Aligning Employee and Employer Expectations in the American Workplace with Jacquelyn Reardon

Jack Sharry: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this week’s edition of WealthTech on Deck. Now that we’ve been doing this podcast for three years, it has been fun to have some of our favorite guests come back to provide an update on their work. This week, we are very pleased to have our friend, Jacquelyn Reardon, give an update on the Voice of the American Workplace survey that Franklin Templeton has been conducting over the past four years. And as you’ll learn from Jackie, in a moment, a new wrinkle has been added to the research. In the past, it was focused on employees, and this year the employer point of view has been added. Now that they have both the employee and employer perspectives, there are some interesting comparisons. And as we’ll discuss, the survey reveals the crucial importance of aligning expectations with resources. Jackie is the vice president and head of US marketing at Franklin Templeton. Today, we’re going to talk with Jackie about the three key takeaways from this year’s voice of the American workplace survey. And, Jackie, it is my pleasure to welcome you back. Good to have you on, my friend.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Jack, thanks so much for having me back.

Jack Sharry: So, let’s start with understanding why you do the survey? And who is the survey for, is it for employers, employees, people who serve them? Please fill us in.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yeah, it’s been such a pleasure to work on this research for the last four years. Our goal is really to provide the industry with a data set. I think some of the topics that you and I have had the pleasure of talking about and that we’ll talk about today are anecdotal, you know, maybe not super duper surprising to folks. But I think really important for us to provide, specifically to employers and plan sponsors and their partners in the financial services industry. So the retirement plan advisors that they trust and partner closely with. A data set that can really help them inform some of the decisions that they need to do to really help address some of the key concerns that we see over and over again, that employees are really focused in on.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So let’s dive into the survey results at least at a high level for now. What are the key takeaways from this year’s voice of the American workplace survey?

Jacquelyn Reardon: So number one, it’s definitely that employers are dealing with a lot of stress themselves, but they’re taking a lot of action. So employers are still dealing with turnover and poaching and really heightened expectations from employees. But they’re, they understand that it’s important for them to face those things head on. The other piece of the puzzle is the employee piece, which we’ve seen year over year. And unfortunately, the picture hasn’t gotten much better. Employees continue to be significantly under stress when it comes to their financial health. And they’re specifically looking to their employer to help them address those issues and concerns. And then I think lastly, the key now that we have both the employer and employee piece so we can put it together is that there is a huge disconnect between what employees expect their employers to be doing and where employers are putting time and resources behind. So hopefully with these insights, we’ll be able to help direct employers to spend their best next dollar, align resources around the things that are going to be the most impactful to their employee base.

Jack Sharry: So let’s talk about the first one, the first takeaway, employee turnover, outsized expectations and loyalty are challenges for employers that they face today. So why don’t you fill us in on what that all means and what we might do about it?

Jacquelyn Reardon: So, I think it’s interesting over the last couple of years, we’ve gotten so many articles and like webinar invites around the great resignation and the great boomerang and it maybe sort of seemed like it had died down. But that’s not the case, we saw that over 90% of employers said that they dealt with at least 10% turnover last year. So they’re still dealing with both involuntary and voluntary turnover. And I think we can all appreciate the strain that that puts on any employer from both a monetary and time spent standpoint. They’re also dealing with, you know, an expectation of employees in providing better work life balance. So that’s one of the key things that they’re getting from employees, like make my time spent in office versus home, the hours that I spend, provide me more flexibility in how I engage with this firm. And then ultimately, we see specifically with some of the younger generations like millennial generations, Gen Z, increased expectations and “insatiable” as our research quoted, insatiable requests for more income, higher compensation and raises and promotions. So employers are really, they’re just getting overwhelmed by non stop requests from their employees around pay me more money, promote me, provide flexibility to me, and then also dealing with this increased turnover that we’ve just continued to see year over, year over year with employers.

Jack Sharry: So fill me in, what’s behind that? What can you surmise or what data do you have, what’s behind all that, that heightened expectation?

Jacquelyn Reardon: I think that there is definitely a shift that we’re seeing year over year in the way that younger generations view their employer versus perhaps some of the older generations. And again, I think it emphasizes this whole idea that we, as an industry, I think, have long suspected, but there’s been a little bit of debate that employees are actually looking to their employers for support across many, many different areas, and specifically financial. I think, sometimes people thought like, oh, no, that’s… employees are gonna go elsewhere for that type of support. But employers, specifically for younger generations, seem to be a specific place that they go back to.

