Things you should know before you start a wellbeing initiative at the workplace

Many employees suffer from poor mental health and wellbeing. According to a recent report published in 2019, two out of every five employees in the UK are experiencing poor mental health, with work being a contributing factor to it. Besides, 30% of the UK’s workforce has been diagnosed with some sort of mental health condition at some point in their lives. According to the report by Health and Safety Executive statistics, the total number of working days lost, between 2018 and 2019, due to mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, and depression was 12.8 million which equates to 21.2 days lost per case. Whereas, 41% of employees with such problems reported that no actions have been taken in the workplace to address these issues.   

These numbers are quite concerning and show that there is certainly a need to help employees recover from problems such as burnout, stress, anxiety, and depression. As a mental health expert, I believe the most cost-effective and efficient way of helping all people in the organisation is to adopt a preventative approach instead of a remedial one. In other words, organisations must learn to improve the wellbeing of their employee to prevent these issues from developing or worsening. This includes understanding the risk factors for certain problems, how they can be eliminated or minimised in the first place and identifying the resources and skills that might be needed to better equip the employees against these problems. A well-planned, evidence-based and systematic wellbeing strategy and relevant initiatives can spare many people from experiencing important problems.

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing interest among organisations to invest in wellbeing initiatives. The success of these initiatives depends on many factors such as leadership attitudes and behaviours, the overall organisational strategy, the employees' perception of safety within the organisation, the commitment by the employees and leaders, and the type of programs as well as whether and how they are executed. In this post, I have shared some of my thoughts that I believe to be helpful in addressing the critical issues around wellbeing programs and have made a few recommendations that are relevant to both practitioners and leaders.

Wellbeing programs are not standalone activities

One of the reasons why wellbeing and mental health initiatives fail or do not benefit the individuals in the workplace is a lack of strategy which acts as a guide for implementing, monitoring, and evaluating the program. The wellbeing and mental health strategy should be comprehensive, integrated with the broader policies and management processes of the organisation, tied to the organisation’s values, and systemic across everything that’s done in the organisation rather than a standalone activity or an added project. The strategy needs to be continuously revisited and updated to keep it relevant to the changes in the organisation such as the culture, the values, the people, the teams, and the leadership. People should also consistently speak the same language and embed it at all levels of the organisation.

When there is no strategy in place, then there will be mostly one-off interventions or activities rather than an ongoing process. Organisations, most with good intentions, provide certain wellbeing and mental health services or activities for employees, but wellbeing is not a one-off thing and shouldn’t be done for the sake of doing it. For example, organisations arrange a mindfulness or stress management workshop, or they provide healthy snacks; however, these are done to check the box, thinking that the organisation has a wellbeing strategy. Serving healthy fruits and teaching breathing techniques are all fine, but if there is no good job design in place, no good management, no good leadership, then it won’t go any further than a checkbox exercise.  

What organisations need is a holistic approach that helps them reflect the wellbeing strategy in all aspects of the organisation including the human resources practices, the management strategies of the leaders, the design of the environment, and the design of the job. You might have a training session focused on, say stress management, but both the leaders and the employees need to know that a wellbeing focus is not equal to a one-time or one-week training. Besides, what I have seen in some organisations is that what employees actually need to improve their wellbeing is not another training or a workshop, but a safe space to talk about these issues or leader attitudes and behaviours that are in line with such a wellbeing focus. Therefore, a lack of clear wellbeing strategy tied to the whole organisation strategy makes employee and organisational wellbeing sort of symbolic. Having a clear policy around wellbeing and mental health and engaging in activities in line with the policy throughout the year will make sure that there are a common language and culture around these ideas. Organisations should also make sure that the concern for the wellbeing of the employees is reflected in each aspect of the process including hiring them, onboarding them, and until they exit the organisation.

The leadership attitudes and behaviours also have to be consistent with the wellbeing strategy or the message the organisation is trying to convey. Sometimes even when you do have a policy that considers the wellbeing of people, if the leaders behave in ways that are not consistent with this policy (e.g., expecting employees to respond to emails after work or over the weekend or refusing flexible working), then the policy becomes meaningless and is subject to die. If the values say one thing and the leaders do something different, employees might approach the leaders in a doubtful manner. In fact, managers/leaders should champion the company’s wellbeing strategy and any practices or programs associated with this strategy.

We can’t underestimate or ignore organisation-related factors

I want to draw your attention to another critical issue that I’ve been witnessing in the current organisations. We all know that individual and biological factors are definitely important in understanding one’s wellbeing and mental health. However, we cannot deny the role of contextual factors and the environment in which the individual is situated. When it comes to workplaces, these factors refer to all the organisational factors such as the job design, attitudes and behaviours of the management, work pressure, the design of the office environment and flexibility in terms of work. Working with the individual through coaching, counselling or psychotherapy might bring good results regarding addressing their problems, but psychological health is an external issue as much as it is an individual one.     

