

“We’re seeing a rising demand for flexible, inclusive options—pet care, elder care, tutoring,” Rose notes. “And the importance of education and upskilling benefits is only growing.”

This demand is especially pressing as many organizations navigate hybrid and return-to-office plans. Robust care solutions are increasingly viewed as essential—not a nice extra. Companies that recognize this shift and act on it are more likely to build loyalty and retain high-performing talent.

For many organizations, the challenge isn’t just offering these benefits—it’s knowing how to position them. Rose explains that Bright Horizons works with employers to connect care offerings to larger talent goals and business priorities.

“Our approach is to support the whole person—care, education, and financial wellness—across all life stages,” she explains. “We help companies integrate care benefits into their total rewards strategy so that it directly supports recruitment and retention.”

When family care programs align with what employees genuinely need, companies not only stand out in a competitive market, they create a more engaged and resilient workforce. The impact extends beyond individual well-being, strengthening the organization as a whole.

Translating Care Values into Business Results

Beyond implementation, Bright Horizons plays an active role in shaping how employers think about caregiving. As one of the early leaders in the space, the company has helped expand the conversation to reflect a more inclusive and modern understanding of care.

“We advocate for inclusive, flexible care solutions and for expanding the definition of caregiving itself,” says Rose. “Employers are no longer bystanders—they’re essential to how working families thrive.”

This leadership goes beyond offering services—it encourages organizations to view care as a foundational element of workforce well-being, equity, and long-term success.

That vision comes to life through real-world partnerships that align care benefits with business goals. Bright Horizons has supported a wide range of companies in implementing strategies that deliver results:

• AT&T implemented an on-site summer camp to support employees returning to the office five days a week. 
• Walmart surveyed employees during the planning of its new headquarters and found that on-site child care was a top priority. The company responded by building a center on campus—reinforcing its commitment to working families.
• CHRISTUS Health provides back-up care to employees caring for loved ones, helping ensure business operations continue smoothly with fewer unexpected disruptions.
• United Health Services, facing a local child care shortage, transformed a vacant site into a fully operational child care center in just six months—saving both time and money compared to a new build.

“These stories show how care benefits aren’t just a feel-good investment—they’re a smart business move,” Rose emphasizes. “In fact, research shows that employers can see up to a 425% return on child care programs through increased productivity and reduced turnover.”

Investing in Your Workforce Today Creates Sustainability for Tomorrow

To stay competitive in today’s evolving workplace, companies must look beyond short-term solutions and invest in the long-term resilience of their workforce. Care benefits are central to that effort—not only by helping employees manage their responsibilities outside of work but also by supporting their development, well-being, and ability to focus on the job at hand.

Programs such as back-up care, tutoring, and non-degree upskilling are helping organizations meet immediate needs while preparing their teams for what’s ahead. These benefits reduce stress, improve engagement, and foster trust across a diverse and multigenerational workforce.

As caregiving responsibilities continue to expand and shift, care benefits have moved from optional to essential. They signal a company’s commitment to supporting the whole person and serve as a meaningful differentiator in a competitive talent market.

“When organizations invest in family care,” Rose says, “they’re not just solving a logistical problem—they’re making a statement about what kind of employer they want to be.”

By aligning care offerings with the real lives of their people, employers aren’t just enhancing benefits—they’re building the foundation for long-term success.

The post Why Care Benefits Create a Cost-Effective, Competitive Advantage in Today’s Workplace appeared first on Seramount.

Most companies don’t realize someone’s checked out until the resignation email arrives. By then, it’s too late. Productivity drops, teams scramble, and morale tanks. If pay, perks, and a strong employer brand aren’t enough, what does it take to keep your best people committed?

Presence Isn’t the Same as Engagement

It’s easy to assume that if people show up, they’re engaged. But being present isn’t the same as being invested. Have you seen any of the early warning signals? Slower Slack replies, missed check-ins, or a spike in internal transfers could mean loyalty is fading.