Jack Sharry: Interesting.

Jacquelyn Reardon: And I think, you know, just in the world that we live and work in, work is so much of a larger portion of our, of our society and our day to day job, that there is just increased expectations. I think a little bit that’s also at play here, as we’ve talked in our research the last couple of years about the inflationary environment that we are living in as well. So there’s a lot of pressure on employees today to sort of sustain their living, their style of life, and make sure that their paycheck is meeting ends. So I think there’s a lot of pressure that they’re going back to employers to say, I’m under pressure as an individual, and I really need you to help me manage through this sort of crisis or economic environment.

Jack Sharry: Interesting. So I don’t know if the research shows this so I hope this isn’t a curveball, but I’m kind of curious. I’m sitting in LifeYield’s office in downtown Boston. Downtown Boston looks like a ghost town. There are very few people here. You couldn’t tell that from the traffic coming in, because it’s mobbed. So I don’t know where they go once they get here. But in any event, there’s not a lot of places to get lunch anymore, as an example. I will admit I for many years worked in our downtown office, and I don’t have an office here anymore. I work from home, whether it’s my home outside of Boston, or my home in Vermont, but I’m not here. I happen to be today, because I had some meetings and what have you. But it’s rare. So I’m kind of curious, the whole notion of working from home versus working in the office, did you see anything in the survey that gave you some understanding of what’s going on there?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of our research that shows a disconnect between employers and employees, except for that one topic.

Jack Sharry: Okay.

Jacquelyn Reardon: That’s the one topic that they agree on. So both employers and employees agree that some sort of flexibility, so ability to work from home, ability to work hybrid, ability to change your working hours, whatever that sort of, under the broader flexibility umbrella is appreciated by both audiences and is being used specifically as a recruitment tool, and also a retention tool. So both employer said we’re able to keep talent because of flexibility and employees are saying, I’m actually staying at my, my job, because I have this flexibility versus leaving and going somewhere else where I don’t. So that definitely I think has become a cornerstone and just kind of like a table stakes for most folks when they’re either thinking about going to a job or staying at a job.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, I have to say I do pay attention to that, I have adult children that are in the 30-something range, and their job selection has a lot to do with the flexibility, just part of how they think.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yeah.

Jack Sharry: Understandably so. So let’s talk about takeaway number two, and that one is employees are under a lot of financial stress. And financial independence is a major concern. So that all makes sense to me, fill us in?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yeah, definitely not a surprise. So we found that 96% of employees that we surveyed mentioned some type of concern, which I would love to meet the 4% that have no concerns and see what their secrets are. But of the concerns that they mentioned, the top three are all financial. So again, it’s that, do I have enough income to maintain my standard of living, health care costs, and also retirement savings? So, Jack, you might remember, we’ve talked over the last couple of years about kind of those three areas of health, financial health, mental health, and physical health in our research and every single year, we see that people are kind of, they’re equal for folks, it’s almost like a three legged stool. This year, though, folks said that financial health, which is up 15% year over year, is their number one concern. So there’s no longer this sort of like, okay, I’ve got these three areas of health, and I need to manage them all equally, or they’re all as important to me, or I’m as concerned about each of them. Financial health is their number one concern by a longshot. And what it’s really doing is it’s starting to push back some of these milestones. So we’ve talked over the last couple of years about people pushing back retirement or we’ve talked about financial independence. And that’s come up this year too, financial independence is really the Northstar that people are working towards versus traditional retirement. And people are feeling less and less likely that they’ll be able to meet these key milestones, because of the financial stress that they’re feeling today, due to a whole slew of factors.

Jack Sharry: So again, this may be a curveball and you may not have the data behind it, but over the past… about a week or so ago, I don’t know if you know Paul Hatch, he used to run the consulting group at Morgan Stanley and had a senior role at UBS, he now has a firm called Vestria Capital, which is an RIA roll up startup kind of thing. He posted something on ageism.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Oh.

