Leaders who are curious about the roots of poor wellbeing and by extension the origins of employee engagement and organisational satisfaction undoubtedly benefit from more productive, content and engaged workforces. However, getting curious in a practical way means looking beyond the collective knowns and initiating discovery of what might be lurking below the company waterline. Senior leaders are clearly the people for this job, having the necessary circle of influence to initiate both the investigation and strategic remediation into causal factors, should they be identified.
However, despite being best placed to do this, unsurprisingly (because of the fear about what they might find) this is rarely where such an investigation starts – if it starts at all. The stakeholder groups most often found ‘in charge’ of wellbeing are usually several rungs lower on the seniority and board influence ladder. More often than not responsibility for employee wellbeing rests with the occupational health, safety, health and environment teams or the human resources department.
On one level this makes sense. These are the business areas where employees can expect confidentiality and therefore people feel relatively safe to share their concerns and experiences. They are therefore the functions with the greatest amount of first-hand experience regarding wellbeing outcomes. They get the footfall from those who need help and are therefore in the best place to know what kind of support might be helpful. This is great for providing the support but, as this group often says, they have no influence when it comes to moving the dial on the sources of the stress that employees show up with. Their circle of concern is wider than their narrow circle of influence, meaning they’re restricted to sourcing either emotional support services or personal development interventions such as resilience training.
Despite overwhelming evidence that investment in addressing the primary sources of poor wellbeing at work pays for itself many times over, only a small number of companies are directing investment towards wellbeing. Stress and poor mental health statistics tell us that people feel they have to respond to relentless work demands and it’s burning them out. Rather than investigating those demands and moderating risk of damage by working directly on the sources of that pressure, employees are being sold the idea that they need to avoid damage by taking more personal responsibility for their wellbeing. The relevant services are then offered almost as a commodity solution.
A dizzying array of wellbeing services is being offered to employees to help them take more personal responsibility in this regard. To appreciate just how popular the commodity solution approach is, you only have to look at the growth of the wellbeing industry in the past several years. There’s nothing like demand to stimulate supply and the global wellbeing industry hasn’t disappointed in the provision of smart and scalable interventions to salve and support the stressed employee.
Helping employees to be more aware and responsible for their own wellbeing is sensible but this should be a strand in a wider strategy rather than the strategy itself. In a rather ironic twist, the message that ‘We want to help you protect your own wellbeing and to help you do that we have provided lots of wonderful support services for you to use’ often adds an additional layer of pressure. Many of the people we help tell us that they feel guilty about not being able to find the time to access the support that’s provided for them. Given that they’re often already feeling overwhelmed, it’s a short and common cognitive hop from here to ‘So really, it’s my fault that I feel like this’. Remember how the brain generalises and is biased to seek confirmation. This ironic twist could actually be compounding the issue.
Many of the people we see at this stage are genuinely struggling to cope and as a result, their performance is often declining. It can therefore be helpful to have access to confidential support. Ironically, when a wellbeing service is ‘popular’ the organisation is rightly pleased it’s being used, thus demonstrating that the decision to invest in the service was a good one. Basking in the warm glow of rewarded good intention, conversations are then had about how to extend or augment the service in some way so that others may be similarly supported. This is great but only up to a point. Life is full of surprises and people will need support from time to time as unanticipated events or storms rear up. But this type of support only goes so far and may only provide temporary relief.
Most of the wellbeing services we see in our consulting work do contribute something. If they could be made to integrate more effectively with each other then they might also deliver something valuable to a broader wellbeing strategy. Every wellbeing investment is well intentioned. However, the thread that runs through all the most popular interventions is that they’re either focused on ‘repair’ to a damaged individual or are designed to help minimise negative wellbeing impacts by building personal resilience. People who use the services are grateful, but the money invested does nothing to uncover and address what’s driving people to need these services in the first place. These types of interventions are just sticking plasters on broken windows.
