Leaders play a key role in advancing human sustainability
If you’re running a company today, this has to be at the top of your agenda, not because it’s trendy, but because it’s where everything is headed. The fastest-growing businesses will be the ones that produce products and returns, and real value for people. That value comes from helping employees thrive, physically, mentally, and professionally, not just extracting hours from them.
Human sustainability is about changing the baseline of leadership thinking. Instead of optimizing only for growth metrics, you build an organization that supports long-term well-being, skills development, purpose, and belonging. That’s the foundation for teams that think better, innovate more, and stick around longer.
Most leaders say this matters. But most still don’t act like it does. The gap between commitment and execution is what holds many organizations back. Leaders have to take responsibility here. The tone is set at the top, if your senior team doesn’t live it, you won’t see change.
According to Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, built with input from Workplace Intelligence, 82% of executives believe doubling down on human sustainability would improve their ability to attract talent, appeal to customers, and increase profitability.
The real lever here is accountability. Build metrics into the business, just like you’d measure uptime or cash flow. Human outcomes are measurable. Skills gained. Retention increased. Well-being improved. If it matters, it gets tracked. And once you start tracking it, you can build a system that scales.
Leadership is execution. If you believe people are your biggest asset, there’s no excuse to treat them like a liability.
Workers’ well-being continues to stagnate
Let’s be direct, employee well-being is stuck. Growth hasn’t moved, even with all the talk around mental health, flexibility, and burnout prevention. That’s not sustainable. If your people aren’t getting healthier or more motivated over time, something in your system is broken.
Many employees are still exhausted and stressed. In the 2024 Workplace Well-being Report from Deloitte and Workplace Intelligence, 56% of workers rated their overall well-being as “excellent” or “good.” Which means nearly half are telling you there’s a problem. Even among senior leaders, it doesn’t look much better. About 71% of the C-suite say they’d consider leaving their role for a company that better supports their well-being.
When people work in this kind of condition for too long, they disengage. They stop contributing their best ideas. They hesitate to commit long-term. Eventually, they leave. And when the people who leave are those with experience and potential, you lose momentum.
It’s not enough to offer wellness apps, EAPs, or a few days off every now and then. Those aren’t bad, but they’re surface-level if core pressures aren’t addressed. If the root issue, overwork, lack of support, directionless career paths, remains untouched, the symptoms will keep repeating.
Executives should look at workforce health just as they would any strategic indicator. It affects output, innovation, and team stability. If well-being isn’t improving year over year, someone higher up needs to ask why. And then, do something about it.
Perception gaps exist between leadership and workers
There’s a clear disconnect between what executives think is happening inside their organizations and what workers are actually experiencing. Leaders believe they’re building inclusive, healthy, purposeful environments. Most employees don’t agree.
This is a credibility problem, and it’s measurable. In Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, 90% of executives believe their companies boost employee well-being, skill development, career growth, belonging, and purpose. Yet only 60% or fewer workers say that’s true. Fewer than half of employees believe these values are being embedded into their jobs or the broader culture.
Why does this happen? Leaders are often too far removed from day-to-day experiences. Listening structures are weak or overly filtered. And when signals come through, they’re either ignored or misunderstood. So decisions get made based on assumptions, not evidence. That’s a failure in leadership process, not intention.
The numbers show the effects: only 56% of workers believe their company is even advancing human sustainability, while 82% of the C-suite thinks they are. That gap makes it hard to earn trust. It also makes it harder to recruit and retain talent, especially when the workforce is increasingly demanding meaningful change.
To close this gap, you need data and unfiltered feedback, regularly. Worker surveys, conversations, forums, exit interviews. Skip the spin. Ask hard questions and act on the answers.
This doesn’t require overhauling everything at once. It requires a shift in how you validate success. Perception gaps don’t fix themselves. They close when inputs become reality-tested, and leadership decisions reflect the workforce’s lived experiences. If that doesn’t happen, trust continues to erode, and once you lose it, it’s hard to get back.
Adopting human sustainability
If you’re serious about building a high-output company, you need to care about how people experience their work, because that directly impacts how they perform. People who feel supported, who see growth opportunities, and who believe in what they’re part of will stick around longer and deliver more value.
In Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, around 70% of workers said a stronger focus on human sustainability would increase their job satisfaction, productivity, and desire to stay. Leaders feel the same, 80% of C-suite executives said they’d be more inclined to join a company that visibly prioritizes human sustainability, and 60% would take a pay cut to do so. That level of alignment across the org chart is rare. You should pay attention to it.
You won’t build loyalty with slogans or surface-level perks. Workers want concrete proof: a clearer path forward, the ability to grow their skillset, and a sense that leadership is invested in their success. If those elements are missing, the default response is disengagement or exit. And retaining even average talent today requires more than just a paycheck.
The organizations that deliver real value to employees beyond compensation will have a structural advantage. They’ll retain institutional knowledge, minimize costs tied to turnover, and gain the reputational lift that comes from being known as a place people want to stay.
Too many leaders still operate under the assumption that investing in people is separate from driving results. That mindset is obsolete. Performance and human sustainability enable each other. Treat them accordingly, or watch the talent you want work somewhere else.
Effective implementation of human sustainability
If you’re not measuring it, you’re not serious about it. That goes for human sustainability the same way it goes for output, margins, or uptime. Vague goals around well-being or equity don’t move a business forward. What does move it is clear, accountable metrics tied to specific outcomes.
You need human-specific indicators, things like progress in skills development, gains in emotional and mental well-being, improvements in belonging, economic mobility, and the impact your company has on the communities it touches. These are tangible areas where performance can be tracked. And if tracked properly, improved.
According to Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, over half of executives (51%) say they operate under ESG reporting frameworks, with 44% following structured transparency protocols like the Global Reporting Initiative. But fewer than two out of three C-suite leaders say their companies currently use human sustainability metrics. That gap matters. It’s the difference between intention and execution.
Public commitment is another missing piece. 82% of the C-suite agrees companies should be required to publicly report their human sustainability outcomes, and 73% see this as an enterprise risk that should be actively measured. Yet only 39% of workers believe their company is advancing these efforts in a clear, visible way. That’s a visibility problem, and it weakens trust.
You don’t build confidence, internally or externally, by keeping your progress hidden. Targets should be made public and tracked over time. This creates pressure, but also accountability. Investors, customers, employees, they want transparency. They want to see if your claims match your data.
If executives hesitate to commit publicly because they think their progress isn’t big enough, they’re approaching this the wrong way. Nobody expects perfect. What people expect is honesty about the baseline, clarity about objectives, and a plan to improve. Do that, and you earn trust. Hide from it, and you lose it.
Tying compensation to human outcome metrics
If you want people to treat human sustainability like a priority, make it one. That means linking part of their compensation to it. You already do that for revenue targets, cost control, and product goals because those matter to the business. If supporting employee well-being, equity, and growth truly matters, it has to show up in incentives.
People across the organization, managers and frontline staff, want their efforts in advancing human outcomes to be recognized and rewarded. In Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, 88% of the C-suite, 83% of managers, and 76% of workers said they’d prefer at least 25% of their pay to be tied to human sustainability metrics. Nearly half of executives (47%) supported linking 75% or more of their compensation to it.
That’s a signal that culture, purpose, and human performance should be measured, and rewarded, alongside traditional business KPIs. More importantly, when you put compensation on the line, people stop ignoring these goals. They start executing on them.
According to the data, at least 70% of the C-suite say their companies already tie, or plan to tie, executive and employee compensation to human sustainability metrics within the next one to two years. That shift is coming. Fast. And it won’t be optional for long.
This also realigns the culture. When sustainability becomes part of how success is defined and paid for, it reshapes decision-making. Leaders start asking better questions, not just about how many hours people worked, but whether their work improved the system, advanced equity, supported others, or drove purpose forward.
If you’re trying to create alignment from vision to behavior, tying pay to outcomes works. People follow incentives. Make yours clear.
Traditional perks and benefits are insufficient
Most companies are still trying to solve workforce problems with surface-level solutions. More benefits, more programs, more perks. But that doesn’t address what people are really asking for. They want better work conditions, fair pay, meaningful responsibilities, and a culture that doesn’t drain them.
The data backs this up. According to Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, 52% of workers said that simply being paid fairly would go a long way toward improving their well-being. That ranked higher than wellness programs or development opportunities. It tells you where employee priorities actually are.