Jack Sharry: And it blew up. Just talking about just the fact that people reach a certain age and they, it’s not so much they age out as they income out. In other words, they get to a point where they’re the most expendable. Some might call it ageism, others might just call… they got the, you know, they have an extra zero next to their name, we’ll address our budget concerns or constraints that way. Just curious if you had any data on this issue of ageism? Is that in the, in the data at all?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Well, I think there’s a couple probably like parallel findings we have. One is this idea of particularly some of our older respondents saying that they plan to work as long as they have job security. So I think if you take a step back from that, what they’re really saying there is, I’m not sure when this is going to be, I’m going to start to get aged out or you know, sort of asked to move aside for some younger folks. So I’m just going to ride this as long as I can and try to make as much income as I can until that comes. So that’s one of the topics that we’ve asked the last couple years. And that seems to be resonating. We did ask a question about AI this year as well. And I was anticipating that some of the older generations would actually say I’m the most afraid that AI is going to replace me. But in fact, it was the exact opposite. So I think that you have kind of this stress, and different stresses, but very unique stresses across different age groups, whether it be sort of this, you know, aging out concern, is the world going to be so, so different for me as a millennial, or Gen Z or… that not even have a job, you know, in the next decade, and I’m not even going to be at a point where I can worry about aging out of the workforce.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, I have a hunch as we’re living longer and as people are recognizing that and feel compelled with good reason to work longer…

Jacquelyn Reardon: Right.

Jack Sharry: Those dynamics are going to shift. Also, it’s hard to find talent, and often those more talented folks are the people.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Right.

Jack Sharry: And are, they’re willing to come back to work at a lower level just to be at least occupied and busy and contributing.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Right.: That have been around a while. And many are available because they were laid off.: For sure. Yeah. And I think some of the things we continue to find, and particularly this year is about the whole idea of income too, like people don’t feel adequately prepared to transition into retirement. And they don’t feel like they have enough information to understand whether or not their income level is going to sustain them, you know, specifically when it comes to health care costs and housing costs in retirement. So I think that that’s also going to perpetuate this idea of folks who, you know, it’s one thing if you want to keep working, because you want to keep working. But it’s another thing if you keep working because you don’t really have the guidance or advice you need to understand whether or not you can like, effectively transition into retirement. And really, a lot of that comes down to do you have the income that you need to be able to do that to cover these sort of costs that you anticipate which our research is showing, those are the two key concerns, health care and housing. If you don’t have the plan in place to understand that you can kind of accomplish that, you’re probably going to remain in the workforce as long as you possibly can.

Jack Sharry: Something I’m sure we’re gonna get to as we continue, we’re gonna take a look at number three in a moment, takeaway number three, but I think where the world is going in terms of, do I have enough money? And how will I… how will things play out? I think that they’re going to be looking for employers to look, looking at their employers to get this information. But I’m ahead of myself. And my hunch is you’re going to confirm that and have a lot of data behind it, but I’ll hold off. So number three in terms of takeaway. Employers try to address employee needs, but are often out of sync while employees aren’t taking advantage of what’s available. So, again, what have you found as a distinction or the ways in which employers and employees are out of sync?

Jacquelyn Reardon: This is really the fun, juicy bit. And there’s a couple of slides in our presentation which anybody can have access to on our website, which kind of overlays, you know, what, what are employers doing? And where are they prioritizing benefits, for example, versus employees. And what employers are looking at is really what they’re calling like the fundamental health benefits. So think like health insurance, dental, vision, those things. They’re really prioritizing to make sure that they have the best option there. Whereas employees are saying no, no, please just increase my compensation, and increase my 401k match. And it’s just exactly the opposite. In particular, too, we also see a call out to employers saying, employees want more recognition in the workforce. Like that’s how we’re going to make sure that they stay loyal and we’re able to retain talent and employees are like, please, please, please just give me more money. So we had an interesting conversation about this with our advisory group around the ability for an employee to see in their paycheck the actual dollar amount that their employee is providing to them. And that’s true in a 401k match as well. So they can actually see the hard dollars that are going into those benefits versus some of the other benefits that employers are providing. And it’s not just those fundamental health benefits, that’s where employers are prioritizing, but they’re providing a very, very diverse slate of benefits today, think pet insurance, like commuter benefits, access to a financial advisor, all of these great benefits that employees are not taking advantage of, or seeing value in because they’re not able to kind of like connect that true monetary value back to it. And this is frustrating, I’m sure, right. And I’ve thought a lot about kind of the call to action within our research, which is, unfortunately, hey, employers, you’re doing so much you’re providing great resources to your employees, but it’s not enough, which is… feels kind of icky. We wanted to get a little bit deeper too to where the disconnect is. I think part of it is that monetary value thing. So how do we as an industry help employers really, in hard dollars, articulate the value of specific benefits that perhaps it’s not so obvious. The other piece of it too is employees are just not paying attention. And we see a couple results here around employees saying, I struggle to know that benefits exist, at least half of them say I don’t even know that that benefit is being offered to me. And then three quarters are also saying even if I know that benefit exists, I don’t understand it. I don’t understand what that benefit is. And I specifically don’t understand the monetary value. So there’s a communication issue here, a gap. And the communication lines that employers are leveraging today, which employees are… say that they’re the ones that they would pay attention to, things like emails, and HR representatives are limited, right? There’s only so many HR representatives that can go around person to person and sit down and say, “Hey, Jackie, here’s all the benefits you have available to you, here’s all the resources. Which make sense to you? Are you leveraging them?” etc. So it’s a bummer for sure, because employers are doing a ton and they’re really stepping up and modernizing their approach to benefits, but they’re just not getting through to employees. So I think that’s where we collectively really need to help them figure out how to get that engagement up.

