'For me, the biggest risk is it erodes trust and that's so hard to build,' says VP of HR
When a business rolls out a new wellbeing initiative in the workplace, it’s often a cause for excitement.
But when the organization fails to live up to its promise of caring about employee happiness, all while loudly proclaiming that it does, that’s come to be known as “wellbeing washing” – and it can pose plenty of risk for employers.
“When it’s free Fridays, or ‘Here’s a smoothie’ – so not necessarily tackling what the issue is or how to support our employees, it’s more about ticking a box saying, ‘We do wellbeing, this is great, we offer free Fridays, we offer smoothies,’” says Angie McKenna, head of people, culture, talent, warmth, smiles and fun at ASquared, a software app developer in Brighton, U.K.
From ‘greenwashing’ to ‘wellbeing washing’
The term plays off another one coined for those businesses who claim to care about the environment but may not do so authentically -- known as “greenwashing.”
Workers today are looking much more critically at what a business is saying and how it’s behaving, making it much harder to hide behind false promises, she says.
“Wellbeing washing comes in when the business thinks, ‘I know exactly what my employees are looking for,’ without actually speaking to them and trying to understand what those challenges are and how we can support them.”
‘Wellbeing has to be at the core of your strategy’
The potential risk to an organization is obvious as retention and attraction numbers will inevitably nosedive.
“For me, the biggest risk is it erodes trust and that’s so hard to build,” says Lito Charet, vice-president HR and inclusion at Imperial Tobacco Canada in Montreal.
“If someone claims to have a holistic wellbeing strategy, then the new hire walks into this toxic environment, it won’t take a long time to figure out.”
The other one is you won’t have an all-star team, she says, “because in the corporate world we live in, if you really want your people to be at their best, wellbeing has to be at the core of your strategy.”
How to detect wellbeing washing
For those organizations who are inadvertently behaving in this fashion, it can be sometimes hard to detect, says Charet.
“I would hope they don’t think that they’re doing it on purpose. Wellbeing has evolved so much over the years, and whether it is wellbeing, DNI, ESG, the world is evolving so quickly. I would think they probably have the best intent but they don’t grasp why it’s really important, and the benefits it can bring.”
One of the strategies to ensure wellbeing is being taken seriously at ASquared involves a simple setting in the company’s Slack channel, says McKenna.
“When they put low battery in their profile, we know they’re not feeling great and that’s a trigger for me to triage them, to check in on them: ‘Is there anything that we can support you with?’ And generally [it’s about] trying to understand whether it’s work-related stress, potential burnout, workload issues, or if there’s something going on at home that may well be impacting their wellbeing.”
Making employee wellbeing real
At Imperial Tobacco, after a discussion with the HR team and management, a number of wellbeing efforts were put in place such as boosted benefits and flexibility around health spending, according to Charet.
“We introduced ‘Fri-Yays’ which is basically from April to October, it’s half the afternoon off Friday because that was a big bonus to be able to enjoy the summer, she says. “This came from wellbeing being very integrated but [also] our DEI council actually came to implement mandatory psychological safety training for all leaders, for them to better understand what it means and what they need to shift.”
Genuine wellbeing initiatives are best when they are fully talked out within the organization, says McKenna, and the company holds an all-hands company meeting once a month.
“We discuss topics like burnout, so ‘Are we at risk of burnout? Which of our teams are at risk of burnout? How do we prevent that?’ It may be that we’ve got a really big client project and we’ve got a project or delivery team that’s been working for three to six months, what we then do is we swap them up with another team, give them a break, put them on maybe a smaller project, and then put them back on the project so they’re not constantly in this high-stress environment.”
The holistic way to wellbeing
Wellbeing management should also be comprehensive and integrated in its implementation, says Charet.
“For me, a holistic approach is recognizing that all the aspects of the individual are interconnected… We really need to understand the person not as an employee, but as an as an individual and then look at what they need to be able to thrive both inside and out of work because they are intertwined.”
“If your family is sick, or you’re not doing well, it impacts your mental health, which impacts your work, as an example. So really looking at the individual as a whole,” she says.
Creating a functioning wellbeing program can also pay off, according to McKenna.
“Two years ago, our absence rate was astronomical. We had a rolling door effect of retention too with people coming in and then leaving within six months, and we couldn’t retain people for anything longer than 18 months – and the business didn’t know what to do about this.”
To address this troubling metric, McKenna took action.
“I’d implemented a culture workshop to try and understand ‘Where are the challenges? What is it that our employees are facing? Why are they leaving?’ And ultimately it was ‘We’re not flexible. We don’t really care about workload, we don’t care about work-related stress, burnout.’ So employees decided, ‘We’ll go and find another company to work for.’”
Today, the retention rate is much higher and employees have more confidence in the wellbeing message, she says.
“Our employees feel empowered to be able to either come to me or their line manager and address a situation and there’s no fear of reprisals or fear of being treated differently. They feel heard, they feel listened to, they feel like we’re actually actioning the stuff that we say that we’re going to do.”
