With Mental Health UK reporting that 1 in 4 women are severely burned out in the workplace, and AllBright’s own Future of Work for Women report revealing 38% want to leave their current role within a year, it's clear stress is a big problem for women.
Worryingly, a further 60% of women believe their employer doesn’t care about their wellbeing at all. The statistics paint a worrying picture. Wellness washing only exacerbates the issue- not only by being surface level at best but also by placing the responsibility back on the employee. So, what should workplaces be doing to make actionable, genuine change, when it’s clear that a wellness app subscription as a job ‘perk’ isn’t working?
We delve into the truth about wellness washing, and what employers should actually be doing to combat the burnout epidemic.
What is wellness washing?
Wellness washing in the workplace happens when employers provide so-called health and wellbeing initiatives, like apps, free classes or team lunches, to appear as though they are considering employee stress. Whilst it may seem this means employers are looking after employee wellbeing, wellness washing initiatives are often surface level. They rarely combat the issues their staff are experiencing, mainly because they don’t really tackle the deeper cause.
Genuine wellbeing issues in the workplace include growing workload, burnout, a toxic team culture, lack of flexibility, poor management practices or unrealistic expectations. While these perks seem positive from the outside, they are often just that. Perks. And they do little to support what employees need to avoid the issues they’re facing at work.
Genuine wellbeing measures, not apps
Whilst meditation apps serve a great purpose in helping us take time to reflect and relax, women in the workplace often do not have that time to take in the first place. With the Office for National Statistics reporting 63% of women do more than their fair share of shouldering household and care responsibilities, workplaces are in desperate need of genuine wellbeing measures.
Strategies like flexible working hours and remote working which allow women to strike a better work/life balance. As more and more companies move away from hybrid working and towards Return to Office Orders, we are looking at more women experiencing issues like burnout on a wider scale. It is down to organisations and the leaders that represent them to make a genuine action plan for employee health and happiness.
Supportive leadership, not pizza parties
No one can argue that team lunches are a good opportunity to bond with colleagues and build friendships, they will not fix issues like over expectation and mounting workloads. They’re also an extremely one-size-fits-all measure for a very deeply individual problem.
Some colleagues may have challenges that make experiences like these uncomfortable, and they are also the wrong forum to get to the heart of personal issues that may be impacting performance.
This is where supportive leadership is essential. A Forbes survey revealed 68% of employees do not feel like their manager listens to them. This can lead to increased frustrations, a lack of retention, or worse still, employees quietly ‘getting on with it’, whilst burning themselves out. Instead of perks like pizza parties, organisations should prioritise fostering a supportive, open workplace, where employees and leaders alike have the forum to discuss issues like increasing workloads, stress or burnout and then strategize on the best ways to solve the issue together.
Promoting balance, not overwork
Most of us will have worked somewhere where being ‘first in and last to leave’ is worn like a badge of honour. But this kind of toxic mentality will only make the issue of burnout worse. Instead of organisations rewarding this type of behaviour, to avoid wellness washing, it’s essential to instead reward for contribution and discourage ‘living to work’.
This could mean arranging drop-in clinics for employees to discuss their workplace challenges with their manager, measurable frameworks for leaders to analyse how their employees are coping with their workloads, celebrating the ‘small wins’ of each employee, or even setting a hard finish time in the office.
By creating an environment that celebrates the value every employee brings to the team, rather than how long they spend doing it, organisations prove they trust their employees and care in tangible ways about their workplace wellbeing, as opposed to washing over their concerns.
So, what can be done to combat wellness washing?
Whilst free team lunches, exercise classes or app subscriptions truly are nice additions for employees to enjoy, they allow more toxic workplaces to ignore the issues at hand. To avoid wellness washing, employers instead need to walk the walk when it comes to employee wellbeing.
To help combat the burnout epidemic, organisations should instead create safe, supportive environments, avoid overloading the employees who seem equipped to handle it and ensure employees are able to approach their managers and leaders. Bringing the mental wellbeing conversation out into the open, rather than disguising it, is key. It is when organisations find tangible, genuine and effective strategies to deal with the issues causing burnout that the balance between workload and wellness will truly be achieved.