Workforce Experience — Kate Crotty

Quick summary

Over the last three years, led global employee experience research for a major technology company’s Health & Benefits function. Across three global studies exploring social connection and loneliness, cancer care support, and ongoing preventative health research, gathered qualitative and quantitative insights from over 2,000 employees to directly inform global workforce benefits, programs, and policies.

Read this study for

Employee listening at global scale

Researching stigmatized and sensitive topics

Running a multi-year client program

Turning insights into benefits and policy

The partnership

Over the past three years, we established a strategic partnership with the Global Health & Benefits team of a leading technology enterprise to evaluate and improve their global workforce experience.

1Partnered closely with health benefits leadership to design tailored insights studies that include IDIs, focus groups, co-design workshops, and global surveys.

2Launched the program with a flagship study on social connection, loneliness, and stigma, establishing a benchmark for workforce well-being.

3Delivered strategic insights frameworks and executive reports that directly informed program design, expanded benefits reach, and embedded empathy-led training across the organization.

The program in numbers

Program to date

Studies, two delivered

Employees in the research

Countries at the widest

Where we worked

Across the two delivered studies.

United States Brazil United Kingdom Ireland Germany Switzerland Kenya South Africa India Taiwan Japan Singapore Australia

The brief

Understanding the importance of social connection and the impact of loneliness and loneliness stigma for a global workforce following Covid-19 and mass layoffs.

Study one in numbers

Total participants

Survey respondents

Qualitative participants

Markets

What we set out to answer

Impact

How social connection, loneliness, and the stigma of loneliness affect employees day to day.

Drivers

What drives each of the three, and which dimensions of life carry the most weight.

Geographic and cultural nuance

How the experience of loneliness differs across regions and cultures.

The company’s role

What role the company should play in supporting connection and mitigating loneliness, if any.

The methods

Qualitative first, to learn how employees describe the subject in their own words, then a survey to find out how common each of those descriptions was.

In-depth interviews

n=30 · 45 minutes · 8 markets

Group discussions

n=41 · 75 minutes · roughly 4 per group

Quantitative survey

n=800 · 10 markets · under 5 minutes

Method 01 — In-depth interviews

We used this time to understand how employees described what connection and isolation actually looked like in their own lives.

Samplen=30
MarketsUS · Brazil · Taiwan · India · Germany · UK · Africa · Japan
Length45 minutes
Fed intoThe group discussion guide and the survey instrument

Method 02 — Group discussions

Small groups of around four, to hear employees build on and learn from one another.

Samplen=41 · roughly 4 per group
MarketsUS · Brazil · Taiwan · India · Germany · UK · Africa · Japan
Length75 minutes
Fed intoTheme validation and the survey instrument

Method 03 — Quantitative survey

A short survey built directly from the qualitative themes, to size them across a wider and more varied slice of the workforce and to hold the market comparisons steady.

Samplen=800
MarketsUS · Brazil · Taiwan · India · Germany · UK · Switzerland · Japan · Australia · Singapore
LengthUnder 5 minutes
Fed intoThe final report and recommendations

Key framework

Archetype 2x2

We discovered that loneliness at work wasn’t driven by how isolated an employee was, but by the mismatch between what they wanted from connection and what their working environment provided.

We mapped employees across two core axes:

1Work-life boundaries. How strictly they segregate their personal life from their job.

2Intentionality. Whether they view work connection as personal companionship or functional career infrastructure.

This created four distinct employee archetypes.

What employees said

Social connection is all we need in life. I have been struggling for many years with career concerns. How and when am I going to be promoted, what about my salary, things like that we are taught to be concerned about. After some therapy and deep conversations with friends and family, I have concluded that all we really need is deep connections with people.
Employee, United States

“I don’t want to have a meltdown in front of a creative lead, so I have to constantly be performing, bringing a good vibe. I am always perceived as younger than my actual age, so people expect me to be more energetic or new to the workplace. I always feel like I have to fight an uphill battle to show confidence.”
Employee, Taiwan

The brief

Cancer is increasingly a chronic, managed illness, and diagnoses among working-age adults are rising. The team asked us to find out what its employees actually go through, as patients and as caregivers, and where its resources and benefits fall short of that.