All employees have the right to be well at the workplace. No matter what, they shouldn’t be in a position where they go to work and end up being psychologically and/or physically unhealthy due to the management of their workplaces. The environment they are in should be one where wellbeing is fostered by the behaviours of the management as well as the design of the space and the tasks. I’ve seen that this has been overlooked in many organisations and resulted in poor - and even detrimental - initiatives. For example, organisations don’t have the right to push employees to be tougher or more resilient with the expectation that they would cope with the situational demands better. This is quite unfair because organisations do have the responsibility to provide the right environment, the right amount of work, and enough flexibility. Without providing these facilities, asking people to be strong, and learning how to cope with whatever they are given is not ethical. Organisations should focus on what they can do to change the environment and address the external pressures before asking people to be more resilient or “survive the demands”. This means looking at the system-related factors that contribute to employees’ wellbeing, in addition to the individual level support initiatives.  

In this sense, introducing certain resilience training programs with the aim to prepare employees for the organisation’s difficult work conditions such as long working hours or tough managers cannot be and should not be a solution. The belief of giving resilience training to employees in an effort to compensate for the organisational factors that are negative for employees’ wellbeing is not fair. You can help employees develop and improve certain wellbeing skills as part of the broader wellbeing strategy and initiatives, but resilience should not become the sole solution for good mental health. What about the contextual factors that negatively impact one’s wellbeing and mental health? Organisations should do whatever they can to provide the best working conditions, create the best job designs, and making sure the management acts in accordance with these and stop expecting employees to become tough. For example, identifying possible tight deadlines and heavy workload and managing them well, increasing the autonomy of the employees over their tasks and involving them in certain decisions, providing opportunities for quality connections at work, making the roles and expectations as clear as possible are some of the things that organisations can do. These are also among the psychosocial risk factors important in the wellbeing of employees that the Health and Safety Executive in the UK has identified. I don’t know about you, but I personally wouldn’t want to work in an organisation where I am expected to be strong to last there, so to say.     

Everything starts with trusting the people from the moment they walk into the organisation and caring for them as people, not only as employees. This means appreciating that they have a life and needs outside work. A generous, giving, and humble attitude combined with compassion can definitely help employees trust the leaders and the organisation and make them thrive at work. Leaders can also model healthy practices, such as taking sick leaves when they need to, not sending emails outside working hours, noticing an employee who is struggling, giving the message that they don’t have to be happy all the time, and having open discussions around wellbeing and mental health and fight the stigma associated with these topics.

Programs and practices should be evidence-based

One of the ways we can help leaders see why wellbeing practices are so integral in employees’ personal and professional lives is to show some scientific evidence. There are many research studies that can be used to generate certain models and examples of wellbeing programs and interventions, and statistics that display the benefits of such practices. However, how we convey the message is critical. Although bringing evidence on the table is important, being stuck with the theory might scare people. We can find ways to show the evidence with few words and then shift our focus to action because people follow actions more than words.   

On the other hand, although there are best practices or scientific evidence around wellbeing programs, nothing is certain when it comes to applications and implementations because of the complexity of people and the organisations. One practice might be beneficial for one organisation or some individuals but not for others. Therefore, the best approach would be to play with them, try things out, and see which ones work better. For example, in dysfunctional workplaces, certain activities such as promoting healthy eating might backfire, because employees might be expecting other - essential -things from the organisation such as psychological safety or trust. Creating our own version of the practices is always possible as long as they are based on the current needs and there is a science behind them.

Evidence-based approaches can also encourage an ongoing assessment. Before starting wellbeing and mental health strategy, it might be a good idea to identify some baseline for measuring improvements. This can be achieved by certain standardised instruments such as evidence-based surveys that target different aspects of wellbeing like happiness, life satisfaction, resilience, quality of relationships, job satisfaction, and psychological needs. Then, you can measure these variables as you go along at certain points. This will ensure a good assessment of what works and what doesn’t. Besides standardised measures, collecting employee feedback can also be a good idea. One way to achieve this is by creating certain forums where people can safely express their opinions. However, it’s important to continuously monitor this feedback and give the message that they are listened to and they are taken into consideration in making the necessary changes.

Concluding Remarks

Workplace wellbeing and mental health is more than a few trainings. It includes a well-defined strategy, a relevant policy that is aligned with the organisation’s values, and a continuous process. Wellbeing initiatives should be led from the top. The CEO and other leadership teams should be on board. The leaders should support the program by being an advocate, communicating regularly with employees about the organisation’s commitment, using appropriate language to decrease stigma, and by modelling certain healthy behaviours consistent with the wellbeing policy. 

The wellbeing initiative should not be copied from another one as each organisation has different needs, a different culture, different values, and different people. Therefore, they should be relevant to the organisation. We should also remember that this is a journey; we can invite the organisation and the leaders to this journey and see where they are at and how we can align around the goals and move forward. Pushing organisations and leaders on a path they might not be ready for might backfire.