Jack Sharry: It’s interesting. We’ve had, as you and I were talking before we went on the podcast, we’ve had 150 episodes of WealthTech on Deck, we’ve had numerous folks on who are developing software, the buzzword you hear everywhere I turn, I hear hyper personalization. And there are a number of people that are building software so you can do that. Because you can’t hyper personalize without, frankly, getting information and then using some kind of algorithm to figure out what matters to each individual person, because that’s really what I’m talking about. And that seems to be a challenge, at least for now. I think this is going to change. But increasingly, it’s around and we’ve had at least ten guests on this show that are working on making sure that when you do a plan, you’re getting the information that matters to you, whoever you is. So I’d be curious to see, I don’t know if you have anything like that in the research, but it would seem like one of the answers is to, is for employers to somehow determine a way to hyper personalize it and deliver it. Is that, am I close at all?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yes. 1,000%. So from the employer side of it, the number one benefit that people are requesting of them are personalized benefits. So they’re saying, here’s what we’re being asked of by our employee base. And then if you flip it over to the employee side, close to 90% of employees are saying I’m super interested in, you know, we can call it a lot of different things, personalized benefits, voluntary benefits, you know, whatever that looks like, there’s huge, huge interest there. And we’ve talked in the past, and I’m sure you talk about this in every podcast, but the appetite’s there, and the expectation is there from a societal standpoint. So people are absolutely expecting that. I think, to your point, though, it’s how do we deploy something like that? Gotta be digital. There’s got to be information there. And I think that’s another takeaway for our industry is to how do we help employers really institute something like that in a way that is going to help them so that they’re, again, spending their next best dollar in a way that’s going to be superduper impactful to each individual employee. It’s scalable, it’s accurate, it’s measurable, all those things. And I think that that’s really where we need to get to as an industry, because it’s the only way to solve this.

Jack Sharry: Yes, fully agree. And it’s interesting, especially with the advent of AI, you mentioned that a little bit earlier. I think there’s, it’s going to be somewhere along there… along the lines where those personalized benefits will be a function of putting that together, but I wax too poetic. So, Jackie, what does this survey tell you and the firms and advisors you serve, about what they should do about it? So what is the advice and guidance you would offer to advisors on how to address these issues and concerns we’ve been talking about?

Jacquelyn Reardon: I think there’s a couple things that are top of mind for me. And this comes up every year in our research and it came out loud and clear is that people need advice. And they’re still not, we haven’t done a good enough job to sort of make sure that people are covered from an advice standpoint. So I mentioned earlier about the concerns around health care costs or income in retirement, housing. On the flip side, employees are saying that they’re, they plan to heavily rely on Social Security and they don’t know how Medicare works. So this is a group of people who are concerned about health care costs in retirement, they’re not sure that they have enough income to transition into retirement, but they’re planning on heavily relying on Social Security and they don’t know how Medicare works. So if there was ever a group of people who are just screaming, screaming, screaming for access to advice, it’s these employees. So we have to figure out how to make that more readily available. And again, making it available as a benefit. And making sure that people understand how to access it and tie the monetary value of it so that it can kind of come back to the employer in a way that can help retain talent and attract folks. I think the other piece that we talked about earlier is how do we help employers better articulate the monetary value of what they’re providing if it’s not so obvious, right? So if I got a $10 raise, it’s $10. But if I got this other benefit over here that I don’t know how much it costs, how do I better articulate what it would cost me to buy that kind of on the market by myself versus getting it through an employer? I think we absolutely have to do that. And then, you know, I think, last, we just talked about how do we kind of provide personalization at scale? How do we make sure that this engagement piece is taken care of, because, again, there are so many wonderful, great, diverse, modernized benefits that employers are putting time and resources behind, but it’s just kind of falling through the cracks and getting lost in people’s emails. And they don’t even know that it exists, or they don’t know how it works. So there’s definitely a huge gap there that we have to step up and help employers solve for.