High turnover and low engagement cost the global economy $8.9 trillion annually. If you don’t tune in to these warning signs until they’re big problems, it can cost up to twice an employee’s salary to replace them. Every departure puts your business goals at risk, but when high-performers leave, projects stall, teams lose momentum, and other people start to wonder, “Should I be next?”

Why People Really Leave

Loyalty is more than how long someone has been around. It’s about trust, transparency, and growth. When these are missing, even the most committed employees start looking elsewhere. The most common loyalty breakdowns often start small:

• Clarity: Do I know where we’re going and how I contribute?
• Consistency: Do leaders follow through on what they say?
• Growth: Is there a path forward or just vague promises?

Trust is built, and broken, in the small moments: how leaders communicate, how quickly they respond, and whether employees feel heard. Get this right, and people stick around to help the company grow. Otherwise, they can check out entirely.

The Four Most Common Themes for Leaving a Job in 2024

• Engagement and Culture
• Well-Being and Work-Life Balance
• Pay and Benefits
• Managers and Leaders
• Other Reasons

Spotting Flight Risks Before They Quit

Loyalty shifts quickly. A missed promotion, a tense meeting, unclear expectations, or a surprise policy shift can make even star employees question whether they belong. Similarly, mixed messages from leadership, such as promising growth opportunities but not following through or asking for input but not acting on it, can quickly erode trust.

Most companies rely on annual engagement surveys and exit interviews for clues, but can’t spot early signs of disengagement with their current tools. By the time data shows there’s a problem, your best people may already be gone. And when employees do speak up, their feedback rarely leads to real change. More than half of HR leaders admit their organizations either don’t do anything with survey feedback or only tackle the easy stuff.

See Around Corners, Not in the Rearview

You don’t have to wait for turnover data to tell you what’s wrong. With the right employee voice platform (EVP), you can:

• Spot patterns early: Catch shifts in sentiment, absenteeism, and internal transfers
• Dig into the “why”: Go beyond the numbers to discover root causes
• Act quickly: Focus on what your people care about: trust, transparency, and growth
• Close the loop: Share what you heard from employees and how you’re responding

Seramount’s EVP, Assess360, isn’t just another survey. It’s an end-to-end solution that shows you where teams are at risk of turnover, what’s fueling uncertainty, and what to do next. With our innovative listening technology and expert support, you get actionable insights instead of a pile of data. Seramount experts partner with you every step of the way, from analysis to action planning. So, you aren’t just collecting feedback; you’re building a culture where employees want to stay.

Your best employees won’t always tell you when they’re starting to pull away. Don’t wait for the resignation email to find out who’s checked out. Learn how to keep your best people on board with Assess360.

The post The Loyalty Factor: Spotting Flight Risks Before They Quit appeared first on Seramount.

Asked about their top stressors, 49% of employees cited high workloads. Meanwhile, 88% of staff reported feeling burned out at least some of the time. Increasingly attuned to this challenge, CHROs are ramping up investments. But in a world of limited resources, they’re asking which are worthy?

The Link from Mental Health to Productivity, Cost, and Turnover

Estimates suggest employee mental health challenges cost employers about $5 million per 1,000 employees each year.

Organizations are seeing higher Employee Assistance Program (EAP) usage and rising drug costs for employee health care. Requests for mental health leave have also skyrocketed, with requests for mental health leave or accommodations increasing by 74% in 2024.  In addition to its impact on leave, low employee mental health also impacts productivity. Thirty-seven percent of employees report that they’ve felt so overwhelmed that it lowers their job performance, and 70% of employees say they are looking for a new job because of burnout. Multiply that by the standard cost of turnover, and this becomes very expensive.

The Employer Response

In response, many companies have increased or plan to invest more in their employee well-being offerings. However, these investments don’t always achieve the desired impact. Less than a quarter of employees strongly agree that their organization cares about their well-being, a sharp decline since the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, even when employers do offer well-being benefits, employees don’t always know about them or feel that they can use them.

