Employers re-examine wellbeing strategies

Company executives are starting to rethink their approach to wellbeing programmes as research suggests that — despite billions of dollars being spent on such initiatives — many workers are the unhappiest and unhealthiest they have ever been.

Global corporate spending on programmes that can range from mindfulness and resilience workshops to counselling and wellness apps reached $51bn in 2022, according to the US-based Global Wellness Institute. But research provider Gallup says employee stress levels have reached a historic high worldwide, with workers in east Asia, including China, tying with those in the US and Canada as the most stressed of all.

In the UK, 10 per cent of workers — rising to almost 15 per cent of under-30s — reported being depressed in the 2023 FT-Vitality Britain’s Healthiest Workplace survey, representing a 43 per cent increase since 2016. Respondents reported both near-record levels of sickness absence and unproductive presenteeism, and 15 per cent said they had suffered burnout, with 49 per cent suffering fatigue at least one a week.

Some observers attribute these higher numbers to a greater awareness and reporting of mental health issues. Whatever the reason, though, staff wellness is now high on many companies’ agenda — especially since the pandemic.

Wellbeing can be assessed on factors such as job satisfaction, sense of purpose, and stress. But analysts note that research on whether certain initiatives can improve it in the workplace will often trail the speed at which companies roll them out.

“There’s a commercial aspect to all of this and a lot of stuff is being sold that has a very poor evidence base attached to it, or no evidence base,” warns Christian van Stolk, executive vice-president at research provider Rand Europe.

In a Gartner survey, last year, only 32 per cent of human resources executives felt that their organisation was doing a good job of assessing the effectiveness of wellbeing initiatives.

“Wellbeing programmes do generally help, if employees use them, but leaders report difficulty in measuring how [they are helping],” says Augustus Vickery, a director at Gartner’s HR practice.

Another problem is that “employees aren’t using the wellbeing support that’s available”, he adds — either because they choose not to, or because they are unaware of the support.

Positive effects observed in pilot schemes often evaporate when a programme is released into “real-world settings”, cautions William Fleming, research fellow at the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre. In a study of survey responses from 46,000 UK workers, he found no difference in the self-reported mental health of those who participated in wellbeing programmes and those who did not.

Before providing employees with solutions to manage their stress, Fleming recommends that employers do more to tackle the ways in which their business might be causing the stress.

A Deloitte survey of US workers, in 2022, found three systemic factors had an “outsized impact” on wellbeing: leadership behaviour; job design; and organisational working practices. It prompted the researchers to conclude that “perks and programmes”, alone, achieve little.

Similarly, research by UK human resources body the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development identified a strong association between poor management and employees reporting feeling highly stressed or a worsening of their mental health.

There’s a commercial aspect to all of this and a lot of stuff is being sold that has a very poor evidence base attached to it, or no evidence base

“To get wellbeing right, at a fundamental level, you not only need the organisation to provide resources, but you also need managers who know how to direct people to the right resources and how to help them to have good work lives,” says Jim Harter, chief workplace scientist at Gallup.

Josh Krichefski, Emea and UK chief executive at media agency GroupM, is president of UK industry body the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, which recently launched a “badge of honour” scheme aimed at supporting the mental health of ad agency employees. “If there’s one thing that’s evidence-based and proven to have a negative impact on people’s mental health, it’s a toxic workplace culture,” he says.

Jenn Barnett, head of inclusion, diversity and wellbeing at accountancy firm Grant Thornton, agrees that nurturing wellbeing involves “a lot more than running initiatives”. Getting the culture right may even mean changing the criteria and methods used to select managers. “Not everybody is a people manager” with the skills to manage supportively, she observes.

Ultimately, wellbeing initiatives may be limited in the benefit they can have if, for example, an employer operates in a way that leaves workers without time for family, or for non-work activities known to protect mental health.

Many professionals are now readier to discuss mental health, as a result of experiences in the pandemic, observes Elizabeth Rimmer, chief executive of LawCare, a UK-based mental health charity for the legal sector.

But she points to the ingrained stresses in the profession’s pay structure. “It’s kind of the elephant in the room,” she says. “Law firms reward people who exceed their billing targets. We’re rewarding behaviour that undermines people’s mental health, fuelling more of the same.”

Still, Vickery detects a growing readiness on the part of some businesses to ask the hard question: “What does wellbeing at work really mean?” — and to rethink burdensome practices.

He cites an experiment at US retailer Gap, which was featured in the US surgeon-general’s 2022 framework for workplace mental health and wellbeing. The experiment included providing store workers with predictable schedules and the freedom to swap shifts without managerial approval.

On its conclusion, the stores registered increased sales, while the workers reported feeling better in various ways — even extending to improved sleep quality.