Too many organizations layer new initiatives on top of flawed systems. They implement mindfulness apps or learning budgets without fixing core issues like heavy workloads, unclear role paths, or pay inequity. These are operational problems, not HR programs. And trying to fix structural issues with cosmetic add-ons just delays the real work.
If your workforce is underpaid, overstretched, or stuck in repetitive work with limited growth, it doesn’t matter how many extra days off you give them. People will disengage. And when people disengage, productivity slows, attrition rises, and institutional knowledge walks out the door.
Executives need to look beyond programmatic fixes. Improving human sustainability requires operational change, how roles are designed, how compensation is structured, how careers progress, and how the workday is experienced. If these areas remain unchanged, the rest is noise.
The organizations that take this seriously are redesigning the fundamentals. Not all at once, but deliberately. They’re eliminating low-value tasks, rerouting resources to deliver higher impact, and closing gaps in pay, opportunity, and fairness. That’s what employees are watching. And if they don’t see progress, they’re already looking elsewhere.
Empowerment and support are key
Most organizations say they care about human sustainability, but very few make it easy for people to act on it. Workers, managers, even executives, they don’t feel fully equipped to contribute to these goals. That reveals one of the biggest barriers: lack of enablement.
According to Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report, only 30% of workers and 21% of managers said they feel completely empowered to help achieve their company’s human sustainability goals. Even at the executive level, only 58% reported feeling fully capable. Across the board, people want to do more, 86% of workers, 94% of managers, and 95% of the C-suite said they need help to move this work forward.
Most employees support these goals. The issue is they don’t have the tools, frameworks, or backing to follow through. Without training, visibility into relevant metrics, or internal and external expertise to guide action, they stall out. Momentum dies.
If you want alignment across the entire organization, you need to operationalize support. Start with clarity. Make sure everyone understands what the goals are, how progress is measured, and their specific role in driving it. Then give them what they need to execute, access to data, dedicated support teams, training, and subject-matter input from people who understand the space.
Scaling human sustainability means acting beyond awareness. You’re building capability into teams to think, decide, and improve with these goals in mind. And that starts with infrastructure, not slogans. Without it, you’re essentially asking good people to make an impact without giving them the resources to do it. That’s a fast way to lose buy-in, and it wastes time.
The companies that move fastest here are the ones treating empowerment as a prerequisite. That’s how change scales, through equipped people, supported by systems that give them real agency.
A human sustainability focus supports business resilience
Focusing on human sustainability strengthens core business strategy. When companies consistently invest in the well-being, development, and long-term success of their people, they perform better. Talent stays longer, new ideas surface faster, and reputational risk drops.
This approach improves internal dynamics and expands external impact. Customers, investors, and partners are watching how companies treat their people. The decisions you make on pay, equity, well-being, and growth opportunities affect how your brand is perceived far beyond the workplace. If you get it right, you earn deeper stakeholder trust, which pays off in resilience, differentiation, and influence.
Deloitte’s 2024 Workplace Well-being Report makes it clear that leaders are starting to see this. About 73% of executives now consider human sustainability an enterprise risk that needs to be measured and monitored. 75% say the topic belongs at the board level. That’s a shift in how leaders view people-related priorities, from compliance or culture metrics to strategic inputs into the future of the business.
The companies that succeed long term will be the ones that integrate this view into their operating model. They won’t treat human outcomes as side initiatives. They’ll embed them into results measurement, decision frameworks, and organizational design. When done right, it leads to a workforce that’s sharper, more motivated, and more committed to building something durable.
It also buffers against volatility. Companies able to consistently grow human value, through skills, purpose, inclusion, and fair opportunity, are harder to destabilize. They generate long-term trust and attract aligned talent. That creates a different kind of growth curve—one that’s grounded in people who want to stay, contribute, and lead. Human sustainability is a force multiplier. When leaders treat it that way, everything scales faster.
Final thoughts
If you lead a business today, human sustainability must be operational. It’s about how you build a company where people actually want to work, grow, and stay. That drives performance. That builds resilience. That attracts talent that contributes at a higher level.
The signals are clear. Workers are ready for something better, more purpose, more fairness, more support that actually works. Executives already believe this matters, but belief isn’t enough. Belief has to show up in metrics, compensation, systems, and structure.
The companies that move first, and move with intent, will have a significant edge. This shift means making better decisions that scale your impact while aligning your people strategy with your business strategy. Once that happens, you’re engineering performance that lasts.