That said, mental health benefits show a large return on investment when done right. For example, employees who agree that their organization cares about their well-being are seven times more likely to recommend their organization and 4.4 times more likely to be engaged at work. Similarly, they are 66% less likely to be job hunting.

Proven Well-Being Strategies to Prioritize

While employee well-being strategies are not “one size fits all,” these six approaches—on top of counseling within your benefits plan—consistently provide outsized returns with relatively modest costs.

The post Sizing the Employee Well-Being Challenge appeared first on Seramount.

GenAI is quickly advancing, often driven by employees or departments rather than a centralized strategy. As a result, CHROs were interested in how to create guardrails and messaging that encourage creativity and responsible use. Attendees discussed the impacts of strong governance structures, ranging from multifunctional review and governance committees to bifurcated models that rely on business units to develop use cases and a central team to manage rollout and adoption. Ultimately, HR leaders said they are being asked to shape how AI fits into culture and work, even when the technology is moving faster than the narrative around it.

The conversation around AI evolved into a broader discussion about skills. Specifically, several CHROs asked how leaders should discuss the value of so-called “soft skills” like communication and empathy, while also acknowledging AI tools that can speak, reason, and even fundraise. CHROs in the room also noted that employees are entering the workforce with strong technical skills, but those same employees often struggle with the interpersonal capabilities necessary to lead. One CHRO shared that they’ve begun referring to these as “smart skills” to help reframe their importance internally.

To better evaluate leadership skills and capacity, CHROs said today’s performance management systems need to change. Currently, they capture and promote employees who are good at what they currently do but aren’t necessarily prepared to manage. As organizations expect more from managers, CHROs said that skills like leadership need to be more measurable and tied to business outcomes. To help CHROs better evaluate how people lead, Seramount plans to explore innovations in this space, including technology improvements and assessments of what works versus what’s distraction.

Employee mental health was another major topic of discussion. It is a growing challenge, and many companies are ramping up investments. However, they’re not always seeing the results they hope for. That’s in part because companies are still experimenting with what works best. To start seeing ROI, CHROs need to focus their organizations’ efforts on proven strategies and best practices. Attendees shared several examples, ranging from general communication and destigmatization to volunteer initiatives and financial wellness programs. There was particular excitement around mental health first aid programs, which aim to help employees identify early signs of distress, respond with empathy, and connect peers to the right support before issues escalate.

Culture and C-suite relations were recurring themes throughout the day. CHROs shared that many culture breakdowns, especially those related to unclear priorities, conflicting messages, or uneven adoption of new norms, were symptoms of misalignment at the executive level. One CHRO described a situation where the CEO publicly committed to a full return-to-office plan without aligning first with the rest of the leadership team, forcing HR to respond without any context. Others pointed to moments when senior leaders acted in ways that contradicted company values or moved forward on initiatives that hadn’t been fully discussed or planned. The result is a lack of cohesion at the top that makes it hard to sustain momentum further down the organization. Several CHROs noted that culture efforts tend to stall not because of resistance from employees, but because of inconsistency from leadership.

The conversation then turned toward DEI in light of shifting political and legal pressures. While no one questioned the long-term value of DEI work, many said that the recent executive orders made them hesitant to take new action or expand programming right now. Specifically, many in the room said they were adopting a “wait and see” approach until there’s more clarity. As one CHRO put it, “These executive orders change so quickly that it doesn’t make sense to react to every headline.” This aligns with Seramount’s recent survey showing two-thirds of organizations are taking a so-called “Embassy” approach: maintaining internal DEI commitments without pushing for broader social or policy change. While few are fully stepping back, there are also very few organizations taking an advocacy posture. CHROs are focused on steadying the progress they have made and waiting for a more stable moment to assess what comes next.

The post The Most Interesting Things We Heard at Seramount’s Inaugural CHRO Roundtable appeared first on Seramount.