Well, well, well

From corner offices to warehouse floors and kitchen table desks, wellness is the word of the moment. The pandemic made it impossible for employers to ignore any longer and we’re hearing about it everywhere. Some are wellness evangelists. Eager to try the latest craze or tell you about their rituals. Others roll their eyes. But no matter where you fall on the spectrum, one thing is certain: wellbeing is real and it matters to employees - and therefore employers.?

It’s also big business. There’s no shortage of companies looking to serve this wellness craze, both for consumers and companies. In part we demand so many new answers because there’s no simple, ‘one size fits all’ solution. For employers, this is particularly frustrating. Solving for employee wellbeing requires a highly individualized experience that meets the needs of the masses, in an evolving and customized way, at an affordable price point. Just thinking about it makes your head spin. And that’s before you dig into the layers of wellbeing.?

Despite the complexity, employers are eager - in some cases verging on desperate - to ‘find a wellbeing’ solution. A recent survey showed that a staggering 86% of employers implemented/plan to implement new strategies in the last 18 months to address employee wellbeing. It’s such a high number that it leaves you wondering which companies aren’t doing that??

That’s the high level view. The details are decidedly a little less clear. The same survey breaks wellbeing into 10+ categories ranging from mental health to physical health, parent specific programs to volunteer activities, and wellness days to the broad brush of ‘wellness stipends’. You can start to see how complicated it gets if you’re the one in charge or designing a wellbeing program. The more I listen to employers talk about wellbeing, the more apparent it becomes that solving for wellbeing - almost comically - is stressing them out.? All of the questions and options leave employers uncertain where to focus and what kind of results to look for.

I’ve got some good news though. I recently learned that what matters most to employees is actually how the company presents the wellbeing offerings. Are they buried in the depths of the intranet? Destined to sit untouched at the bottom of the Employee Handbook? Are they a bullet point in a refreshed ‘Benefits!’ email that gets skimmed, flagged, deleted or ignored? Or are they presented by a Senior Leader, who speaks personally and vulnerably about what their own wellbeing looks like, why the company values employee wellbeing and how they genuinely want employees to use these benefits? Is that message followed up by individual managers checking in on wellbeing during 1:1s and team meetings, reminding everyone what tools are available and that those should be used whenever, however employees want? More often than not it’s a benefit announcement followed by...nothing. An impersonal email showing everything you have access too, with no connection to you, your team, or your leadership.?

Employee perception of commitment and support for wellbeing benefits, in some cases, matters even more than that individual's own use of the support. What does that tell us? It's all about culture. Does the employer genuinely care about employee wellbeing or are they simply checking a box? Not every benefit in a company is going to apply to every individual, but knowing that your employer is genuinely committed to those support structures matters deeply. So if you’re looking for impact, take a step back and look at the culture around the tools you’re implementing. It may help guide some of those choices.??

What does wellbeing look like to you? What do you think your company is doing well? What would you change?