Why is everyone talking about… wellbeing washing?

Would you sacrifice work-life balance for an extremely well paid job? While 93% of employees consider wellbeing to be as important as salary, recent research revealed that 90% of employees do not believe their employer when they discuss wellbeing initiatives, insinuating that many may be guilty of ‘wellbeing washing’.

Examples might include a company-wide session about the importance of taking breaks scheduled during lunchtime or performative posts from the company on social media. The same research also found that a fifth of FTSE 100 companies post about mental health only on awareness days (such as World Mental Health Day) and make no reference to it for the rest of the year.

“One of the biggest issues we’ve found is that employers don’t really know how their employees feel or what it is they need. Asking, not just guessing, is always the first step to creating a workplace wellbeing strategy that actually works”, says stress and burnout expert Bex Spiller. 

Her advice? “One of the most important points is to give your employees the time to take part in whatever new wellbeing programs you bring in - and that doesn’t mean during their lunch break. Start fostering a culture of wellbeing in the organisation with dedicated time for your teams to take care of themselves.”

She adds: ”Consider how you can tailor your wellbeing offerings to as many people as possible and don’t just assume everyone’s a fan of meditation or yoga apps.”

There are a few key considerations needed to build out a wellbeing offering that your employees really believe and partake in:

• Listen to what your employees really want - launch surveys, enable always-on suggestion collection and replace ‘perks’ that aren’t used with new options.

• Ensure your leaders follow by example: Create clear rules about contact out of hours and when on leave and identify and discourage when this isn’t respected.

• As Bex suggests, carve out time for your employees to actually engage with wellbeing initiatives – taking part in a company-organised wellbeing activity shouldn’t mean they need to skip lunch or work late to make up for it.

• The definitive guide to employee wellbeing

• How to improve health and wellbeing in the workplace

• The five metrics that help track employee wellbeing

That's all for this week's edition of Personio Pulse: This Week in HR. Check back next week as we continue to dissect the latest trends impacting the ways we work. 

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