We looked at their whole ecosystem of support, their obligations at work and at home, how the experience differs by country, and what they thought the company’s role in it should be.

The gap we found was not in the benefits themselves. Employees were grateful for the financial coverage and said so repeatedly. The problem was everything around it: an ecosystem they had to navigate alone, no human being to talk to at the moments that mattered, and leave policies built for a linear recovery that cancer does not follow.

Study two in numbers

Total participants

Survey respondents

Interview time

Markets

Employees with a diagnosis

Employee caregivers

The methods

Forty-eight hours of interviews, then a survey to test how far each finding traveled.

In-depth interviews and focus groups

48 hours · 33 employees with a diagnosis, 15 caregivers · 10 countries

Quantitative survey

n=196 · 59 patients, 137 caregivers · 10 markets

We uncovered insights across five themes

People

The managers, HR contacts, and colleagues an employee actually deals with after a diagnosis.

Work and life

How treatment, recovery, and caregiving fit against the job someone still has to do.

Organization

What the company signals about illness, and how far that reaches into local offices.

Benefits

Coverage employees valued highly, wrapped in an ecosystem they had to navigate alone.

Leave

Policies built around a fixed block of time away, against an illness that does not run in a straight line.

What employees said

I feel like if I could just talk to someone in HR for even 15 minutes, that would give me tremendous comfort. The human touch, the human compassion, even though HR couldn’t do much, just the human touch would make a huge difference.
Employee in remission, United States

“My whole treatment process cost millions. I only had to pay several thousand dollars out of pocket and pretty much my health insurance covered everything.”
Employee with a rare cancer, United States

“The ability to ramp up slowly was really important to me. I had so much anxiety about whether I could actually work full time again. What if chemo side effects or fatigue came back? Being able to start at 50% and see how it felt took away a lot of stress.”
Employee returning after surgery, United States

What it produced

An insights report built around the five themes, with recommendations attached to each

What the report contains

The five themesPeople, work and life, organization, benefits, and leave, each with the evidence behind it.
Recommendations per areaIncluding tailoring support to different clinical realities, equipping managers to handle the conversation, and rebuilding intake around a person rather than a form.
Spotlight insightsEmployee gratitude for the coverage, the cost of having to self-advocate through it, and the separate load carried by caregivers.
Employee-generated ideasA starter list of benefits and resources proposed by the interviewees themselves.

The current study

This study explores how employees utilize preventative care resources, identifying barriers to early intervention and routine health screenings across global markets, with a focus on understanding how incentives drive adoption or care selection.

Study three in numbers

Employees, fieldwork in progress

Part four

Overall program impact

Created a safe space for employees to speak. We facilitated confidential conversations where participants spoke openly about loneliness, stigma, illness, and caregiving, eliciting honest stories and surfacing nuanced insights.

Built an enduring partnership with the Health & Benefits team. Partnered directly to scope and execute recurring insights studies over a three-year, ongoing engagement.

Influenced global benefits and policy. The organization used our insights and frameworks to shape policy decisions and benefits programs, rolling them out across regions to guide future experience design.

Publishing joint findings. Co-authored research papers drawn from the program, currently drafted for joint publication with the client.

Practical lessons

Building trust and creating a comfortable space are what let employees speak candidly

Because people can feel guarded about sharing sensitive experiences at work, establishing early rapport and clearly explaining how their data will be anonymized, aggregated, and protected helps them feel safe enough to speak candidly.

Be culturally aware when designing guides for a global audience

When crafting discussion guides or surveys for an international audience, it’s necessary to be aware of local benefits, regional differences, and cultural nuances so the questions feel relevant and respectful for all.

The core team

Mixed-methods Research Lead my roleStudy design, method architecture, moderation, synthesis, client delivery
Design StrategistArchetype framework development, executive deck design
Quantitative ResearcherSurvey design, statistical analysis, market cross-tabulation

Understanding how loneliness, illness, and caregiving shape the global employee experience