A recent consumer survey from MustardHub examined employee engagement, burnout, and flexible benefits. The survey also explains why employers lose talent due to a lack of trust, employee disconnect, and outdated benefit offerings.
MustardHub is a workforce engagement platform that helps companies reduce turnover, build stronger cultures, and unlock predictive insights into employee well-being.
To gain an insight into the core findings, Digital Journal spoke with Curtis Forbes, the company’s Founder and CEO. Forbes is a serial entrepreneur with a background in both technology startups and education.
Digital Journal: Why are employees increasingly open to employers playing a more proactive role in preventing burnout?
Curtis Forbes: The simple truth is that workers are done with being burned out and ignored. They’ve watched companies talk about caring while treating people as replaceable parts. Now they’re finally seeing employers step up proactively, and they’re not threatened by it. The old boundaries between work and personal life have eroded. Remote and hybrid models blurred lines, and people now expect their workplace to acknowledge the real pressures they face, not just track productivity. Burnout is no longer seen as a personal weakness but as an organizational risk that directly impacts retention, culture, and performance.
Our recent consumer survey on the current employee experience found that 59% of workers actually welcome employers proactively offering support when they’re at risk of burnout or disengagement. Only 5% find this uncomfortable. When someone at work notices you’re struggling and offers real support before you have to ask for it, that doesn’t feel invasive. It feels like they genuinely care about you as a person, not just what you produce.
This shift matters for retention. Traditionally, many workplaces have operated reactively, waiting until someone reaches a breaking point before stepping in. Workers today want employers who can read the warning signs and do something about them before it’s too late. According to our survey data, they view proactive support as a sign that the company cares. That’s not micromanaging. That’s leadership.
DJ: How is disconnection and lack of support driving people to leave their jobs, even more than traditional retention levers?
Forbes: People are walking out because feeling invisible makes everything else worse, especially those who believe they’re underpaid. Our survey found that about 46% of workers have left jobs because they felt disconnected or unsupported. When you don’t feel valued as a person, it’s much harder to tolerate other workplace frustrations like low pay or long hours.
Our survey tells an even sharper story when you break it down by generation. Millennials (52%) and Gen Z (51%) report the highest exits due to disconnection. These are the workers who grew up expecting authentic relationships and meaningful work. When they don’t find it, they leave. Emotional disconnection now impacts turnover as much as compensation at 50%, and far more than flexible work arrangements at just 33%.
This shift changes everything for employers. You can offer remote work and competitive pay all day long, but if people don’t feel seen, heard, or supported by their managers and coworkers, they’re still going to walk. Connection isn’t a nice-to-have or “soft” variable anymore; it’s the infrastructure of trust and the foundation that makes workers willing to invest in everything else.
DJ: What does the lack of trust between managers and employees reveal about the state of workplace culture today?
Forbes: The lack of trust between managers and employees reveals we’re living in a culture of micromanagement disguised as leadership. Our research shows that a quarter of the workforce would feel more engaged if they were simply trusted to do their job. This trust gap hits younger workers hardest, with 32% of Gen Z and 31% of Millennials feeling untrusted compared to just 10% of Boomers.
This is more than a generational difference; it’s a credibility gap. Employees have heard years of “we care about people” while watching layoffs, burnout, and short-term decisions undermine that message. Once that disconnect sets in, even well-intentioned programs around flexibility or recognition feel hollow.
Trust costs nothing but delivers massive returns. It’s one of the most cost-effective levers for engagement and ranks as a major driver alongside higher-cost initiatives like compensation and flexible work. Yet most companies would rather throw money at engagement surveys than address the fundamental issue that their managers don’t fully trust their people to do the job they were hired to do.
DJ: How have personalised and flexible benefits shifted from being a perk to a baseline expectation for workers?
Forbes: Workers today expect their employers to recognise that everyone’s needs are different, and they want benefit options that fit their lives. What used to be a nice-to-have perk has become table stakes for attracting and keeping talent.
This shift reflects a broader change in how people think about work. Employees no longer accept that they should be grateful for whatever benefits package gets thrown at them. Most (87%) believe companies should offer flexible benefits tailored to individual needs, and nearly half see it as a modern expectation rather than a bonus.
According to our findings, only 7% of employees oppose personalized benefits, which tells you this trend isn’t going away. People want to be treated as adults capable of making their own choices about what matters to them. Companies that cling to rigid, one-size-fits-all benefits risk signaling they’re out of touch. Those that adapt with flexible, personalized, even portable options send a stronger message: We respect you as an individual, and we trust you to decide what support matters most.
DJ: Why do life-stage-aligned benefits create stronger emotional bonds between employees and employers than traditional programs?
Forbes: Life-stage-aligned benefits create stronger emotional bonds because they show employees you see them as whole people, not just workers. When you offer student debt assistance to someone drowning in loans or elder-care support to someone juggling aging parents, you’re acknowledging real-world struggles outside of work.
Traditional benefits assume everyone has the same needs. A gym membership doesn’t help someone who already works out at home. Childcare support is useless if you don’t have kids. By contrast, when benefits match someone’s life situation, they solve actual problems and that creates genuine gratitude and loyalty.
The difference is empathy. These benefits signal that the company understands the pressures shaping an employee’s daily life and is willing to invest in their well-being on those terms. That’s the difference between feeling like an employee number and feeling like someone the company truly values.
DJ: How could portable benefits reshape career mobility and unlock new paths like entrepreneurship?
Forbes: Portable benefits could unlock massive career mobility by removing the golden handcuffs that keep people trapped in jobs they’ve outgrown. Today, many workers stay in roles they don’t love because leaving means losing health insurance, retirement contributions, or other supports they can’t afford to replace. That “job lock” suppresses mobility, creativity, and small business formation.
Our research shows the appetite for change. Sixty percent of workers would feel more secure changing jobs if benefits moved with them, and 41% say they’d be more likely to pursue entrepreneurship or freelance work if portable benefits were available. Current benefit structures are essentially trapping talent in places where they’re no longer contributing their best work.
When benefits follow the worker instead of being tied to a single employer, new paths open. Suddenly, joining a startup, launching a consulting business, or moving between gigs doesn’t mean sacrificing your family’s healthcare or retirement planning. Beyond security, the cultural impact is huge — portable benefits recognize that modern careers are nonlinear, multi-employer, and often entrepreneurial. By reducing the penalty for mobility, they protect workers while expanding the economy’s capacity for innovation.
DJ: What risks do leaders face when their own engagement levels blind them to what younger workers actually need to thrive?
Forbes: When leaders feel engaged themselves, they assume everyone else does too. That’s a dangerous blind spot, especially when most leadership positions are held by boomers who grew up in a different work culture. While most boomers already feel engaged and only a small portion want more appreciation and feedback, the opposite is true for younger workers.
The engagement gap between generations is massive. The vast majority of Gen Z and millennials don’t feel engaged, and nearly half want more appreciation and feedback. But leaders who don’t need those things themselves often don’t prioritize providing them. This creates a cycle where leaders think everything is fine while their younger talent quietly plans their exit.
The cost shows up in turnover. Millennials and Gen Z are leaving at much higher rates due to feeling unsupported, which weakens the leadership pipeline and hollows out the organization from the bottom up. Leaders who project their own engagement experience onto everyone else miss the warning signs and lose talent they thought was secure.
