Jaclyn x Forbes: The Invisible Forces Crushing Performance

This article was originally published on Forbes.

How Hidden Stressors Are Undermining Your Workforce Performance

Organizations have spent years building systems to measure output. We look to new analytics tools that track employee productivity, revenue per square foot, absenteeism and attrition to tell us how we’re doing. Yet we have far fewer systems that are designed to show us what may be quietly undermining our business outcomes.

Based on recent research from Humankind, some of the strongest predictors of workforce performance—such as financial strain, sleep disruption, declining health habits and social isolation—live outside traditional HR dashboards.

Quality of life is made up of overlapping factors, and it’s historically harder to measure than something like absenteeism data, but it’s a rich, upstream source of actionable insight. The World Health Organization has created quality of life frameworks and assessments, which Humankind uses to assess individual employee experiences. The signs that an employee is experiencing a dip in quality of life may be subtle. You might notice that someone is withdrawing from hobbies or time with loved ones, for example, which could indicate increased social isolation.

These early warning signs are key upstream drivers of both employee well-being and work performance. Our research shows that 73% of employees say stress in their personal lives has a negative impact on their focus, engagement, motivation and decision making at work. And 41% report feeling very or extremely worried about at least one major life stressor.

Stress also often contributes to a cycle of health challenges that is hard to break. For instance, a majority of U.S. adults report "sometimes, always, or often experiencing disrupted sleep" due to stress (74%), anxiety (68%) and depression (55%), according to data from a 2024 American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey. These factors disrupt sleep patterns, and inadequate sleep can negatively affect mood, cognitive function and quality of life.

Identifying Hidden Stressors

Leaders may intuitively know that all of these factors are intertwined, but managers are often ill-equipped to manage employees’ life stressors, and they usually only see the downstream impact when performance drops or turnover increases. My company’s work focuses on helping organizations take a wider lens—think of it like seeing what’s causing people to fall into the river and intervening there, instead of spending time and resources rescuing people from the river after they’ve fallen in.

In one organization we partner with, a high-performing facility manager had a 15-year track record of excelling at work by standard HR measures. But they’d started to exhibit early warning signs of stress. Their behavior changed. They weren’t able to make decisions easily. They began to withdraw from lunchroom conversations and other interactions they usually enjoyed.

What we found was that this person was caring for aging parents in addition to their other work and life responsibilities. They were part of the "sandwich generation," which research suggests includes more than half of U.S. adults in their 40s and over a third of those in their 50s. In the evenings after work, this employee was driving an hour each way to visit their parents in a care facility—which was taking time away from their partner and children. Our team of clinicians reached out to this employee, and we were able to help identify care facilities that were much closer to their work.

It was important to them to spend time with all members of their family. This one key change—reducing travel time to and from the care facility—alleviated significant stress. We saw an almost immediate positive impact on their quality of life, psychological and emotional health scores—which also boosted their performance metrics as an employee.

High-Impact, Low-Friction Strategies

It’s clear to me that we need to reframe how we—as employers, leaders, managers or even co-workers—view our role in a workforce community. We can't rely only on traditional HR metrics or utilization dashboards to design the benefits and programs our employees need.

And self-reporting isn't enough. We can't expect people dealing with stress to bear this burden.

Stress itself can impair executive functions, including working memory and cognitive flexibility, making it difficult for people to articulate their experience and ask for help. There’s also stigma associated with needing help, along with the unfortunate reality that people lack support networks. Instead of waiting to see lagging indicators, there is an opportunity for us to recognize early signals and offer support before people reach that breaking point.

Segment Your Workforce

You don’t need a full analytics stack or predictive models to start personalizing benefits. Begin with basic segmentation, looking at bands, geography, major life stage markers or stressors in your workforce to build programs, then refine them. The idea that there's one program for everyone isn’t accurate.

Audit Benefits Based On Stressors

Use a stressor lens, not a utilization lens, to evaluate benefits. Utilization shows you what is being used, not necessarily what is needed. Based on the segmented data you have, what common stressors affect different groups in your workforce? How can you offer specific support for known stressors, such as having a baby or moving?

Design Support For Generational Needs

People in different generations have different stressors and priorities—and they often express themselves in distinct ways. Customize benefits programs to reflect how stress actually manifests across various groups. Prioritize support around mental health, career development, financial wellness and work-life balance for early-career employees while concentrating on physical health, retirement planning and life transition support for late-career employees.

Treat Social Support As A Benefits Category

Social connection is crucial to well-being. But it’s not just a personal issue. If an employee lacks social support, this also becomes a risk factor for your organization. Invest in social support as an actual benefits category. Develop programs that create real connection and strengthen your workplace community, such as peer support networks, mentorship initiatives and cultural and social events. In many contexts, work is oftentimes a person’s most impactful social network.

Pair Insight With Outreach

Train and equip not only leaders and executives but also managers and colleagues to recognize some of the signs of stress and burnout. Make it part of your culture to practice authentic noticing, and create space for hard conversations to build relationships. Implement proactive outreach programs, including confidential, personalized support that connects people with relevant resources before problems escalate.

Employees don’t check their stress and worries at the door. They bring their full selves to work. And their well-being is tied to your organization’s productivity and profitability. Relationship-building must be a core principle of running a high-performing workforce. In my experience, vulnerability with boundaries will never disappoint. I don’t regret any time I’ve taken a leap of faith and opened up or given an employee an opportunity to share what might be weighing on them.

When you help people get the right support at the right time, you foster a culture of care that benefits everyone—and gets the best ROI out of your benefits.

This article was originally published on Forbes.