Employees with disabilities are unhappy at work and it has a lot to do with RTO policies

Bosses are focused on keeping workers happy and healthy as employees struggle with stress and burnout, and a recent report shows some encouraging signs.

Job satisfaction for workers overall increased by around 3% between 2023 and 2024, according to MetLife’s 2024 Employee Benefit Trends Study. Employee engagement is up 3%, and “holistic health,” defined as a measure of employee perceptions about their own physical, mental, financial, and social health, is up 3%.

But not all workers enjoy these gains equally. Employees living with disabilities reported a 9% drop in happiness over the past year, the largest decrease of any cohort measured. The group also reported a 15% drop in mental health, and an 18% drop in holistic health. Unsurprisingly, job loyalty and satisfaction for this group are down 5%, while engagement levels are down 4% compared to 2023.

The study credits these negative trends to changes in flexible work options. “These declines are largely a function of the impact of return-to-work policies,” the report reads. “Significantly more employees with a disability are working fully on-site.”

The dramatic increase in remote work following the pandemic helped push the employment rate for people with disabilities to a new high in 2022, and the ability to work remotely was something that advocates had been pushing for years. But remote work trends are now moving in the opposite direction. Around 58% of employees with disabilities are working fully on-site this year, according to the MetLife report, compared to 42% who were doing the same in 2022. And as this group gets pulled back into working in person, their feelings around flexible work policies have taken a big hit. Satisfaction with work location was down 9% in 2023 compared to the year before, and satisfaction with weekly work schedules was down 11% over the same period.

Employees living with disabilities are certainly not a monolith, as my colleague Paige McGlauflin previously wrote. But employers should take note of this discouraging data and consider how workplace policies could be contribute.

“Employers seeking to meet the needs of the entire workforce should devise care strategies that address the needs of employees living with a disability,” the report reads.

Azure Gilman
azure.gilman@fortune.com

Today's edition was curated by Emma Burleigh.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com