81% of HR Leaders Say They Advocate for Employees. Only 54% of Staff Agree

Only 54% of individual contributors fully trust HR to advocate for them in business decisions, while 81% of HR leaders believe they do so successfully. That 27-point gap comes from Leapsome's 2026 Workforce Trends Report, and it frames a blunt argument now gaining traction in management circles: employee well-being cannot remain an HR initiative if companies want it to work.

The argument comes from leadership commentator Mark Crowley, who writes that after decades of failed engagement efforts, the structural problem is clear. For years, companies handed responsibility for the employee experience to Human Resources. HR administered the engagement surveys, analyzed the results, and reported the findings. But the main drivers of engagement—workloads, caring and supportive leadership, flexibility, and job security—have always sat in the business itself, not HR.

"Leaders treated the data as HR's problem to fix, not their own," Crowley writes. "We're at risk of making the same mistake with well-being."

What the numbers say about the trust gap?

The Leapsome data confirms a second disconnect. While 72% of HR leaders believe they can challenge top-down mandates, only 45% of individual contributors agree.

Crowley points to what he calls an untenable dual mandate at the root of the problem: HR is expected to advocate for employees while simultaneously carrying out layoffs and job eliminations—decisions made by senior leadership, not HR. Trust erodes when employee interests inevitably collide with business decisions.

His prescription: manage well-being the same way companies manage all other important business objectives. That requires four elements working together:

• Someone at the top owns it
• Managers are accountable for it
• Employees have a continuous way to provide feedback
• There are real consequences when line managers repeatedly fail to respond

Without those elements, Crowley argues, well-being will remain something companies only talk about rather than something they systematically manage.

Who should own well-being at the top?

The first step, according to Crowley, is putting someone senior in charge. That person could be the Chief Human Resources Officer—and in many companies, that may make the most sense. But if an organization creates a separate Chief Well-Being Officer, the position must be a genuine C-suite role with direct access to, and support from, the CEO and executive team.

"The title matters less than the authority behind it," Crowley writes. "If senior leaders don't regard this person as a peer who can question decisions, escalate concerns, and influence what happens next, the position will have no teeth and zero impact."

There is precedent. In 2022, Ernst & Young became one of the first companies to create the position of Chief Well-Being Officer. Frank Giampietro, who holds the role, explained on Crowley's podcast that his job is to systematically address the physical, emotional, financial, and social well-being of the firm's people—extending beyond programs and resources to culture and the broader work environment.

Crowley adds one condition: that leader must be involved before consequential decisions are made, not brought in afterward to explain them.

Why annual engagement surveys failed?

Engagement surveys were conducted only once or twice a year, and the data was often stale by the time managers saw it. Survey feedback was infrequently addressed, if ever, and workers grew to distrust that their voices were heard.

Crowley proposes replacing broad surveys with shorter, more frequent pulse surveys. Technology now makes it seamless to pose one or two focused questions and have responses almost instantly collated and summarized. Targeted questions—whether people feel safe at work, whether they have autonomy, whether they trust the organization—give leaders the ability to see pain points before they metastasize.

There is a catch, Crowley warns: listening only works if the organization is prepared to respond. Otherwise the new survey becomes another ritual that asks employees for candor without giving them reason to believe it will matter.

Who holds managers accountable?

Every manager should review team feedback, share what was learned, and discuss what can reasonably be changed—even when concerns cannot be addressed as employees would prefer. The manager's boss, not HR, must enforce this. Crowley calls making HR the police force "a huge mistake," since the supervisor is ultimately responsible for a manager's performance.

Research cited by Crowley shows managers have a bigger impact on employee mental health than therapists. Pulse surveys can identify leaders whose teams repeatedly report they don't feel valued, appreciated, trusted, or supported. HR can coach, but the manager's own boss should be asking why the same concerns keep surfacing. Managers who show little willingness or ability to improve must ultimately be held accountable and weeded out.

What is HR's actual role going forward?

HR should own the system, Crowley argues, not the outcome. Its future role: implement and oversee the listening system, analyze patterns across teams, help managers respond to feedback, and identify problems individual managers cannot solve. If numerous teams report burnout or distrust, HR can bring those trends into the executive conversation and ensure they are acted upon.

The critical pivot, Crowley writes, is putting well-being in the room while major decisions are being made—layoffs, restructurings, return-to-office mandates, AI deployments—rather than after. Recent research, he notes, has consistently shown that caring for people is not a drag on leadership performance but a major catalyst for it.

For companies weighing the model, the Leapsome numbers set the baseline: a majority of employees already doubt HR speaks for them. Whether that gap closes will depend less on HR and more on who at the top picks up ownership.