It’s high time we had a serious conversation about workplace wellness. A strange paradox is occurring within organisations. The investment in corporate wellness solutions is expected to reach 94.6 billion dollars in 2026, but on the other, we are also experiencing a 13 percent increase in employee stress YOY.
The effectiveness of the many wellbeing solutions designed to encourage employees to take responsibility for their own health seems to have reached a ceiling.
Perhaps it’s now time to embrace a new paradigm for workplace wellness. Maybe it isn’t the people who need to be fixed, but rather organisations.
Look at the problem from Airbnb’s perspective of Elephants Dead Fish and Vomit.
Elephant – What is it that needs to be said?
Dead Fish: What event in the past needs to be addressed?
Vomit – What should be made public?
The elephant in the living room: Individual wellness solutions do not work
Be clear: Before employers cancel their digital wellbeing platforms and mental health apps, they should know that wellbeing is an important investment for the workplace.
A recent study conducted by the Wellbeing Research Centre found that organisations with higher subjective well-being outperformed the stock market. Not by a small margin either. In the first half 2024, they saw a return of 11% higher than the S&P500.
How can you make workplace wellbeing work? In early this year, William Fleming conducted a study to examine the impact of different wellbeing interventions like mindfulness classes and wellness apps. The study found that none of the solutions studied had a statistically significant effect on employee well-being.
All of these interventions share three common characteristics:
- These are targeted interventions that treat symptoms of mental illness or stress in employees.
- The first thing they do is to assume that the person in question needs fixing
- All of them try to improve the wellbeing of employees’ workday
These interventions do not address the obvious question: “Why are there so many stressed employees and is it their fault?”
Few dare ask this question. It’s an unpopular question that few dare to ask.
The design of human workplaces is successful when it integrates wellbeing into work at all levels of an organisation, so that the two are indistinguishable.
Dead fish: what keeps employees in a state of stress and burnout
According to a 2024 YouGov survey, 15% of UK households said that a family member or members of the household took time off from work this year due to mental illness. This was attributed to:
- 51% – poor work-life balance
- 50% – excessive workload
- 36% – demanding management
- 27% – Long or inflexible working hours
- Discrimination and harassment – 24%
These reasons are all related to company culture or leadership styles. Apps, fruit baskets, yoga sessions and webinars on awareness days are not enough to fix them.
You may not be talking about your wellbeing when you talk.
Employees want more wellbeing interventions in the workplace
According to CIPD, a supportive and healthy workplace culture has a positive impact on employee wellbeing. Does the answer to the conundrum of wellbeing lie in changing the culture at work?
It’s more complicated than that. It’s all about creating a culture where people want to work. It’s all about creating an environment that is more humane, where employees are motivated to do their best and feel valued and respected.
Human workplace culture is a way to unlock people’s potential and sustain their performance. These are not workplaces where employees sit together and visualize success. Accountability, ownership and clear goals are the foundations of these workplaces.
These workplace cultures are based on drivers of wellbeing ranging from flexibility to happiness. According to Jan Emmanuel De Neve’s brilliant research into workplace wellbeing, these cultures are focused on creating a feeling of belonging within the organisation. This is the number-one driver of workplace wellness.
The design of human workplaces is successful when it integrates wellbeing into work at all levels of an organisation, so that the two are indistinguishable.
The message that your employees and experts have for any leader who wants to invest in workplace wellness is the same: Invest in your culture.
Three things that leaders can do effectively to promote wellbeing in their culture
1) Calendars
You can do this by creating space in the diary of people so that they are able to be healthy and perhaps attend a mental health awareness webinar. It will increase productivity by allowing employees to do deep working, and improve their wellbeing.
Recommended Reading
Quick Wins
- Start meeting-free days
- Set your calendar to automatically end meetings at 25 or 45 minutes
- Ask your people: Does this need to be an email, meeting or informal chat? Ask your people: does this need to be an email/meeting/informal chat? Encourage your employees to also run this audit.
As Bruce Daisley stated in his brilliant book, Presence , “fixing the workplace culture begins with your calendar, not your office.”
Create intentional moments of connection with your staff to enhance belonging and performance.
Recommended Listening
East Sleep Work Repeat episode: “Call centre workers who overlapped their breaks formed a social group where they could connect and vent with each other, resulting in a 23% increase in productivity”
Quick Wins:
- Work-free workplaces: coffee and cake for work-free meetings
- Create a magical lunch hour in office environments. This is a time set aside for employees to get together, share food and have fun.
- Create quiet areas in the office where employees can recharge their social batteries and take advantage of other opportunities for connection.
3) Lead loudly
Leaders who set healthy boundaries and promote a positive workplace culture are more likely to boost employee performance.
Quick Wins:
- In your signature, indicate that you do not expect to receive replies from emails sent outside working hours.
- Use the Outlook delay delivery feature to send emails only during work hours
- Do not be late for work and encourage others to do the same
Empathy in the workplace
VaynerX is an example of a forward thinking organisation that has adopted these effective wellbeing interventions. VaynerX is on a quest to transform the company into a human-centred one by fostering empathy. Its leaders are role model in business with heart and prioritise culture and wellbeing.
Claude Silver, their Chief Heart Officer and a brilliant man, said that corporate culture had lost a great deal of its humanity. The heart needs to be put back in the workplace.
It will at least remove the smell of vomit, dead fish and the elephant in the room.
