Exploring Employee Well-Being: Sticking Plasters On Broken Windows Or Looking For The Smoking Gun?

Unveiling the true sources of workplace pressure in 2024

There is no shortage of money being invested in employee well-being, with the majority of large to medium-sized enterprises offering an ever-expanding ‘buffet’ of employee well-being services alongside other traditional employee benefits. Back in the mid to late 1990s, when the concept of wellness was new and intervening in employee health was a novel idea, early adopters rushed to provide 24/7 help and support services via telephone-based employee assistance programs. 

Twenty-plus years later, there is now a dizzying range of services on offer, which often include peripatetic or permanent occupational health support, health and lifestyle education and promotion, life coaching and personal health and well-being consultancy, nutrition advice, sleep clinics, subsidized gym memberships, free fruit in the office, onsite counseling, mental health first aid, mindfulness and free apps, lunchtime yoga, group exercise, and running clubs, personal and team resilience training, support with women's health issues, men’s health support and so on. The list is long. Just like a lot of buffets, though, much of what is on offer is not consumed and goes to waste.

There is nothing like a demand to fuel supply, of course, with the result that the value of the well-being industry has been forecast to reach $20.6 billion by 2024, a compound annual growth rate of 3.7 percent for the forecast period (Javed 2020) Taking well-being interventions as a totality, the market is worth $1.5 trillion, (Callaghan et al 2021) with no sign of contraction yet. The burning question, however, is whether all that expenditure is moving the dial in the right direction.

There is no doubt that emotional support for people feeling stressed or help and advice about how to stay strong and resilient in the face of the challenges of work and life is undoubtedly useful. There is no question that interventions like these have a valuable place in a joined-up employee well-being strategy. Modern life is full of uncertainties, and it makes good sense to invest in employees’ ability to bend with the wind when life and work storms blow up, as well as providing support to set them back on their feet if required. 

But on their own, these interventions do not combine to form a wellness strategy – the proliferation of support does nothing to address the underlying causes of poor workplace well-being, they merely alleviate the symptoms or moderate the impacts. It is quicker and easier to buy well-being support services or develop employee tolerance for demands and pressures than try to address or moderate those pressures directly – despite the clear HSE (Health and Safety Executive) guidance that companies should take a primary prevention approach supplemented by secondary and tertiary interventions like those just described.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the number of people experiencing stress and burnout – the negative impact of perceived pressure at a sustained intensity that feels as though it is exceeding their perceived ability to cope – is still increasing (Deloitte 2022, DWP/DHSC 2017). What impact, therefore, is current well-being investment having, other than to ‘clean up the fish’ or moderate negative impacts before throwing them back into a ‘dirty pond’? Employee well-being programs of the future are going to need to look at the pond and, therefore, include an examination of the systems, processes, and, most importantly, narratives that circulate inside modern businesses about the viability of alternative models for meeting the company and shareholder objectives.

Increasing global competition, coupled with economic volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity – the so-called VUCA world, means that for several years now, companies have had to find ways of achieving more with the same or fewer resources. The complex emotional relationship that humans have with work, coupled with the erosion of boundaries between life and work, accelerated (but not initiated) by the Pandemic, has fuelled the extension of the average working day. Robbing the ‘wider life Peter, to pay the work demands Paul’ has been an effective and increasingly normalized method to do more with the same resources. 

However, this goodwill response by employees is not sustainable indefinitely and cannot be relied upon going forward. Poor mental health statistics show us that, unlike computers, the human organic algorithm is not engineered to be always ‘on’. Sustainable creativity, performance, and well-being necessitate rhythmic periods of recovery - meaningful disengagement from work. As the saying goes, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’. It also undermines his effectiveness both inside and outside of work and ultimately makes him unwell.

The future of employee well-being starts with a recognition that doing more of what has worked in the past does not guarantee success in the future. It is not going to be possible to sustain the current level of performance, let alone improve it, by trading on discretionary effort. As the ‘Great Resignation’ after Covid lockdowns demonstrated, the psychological contract between employers and employees of all ages is changing. 

The law of diminishing returns looks as though it has been reached using support and resilience training alone as the sticking plasters. A more primary prevention, sources-based approach is going to be required – one that is led from the top but informed from the bottom. A preference for leadership asking over telling is going to be needed so that employees can be directly involved in both uncovering and moderating the sources of workplace pressure, in preference to being merely insulated from it.

Securing employee involvement in this type of well-being management activity is not inherently difficult – in fact, with the right tools, easily acquired, it can be an energizing exercise in organizational learning and increased satisfaction. The biggest barrier most face at the start is a lack of appropriate psychological safety to initiate conversations and develop team trust that challenges to the status quo will not backfire.

Regardless of the level of seniority, it takes bravery to push back on old narratives, experiment with new ideas, or take interpersonal risks. Impression management reigns supreme at all levels, and if the anticipated outcome of speaking up, trying something new and failing, or challenging an accepted belief about what can and can’t be done has personal negative consequences, people stay quiet. 

When this happens, personal and organizational learning is stunted inside an echo chamber, innovations are not discovered, and things stay the same. It is staggering how much insight employees have about the small-step changes that will make the biggest impact on well-being in their workplace, but they are either never asked or just too fearful to speak up and share what they know.

Continuing to do more with less, without damaging employee well-being in the process, will require a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between employee well-being, engagement, and sustainable performance. As a recent McKinsey survey [1] has so neatly described, good work continues to be good for you, but improving aspects of the work or improving employee health alone does not mitigate burnout. 

A more nuanced, employee-centric, and humble inquiry approach to people leadership is necessary to create environments that are psychologically safe enough for employees to implement and ritualize good well-being behaviors, which includes recovery. They also need agency in their well-being through the ability to contribute to decisions about how work is carried out and, critically, share insights with leadership that will help both parties achieve what they need - healthy and sustainable high performance.

A mindset shift is required - away from employee well-being as a condition that can be influenced by the application of commodity solutions to one where the levers and dials that drive employee well-being can be moved by the people themselves. Nurturing psychological safety inside teams is going to be a fast and mutually beneficial route to better well-being, faster innovation, sustainable performance, and greater job and organizational satisfaction.

Recommended Resource
^[1] Reframing employee health: Moving beyond burnout to holistic health

Lesley Cooper is a Management Consultant with over 25 years of experience in the design and delivery of all elements of employee well-being management programs. Lesley founded WorkingWell, an award-winning specialist consultancy that helps companies manage workplace pressure in a way that facilitates growth and development.