Executives are feeling the strain of leading in the “new normal”

A new Future Forum consortium study shows that executives’ work experience scores have worsened significantly over the past year as leaders struggle to adapt to new employee expectations and adjust their management strategies for the “new normal.” Executives’ overall satisfaction with work is down 15% over the last year, while remaining relatively flat – or even slightly rising – for non-executives.

“We’re still in the middle of the biggest workplace paradigm-shift we’re apt to see in our lifetimes, and leaders are feeling that pressure,” says Sheela Subramanian, vice president and co-founder of Future Forum. “The macroeconomic conditions, the continuing Great Resignation, and the push-pull between executives and employees on issues of workplace flexibility are making it harder to lead with confidence — you can no longer rely on the old leadership playbooks.”

Executives are struggling — reporting record low experience scores, including 40% more work-related stress and anxiety and 20% worse work-life balance over the last year.

While experience scores dropped for executives, scores are rising for other groups since the broad adoption of flexible work. In fact, remote and hybrid workers are 52% more likely to say their company culture has improved over the last two years compared to fully in-person workers — with flexible work policies cited as the #1 reason for that change. This suggests a strict return to pre-pandemic norms will be counterproductive. Still, 60% of executives say they’re designing their companies’ policies with little to no direct input from employees — and executives themselves are much more likely than their employees to want to spend most of their time in the physical office.

“If you’re thinking in terms of ‘returning’ — returning to the old way, returning to the way the office used to be, returning to what worked for you — then it’s time to rethink that direction,” says Ryan Anderson, vice president of global research and insights at MillerKnoll, one of the founding partners of Future Forum. “We need to move forward to a new path, and that requires engaging your employees to establish new ways of working together.”

The latest Pulse data shows that leaders who wish to build healthy and productive work cultures would benefit from refocusing their attention on a growing crisis among desk workers: burnout.

Read more: How to get the hybrid work balance right

Providing employees with schedule flexibility is an effective, yet so far rarely supported, way to reduce burnout and increase employee engagement and loyalty, while also improving business outcomes. Employees with schedule flexibility show the highest scores across the board on the index, including 53% greater ability to focus and 3x better work-life balance. On the other side of the spectrum, employees with no schedule flexibility are more than twice as likely to look for a new job in the coming year, compared with employees with moderate schedule flexibility.