Wellbeing is something of a buzzword in workplaces right now. Companies are waking up to the fact that they must adopt a culture of wellbeing as the default, not the exception, if they want to attract and retain good people.

I wanted to share my own thoughts on the rise of workplace wellbeing, my observations and what I think is missing which might resonate with you or prompt some thoughts on how your company is addressing wellbeing in the workplace. Feel free to let me know your thoughts and experiences, I’d love to hear your opinion.

What is workplace wellbeing?

There’s a lot of confusion about what workplace wellbeing actually is and what the goal of it is. Will free lunchtime yoga result in better work performance? Will healthy snacks increase sales? Will a perks app improve employee retention?

There’s been an influx of workplace wellbeing initiatives (the industry is set to grow to £66 billion by 2022) and a knee jerk reaction from companies to put something in place to separate themselves from their competition and appeal to young workers. 

Wellbeing is defined by the UK Department of Health as feeling good and functioning well, and comprises each individual’s experience of their life and a comparison of life circumstances with social norms and values. 

Ultimately, if you have staff who have good wellbeing, they will perform better at work. The culture will be better. People will be more productive. They will stay and grow with the company. All of this is good for the bottom line. So there is an incentive for companies to put something in place to improve the wellbeing of their staff.

Wellbeing is personal

This is where I think the point is being missed. Many products and solutions are sticking plasters but don’t actually address wellbeing issues.

Wellbeing is personal. It’s internal. It comes from within us. It’s made up of how we feel about ourselves, our self-esteem, our ability to cope with stress and pressure, our self-worth and value. And this infiltrates into work. 

When something happens to us, like a disappointing result at work, or we go through a bad breakup, it can impact on these areas and start to drag them down. And that’s when it hits work performance.

Let’s say Sarah goes through a breakup that gets a bit messy. It could knock her self esteem and confidence, cause her to feel distracted at work and leave her feeling unable to cope with the pressure. Her manager might not know any of this and only see the dip in performance.

They might think the solution is to offer Sarah some sales training when in fact she could do with some emotional support and to build her resilience. Even just hearing stories of how other people got through their breakups might help her to wade through the fog and get back to herself.

Wellbeing versus mental health

The reason why I share the example of Sarah is because poor wellbeing due to a particular circumstance won’t necessarily lead to a serious mental health issue. Sure, Sarah might take a few sick days but she will get through the breakup. But much of the focus in the media related to workplace wellbeing is focused purely on poor mental health - and this misses out a large portion of the workforce who could go through things like Sarah - In the grand scheme of things not dramatic or long-term serious - but could cost a company through absence and presenteeism or leaveism.

• Presenteeism - personal issues or health problems that prevent an employee from being fully productive at work.
• Leaveism - using annual leave when unwell / taking work home that cannot be completed in working hours.

So, there are people like Sarah who go through a ‘bad patch’ and there's also people who don’t have poor mental health now, but could in the future if they were not supported. How many opportunities do we miss to catch someone and give support before things get really bad?

The workforce of today

I can’t talk about wellbeing without talking about the Millennial generation. By 2025 people born after 1983 will make up 75% of the workforce and they will be demanding more than previous generations when it comes to wellbeing. 

Engaging this demographic is not easy, despite the best efforts of some products I’ve seen. Again I think many are missing the mark. Here’s why:

• Bots and gamification - When it comes to wellbeing and mental health, I for one don’t want to be engaging with a cartoon.
• Staff engagement/wellbeing surveys - How can companies be sure they are getting a true reflection when many say they would not feel comfortable sharing details of their wellbeing and mental health with their employer?
• Training videos - Don’t get me started on training videos! Sure, they worked when I was doing my induction for a summer job at McDonald’s, but when millennials are spending 40 minutes a day on YouTube, surely video training needs to step up and engage in the same way?
• So corporate! - My biggest gripe with most wellbeing products is just how corporate they are. Work products don’t have to feel like work products. Just look at Asana or Notion. And if millennials can fall in love with a bank (hello Monzo!) then they can fall in love with the right workplace wellbeing tool.

This generation should be the priority. They report more mental health issues than any other and will be the majority of the workforce in the next few years. They are our future leaders. We should be equipping them with tools to help them develop, talking to them in their language and engaging with them like the digital platforms they know and trust.

Over 3 million self-help books were sold in the UK last year. A record. People do want to develop and workplaces have a responsibility to help them.

The solution

I believe one of the things holding companies back when it comes to wellbeing is the lack of measurability. This was even stated in Deloitte’s “At a tipping point” report in 2017 on workplace mental health and wellbeing.

Self reporting methods just don’t provide enough accuracy and personality tests don’t uncover the right measures. What’s needed is a tool that can measure specific wellbeing areas as a starting point to raise awareness and give individuals their own benchmark to develop from. Their strengths should be highlighted too so they can use them to their best advantage inside and outside of the workplace.

Development content and resources should be provided in multiple formats; YouTube video, articles, podcasts. Short practical exercises delivered by people who look like peers and who can speak from experience. I realised how important this could be when I stumbled across a YouTube video of a 20-something year old girl talking about how she developed her own self-esteem and saw this comment:

Collective data on the wellbeing of the team should be delivered to the company so that they can be informed and potentially take their own steps to address common wellbeing areas. Let’s say avoiding/uncomfortable with conflict is a common development area across the team. Yes, people who have this as a development area will be able to address it on their own, but the company might decide to host an assertiveness workshop to give additional support. This would be a much better directed use of company training funds too. I’ve often been asked to run team-bonding workshops as a knee jerk reaction to poor performance. Something like this would pinpoint exactly where effort should be directed.

What do you think?

If you’re nodding your head, thinking of your own team or a specific scenario where something like this could have helped you or someone you know who’s struggled with ‘personal issues’ that have impacted at work then thank you. Hopefully this has been a worthwhile read. It might make you think about what your company is doing to support wellbeing - is it purely focused on people with poor mental health? Is it 'out of touch' with the younger generation? Is it a fad that will be forgotten about in 6 months?

My goal for a new kind of workplace wellbeing platform

For over a year and with the help of my co-founder Adam we have been building a platform that we think ticks the boxes for what's important for a company and for the employee, and we are nearly ready to bring this idea to life.

We are using a Nobel-Prize nominated assessment tool (that I’ve been working with for over 10 years) that’s scientifically validated to do the measuring part. This online assessment accurately measures key wellbeing areas and the results can move and change over time. 

These areas include: potential to burn out / coping with stress at work / coping with stress personally / self-criticism / self-esteem and confidence / assertiveness / self-direction and motivation.

We are teaming this with a platform to deliver the results to individuals along with the necessary resources to develop. Our aim is for this to not feel like a work tool. We want people to trust it and turn to it when they need either professional or personal support and development.

We’ve got big plans for the future of workplace wellbeing.

If you think your company or team would like to try the FidlLeaf platform then we will be launching with Back Her Business, a crowdfunder partnered with NatWest in the coming weeks. We have a great package for companies looking to try our wellbeing platform on a small scale.

You can register your interest at FidlLeaf.com or please send me a message here on LinkedIn or at sophie@fidlleaf.com.

Most of my stats came from Deloitte's 'Mental Health and Employers - Refreshing the Case for Investment'. It's a great read and I'd recommend checking it out if workplace wellbeing is on your agenda.

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