6 Unlikely Reasons Why Your Business is Harming Employee Wellness

Employee wellness remains a complex issue for businesses, with many employers unintentionally harming the well-being of workers through subtle practices that are often overlooked. 

In a 2024 study of 2,200 workers in the United Kingdom throughout 11 sectors, only 55% of employees at a typical workplace reported a high state of well-being in their roles.  

This suggests that employers need to do more to make a positive impact with their initiatives. In many cases, issues stem not from a lack of wellness programs but from core aspects of the work environment and culture that undermine mental and physical health. 

With this in mind, let’s take a deeper look at six unlikely reasons why your business may be harming employee wellness and how to remedy it: 

1. You Lack a Functional Recognition Program

Life as a worker in the UK comes without recognition. In a recent survey, 19% of employees claim that they’ve never received thanks from their employer for their workplace achievements, while 53% believe that a lack of recognition negatively impacts their motivation. 

Recognising the efforts of your employees should be the result of more than just intuition, and establishing a data-oriented approach can make a big difference in identifying and rewarding instances of outperformance. 

Set up an employee management system that can quantify the efforts of your workers, and regularly audit the productivity of your staff against established benchmarks to appropriately recognise the efforts of your best performers. This helps to quantify the work of your employees and establish trust among workers that their output will be rewarded. 

2. Your Benefits are Missing the Mark

Employees crave benefits packages that are relevant to their lifestyle and interests. For many employers, these perks can be a secondary consideration, increasing the risk of disengagement and potentially growing the risk of burnout. 

Adopting an employee benefits platform that has the power to incorporate a variety of different benefits into a single place can help your workers to enjoy more bespoke offers and exclusive discounts that can improve their overall wellness. 

Because company benefits packages can span perks like additional holiday time, local discounts, salary bonuses, and just about any other benefit, they can assist the financial concerns of workers and support a more positive work-life balance. 

3. Your One-Size-Fits-All Approach Isn’t Fit for Purpose

Because wellness programs are often an operational afterthought for decision-makers, they rarely meet the diverse needs of an entire workforce. 

To underline the discrepancies throughout these singular wellness programs, just imagine the different needs and concerns of a 22-year-old worker and a long-serving parent within your workforce. 

Here, it’s imperative that you gather feedback from everyone within your company and tailor your wellness programs to specific demographics and the challenges they more frequently face. Failing to do so can alienate your employees and result in low participation rates for the programs you implement and weaker outcomes. 

4. Leaders Aren’t Invested Enough in Initiatives

Your senior leaders need to be invested in your wellness programs and be active participants in your initiatives to promote healthy behaviours. 

If there’s a lack of motivation among your leaders to behave as role models within the company, your employees are less likely to take your wellness initiatives seriously. 

It’s worth practicing what you preach when it comes to promoting a healthy work-life balance. For instance, sending out-of-hours emails may be an example of showing initiative among your team leaders, but it also dilutes any positive message about switching off from the office in the evenings. 

5. Your Workplace is Full of Psychosocial Hazards

It may be common practice to quickly identify physical hazards like wet floors and place signage down to protect the well-being of employees, but doing the same thing with psychosocial hazards can be a bigger challenge that many employers get wrong. 

Psychosocial hazards can include a lack of role clarity, poor organisational culture, and a sense of a lack of control in jobs. By ignoring these factors, you could be encouraging mental health issues among your workforce, such as feelings of anxiety and burnout. 

Adopting an approach where you manage these psychosocial hazards in the same way as physical hazards means that you can foster a more conducive workplace where employees have the best chance of performing well within their roles without feeling as though they’re undervalued or misunderstood. 

6. You’re Engaging in ‘Well-being Washing’

One of the most common pitfalls of employers is that they ‘well-being wash’ their workplaces by announcing plans to improve the wellness of their employees without making a genuine positive impact. 

The reason that this is such a dangerous approach is that it papers over some severe cracks among workers and treats very serious issues as box-ticking exercises that can lead to widespread job dissatisfaction and a belief that the employer cares more about productivity than their staff. 

Protecting against a sense of inauthenticity for your well-being initiatives requires direct communication with your staff and an understanding of how your programs are addressing their concerns at work. If your employees feel that you’re missing the mark with your initiatives, listen to them and make changes. 

Emphasising Wellness

The great thing about managing the wellness of your employees is that opening a direct avenue for communication is the best way to fine-tune your processes to ensure that everyone believes that they’re being cared for within your organisation. 

Listen to the concerns of all your employees and make changes based on their wants and needs. Simple measures such as recognising their efforts and supporting workers of all ages can make a big difference. 

By tapping into the insights derived from your employee performance management systems, you can build a more comprehensive overview of the output of your workers, helping to take a more proactive approach to supporting those underperforming and rewarding your most productive assets.