Whose Job Is It to Boost Employee Wellness?

“It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti

It was not that long ago that wellness, especially wellness at work, was all the rage. As an employee assistance professional, I received routine requests from worksites across all professions for some form of training, workshop, or presentation on how to help employees improve their sense of well-being.

Currently, that flood of requests for all things wellness related has slowed to a trickle while calls for conflict resolution, employee engagement, and burnout are on the rise. This suggests that attempts to improve employee well-being missed their mark.

Wellness initiatives in the workplace have suffered from misconceptions, ill-defined criteria, and employee skepticism since their inception. It’s no surprise that, according to the Harvard Business Review, “Nearly 85% of large U.S. employers offer workplace wellness programs, yet the burnout and mental health needs that they are meant to address have continued to escalate.”

According to The Global Wellness Institute, wellness is defined as “the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.” According to the World Health Organization, mental wellness is defined as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” By any measure that seems like a high bar particularly for people who just want to go to work, do their jobs, and return to their non-work lives.

As a therapist and employee assistance professional, I often hear from workers who complain that their work sites only offer wellness initiatives to “check a box” or “put the blame back on us.” This idea that helping employees feel good about themselves while still feeling bad about their jobs is at the heart of why wellness programs might be a thing of the past. Trying to improve a person's overall health while subjecting them to toxic work environments, outdated policies and procedures, managers who bully and intimidate, etc. is akin to losing weight so that one can return to overeating.

If workplace wellness programs are to survive in an age of pandemics, political/social upheaval, and economic uncertainty, they are going to have to shift the focus from trying to heal people’s personal lives and instead strive to make the worksite less hazardous. A good starting point is to stop trying to improve morale and instead stop destroying it. Putting the burden back on the worksite is a win/win as it benefits the employee—who no longer feels like they must heal themselves in order to survive a sick environment—while allowing leaders to take control of something within their purview.

Continuing to offer health fairs, EAP services, and access to affordable health care is one way to let employees know that worker wellness is not just a slogan. So too is addressing workplace hazards that weaken both resistance and resilience among the workforce:

• Creating an atmosphere full of company politics.
• Developing unclear expectations regarding performance.
• Creating a lot of unnecessary rules for employees to follow.
• Planning unproductive meetings.
• Promoting internal competition between employees.
• Withholding critical information.
• Providing criticism instead of constructive feedback.
• Tolerating poor performance so high-performing employees feel taken advantage of.
• Underutilizing the capability of employees.

In the 40 years that I’ve been a mental health professional I’ve spent countless sessions trying to alleviate the negative impacts of work on the clients I’ve seen. From the very top of the company ladder to those just starting the climb, I’ve accepted the fact that any gains made within the therapeutic hour would almost certainly be undone by the eight or more hours they spend at work.

The psychological field of family systems taught us long ago that focusing on the identified patient, i.e., “the problem child” and not the system he or she was being raised in has a limited effect on mental health. Since many worksites like to invoke the “we’re all family here” approach, it’s surprising that the recognition of how dysfunctional families produce dysfunctional people has somehow slipped passed corporate leaders and the bottom-line concerns.

It should come as no surprise that companies have moved on from satisfaction surveys ("How do you feel about your job?”) to engagement surveys ("What is your commitment to doing your job?”). This shift suggests a growing awareness that taking on the challenge of the wheel of wellness, and its eight dimensions of physical, spiritual, social, emotional, intellectual, occupational, environmental, and financial health, was taking too big a bite out of the holistic apple.

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While no one wants to return to the days of “Just be happy you get a paycheck,” if the pendulum swings back toward a time when companies can mind their own business—and truly focus on worksite conditions that enhance morale—then more workers will find their wellness in safe-keeping while earning a paycheck.