Jack Sharry: You know, one of the things that we’ve done on our podcast, a number of different guests, people you know and I think you have some affiliation with some of these folks like we’ve Ed Murphy from Empower and Aaron Schumm from Westwell, and Brian McDonald from Morgan Stanley At Work are three examples that come to mind, there are others. And each one of them in their own way is trying to figure out how to solve what you just said. In other words, how do you provide advice on the issues that matter to employees, participants in terms of what they should do about it, whatever it is, and whatever stage they’re in because it’s a different set of issues, depending on where you are in that in that lifecycle. So maybe if you want to wax poetic a little bit about all that, I’m curious to know, does that sync up with what the research shows?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yeah, for sure. And I think you mentioned some great partners of ours and folks that we’re trying to solve this for. And I think that’s really, ultimately what it comes down to. Franklin Templeton is not going to solve this and you know, XYZ firm is not going to solve it alone, we’re going to have to get together and figure it out because there’s so many pieces of the puzzle, so many pieces of the value chain, the ecosystem, whatever you want to call it, we have to come together and figure out how to best plugin together and do it in a way that’s going to be super user friendly, both for the employer and the employee as well, because you can build this phenomenal tool on resource. But if it’s not something that the employer can easily put into their sort of ecosystem, and if it’s not something that the employee can easily use, and see the benefit of then there was no point in sort of building these tools. So we have to think about creating something that’s more like a Spotify or you know, a Netflix, or an Amazon that’s just so within the flow of everyone’s life and become something that you can’t even imagine living your life without, and superduper easy to just pop up on whatever kind of system is available. So it’s going to come at some point from firms like mine and others working together and figuring out how do we get our own piping together to work really effectively so we can make that experience really beneficial for employers and employees alike.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, I call it the convergence of workplace and wealth. It’s underway, but still very early on in the process and exciting to see all the progress that’s been made. It’s been significant. But frankly, a whole lot more to go, as you well know, because you’re enmeshed in figuring all that kind of stuff out. So, Jackie, as always, it’s been a blast to talk with you. Always fun, I learned a bunch. And so thank you for that. And as you know, our favorite question is coming up, which is what do you do outside of work, because you’ve answered it a few times before, what do you do outside of work that you are excited or passionate about that people might find interesting or surprising?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Well, this is a new one, but we just moved, I live on a lake now and I feel this creeping on in my old age, I think I might become like a birder soon. I got super interested in all the mallards and different types of mallards on my lake this winter that didn’t migrate. Did you know that mallards don’t migrate?

Jack Sharry: That’s great.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Pretty interesting. So I’m just trying to embrace the outdoors as much as possible now that the weather has finally stopped raining in the northeast finally, knock on wood, and just going to be outdoors as much as possible.

Jack Sharry: That’s great, Jackie’s other favorite thing, and maybe you want to give us an update, she is a huge fan of…

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yes.

Jack Sharry: Rock and roll music and probably all kinds of music. Big time concert goer, I imagine that continues?

Jacquelyn Reardon: Yes, yes. Always. That’s always happening, always. My partner and I in whatever little free time that we have are always out there trying to check out new venues and things, so…

Jack Sharry: Cool.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Hopefully have a busy summer of concert going.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, good. Good. And actually, my son was just at a concert… he lives in Houston, he and his wife go to concerts all the time and Houston is a great town for concerts. Apparently lots of different sized venues.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Oh, yeah.

Jack Sharry: Anyway, I just was watching that.

Jacquelyn Reardon: I’ll have to check it out.

Jack Sharry: I was just checking that out on Instagram, actually.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Oh, nice.

Jack Sharry: There we are. So, Jackie, thanks. This has been fun, as always. I can’t wait for next year when we do it again. For audience, if you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we do here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. Jackie, thanks again, a lot of fun.

Jacquelyn Reardon: Thanks, Jack. Really appreciate it.