What HR Is Getting Wrong About Employee Wellness

Transforming workplace wellness through leadership

Human resources (HR) departments have focused on employee wellness for decades. Recognizing the impact of boosting employee health and well-being on the bottom line, many HR practitioners have successfully advocated for - and received - dedicated wellness budgets. Indeed, wellness spending in organizations is at an all-time high and only continues to grow ^[1]. Yet, how HR departments can get the biggest bang for their buck remains somewhat unclear. Without a roadmap for understanding how to best direct corporate spending on wellness, HR is often left following wellness trends instead of making strategic investments in employee well-being that will pay off in the long term. 

New research ^[2] exploring what makes employees feel happiest, healthiest, and most productive at work suggests that HR’s current approach to employee wellness needs to change. While HR has traditionally implemented programs and initiatives to boost employee well-being - like step challenges, healthy eating initiatives, or mindfulness programming - employees themselves are looking for something different. The most impactful way to improve employee wellness is to look toward improving the resources you already have. Based on data from hundreds of employees, this research finds that leaders are the key to workplace wellness. 

Importantly, this research found that leaders who support employee wellness in key, effective ways reap the benefits of more satisfied, committed, and higher-performing teams. But how do they achieve these outcomes? 

First, these leaders recognize that employees don’t want a flawless leader who projects the image that they are a superhero. Employees want real leaders who they can aspire to be like and who they feel comfortable being honest about their own shortcomings with. When leaders display vulnerability to their employees, it creates a climate where employees feel free to be themselves as well ^[3]. In these environments, employees are able to be more authentic, lessening the cognitive load of trying to portray themselves in a specific way. This helps employees reduce exhaustion and allows them to refocus their energy on the work at hand.

Second, these leaders recognize that the time they spend working is far less important than the tone they set for their teams. When leaders set the right tone for their teams, it changes the fabric of employees’ working lives and makes them enjoy their time at work. Leaders who build trusting relationships with employees and role model positive behaviors make employees feel valued and inspired to accomplish their goals. And, when team members feel bonded to their leaders and teammates, they are more open and honest about the challenges they face at work. 

While it may seem like opening Pandora’s box to ask employees to freely share their problems, a positive outcome of doing so is that leaders can then help employees come up with better, more accurate solutions. As the team culture shifts and employees start being more open and honest with each other, they begin to help each other work through challenges. Instead of relying on their leader to have all the answers, they role model their leaders' collaborative, problem-solving approach together. This actually saves leaders time in the long run and allows them to focus on more strategic work.

Third, while many leaders believe that employees should have a life outside of work, they usually ask employees to prioritize work over life - especially in stressful situations. The leaders that this research examined do the opposite. They recognize that employees need to be whole people - especially when work is presenting daunting challenges. They encourage employees to disconnect from their work and to set clear boundaries that allow them to spend time doing activities that refuel and replenish their depleted mental and physical resources. And, even better, they role model these behaviors themselves. Employees come back ready to tackle challenges with much greater energy each day when they have time to recharge, as opposed to sputtering across the finish line after relentlessly sprinting toward goals. 

Finally, these leaders realize that employees are unique. Blanket solutions are not useful when employees have so many varied wellness needs. Just like fingerprints, no one employee is exactly the same - so why should they all benefit from the same wellness offerings? Leaders who get to know their employees, create tailored solutions to address their specific issues, and follow up to make sure these solutions are working create more truly thriving teams. 

In sum, HR functions need to take a step back and evaluate whether their wellness dollars are being well spent. They will achieve better results by getting back to basics - by training leaders to create environments that produce happiness, health, and productivity. Using wellness programs as “add-on” benefits to combat stressful and unhealthy workplace cultures will not solve the problem. By leveraging their leaders as the heart of employee wellness, HR can cultivate work environments that prevent these wellness issues from occurring in the first place. In this way, organizations can stop producing a wellness problem that they are then spending money trying to fix.

Footnotes
^[1] Grand View Research. (Accessed April 20, 2024). Corporate wellness market size & share report, 2023–2030
^[2] Grabarek, P., & Sawyer, K. (2025). Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives. Wiley.
^[3] Wei, F., Li, Y., Zhang, Y., and Liu, S. (2018). The interactive effect of authentic leadership and leader competency on followers’ job performance: The mediating role of work engagement. Journal of Business Ethics 153 (3): 763–773.

Recommended Resources

• Book: Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives
• Podcast: Thriving at Work, a Workr Beeing podcast
• Book: Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work

	Katina Sawyer (Ph.D.) is a Co-Founder of Workr Beeing, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, and co-author of Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives.
	Patricia Grabarek (Ph.D.) is a Workplace Wellness Expert, Co-Founder of Workr Beeing, Director of Talent Vitality at Procept BioRobotics, and co-author of Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives.