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You’ve heard plenty about workplace burnout. But there’s another workplace crisis that might be affecting your team even more: the perception gap.
According to our 2025 survey, 46% of employees believe their boss only somewhat or rarely understands their contributions. Think about that: Nearly half your workforce might feel fundamentally misunderstood.
This isn’t just about feelings getting hurt. When your employees think you don’t see their true value, they can feel they’re being overlooked for promotions, start to disengage from their work, and eventually may walk out the door altogether. The damage from this misalignment can exceed even that of burnout, because it attacks something deeply personal: the need to be accurately seen and valued.
When managers and employees operate from completely different realities, everything suffers — productivity drops, innovation slows, and over time, your carefully cultivated culture begins to erode. As these perception gaps multiply across teams, what begin as individual disconnects can eventually undermine your entire organizational foundation.
If you want to keep your best talent (and who doesn’t?), you need to address this perception problem now. By closing this gap, you’ll catapult team performance and tap into a wellspring of talent that’s been hiding in plain sight.
