Do wellness interventions actually make employees feel better?

Ahead of introducing a workplace wellness initiative or programme, employers need to diagnose the root problem, similar to how a doctor will ask a patient what is wrong before recommending a course of action

Many organisations offer interventions focused on changing the individual worker rather than the workplace. Picture: iStock

Organisations in Ireland and worldwide are investing significant sums of money in employee wellbeing. In 2021, they spent $61.2bn (€59.5bn) on stress management training, resilience programmes, team building exercises, and lunchtime yoga sessions.

It’s a trend set to continue, with the Harvard Business Review predicting that global spending on workplace wellness will reach $94.6bn (€92bn) by 2026.

There are good reasons why organisations think it’s worth spending this money.

“They know that employees who feel well are more motivated, perform better, and have more energy for innovative work,” says Deirdre O’Shea, professor of work and organisational psychology at the University of Limerick.

Studies have proven the link between employee wellbeing and productivity. Take two international studies published in 2023, for example. One showed happier employees were more productive, while the other found that happy workplaces were more profitable.

Yet, a question remains: Do wellness interventions make employees feel better?

William Fleming, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, attempted to answer this question in a study published last year. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/irj.12418.

“There has been extensive debate and plenty of cynicism about this over the past decade, so I wanted to test these concerns,” he says.

Dr William Fleming, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre

His study looked at a wide range of wellbeing interventions and controversially concluded that almost none had a lasting impact on worker wellbeing or job satisfaction.

“While these findings do not entirely discount positive effects for some individual workers, any such effect may be averaged out by a negative effect elsewhere,” he concluded.

It isn’t the only study to have arrived at this conclusion. A 2019 study looked at some 33,000 workers across the US and found no differences in clinical health markers, healthy behaviours, job absenteeism, or performance between those who completed workplace wellness programmes and those who didn’t.

Combatting specific stressors

Associate professor in organisational behaviour at Trinity College, Wladislaw Rivkin, believes these findings reveal a common misunderstanding in organisations — one-size-fits-all interventions can improve health equally for everyone.

He gives the example of time management training.

“That might be useful for someone who works autonomously and has to manage their time themselves but not so useful for someone who works on a factory conveyor belt,” he says.

Rivkin argues that it would make more sense for organisations to assess the specific stressors affecting employees before suggesting any intervention.

“The way organisations deploy interventions currently probably wastes a lot of time and resources as they are not focussed on the specific stressors employees face,” he says.

Wladislaw Rivkin. Picture: Edward Moss

O’Shea agrees: “I’m not at all surprised that many intervention programmes are ineffective in the long term because, for the most part, organisations don’t engage in any form of diagnosis before introducing them. Organisations ought to follow the same process doctors do when they ask patients what’s wrong before recommending a course of treatment based on symptoms. Organisations should identify what aspects of employee wellbeing need to be improved.”

Research suggests that structural change is more beneficial than individual interventions. O’Shea refers to the European working conditions survey 2021 which canvassed more than 70,000 workers across 36 countries.

“It found that the biggest stressors on workers were the social demands made on them in terms of having to deal with people and handling the likes of verbal aggression; work intensity and workload; our always-on culture where it’s hard to disconnect; unsocial work hours and shift work; and job insecurity,” she says.

Rivkin suggests that reflecting on the Job Demands-Resources model might be helpful. It argues that the two factors influencing employee wellbeing are job demands and job resources. Both factors should be balanced, with employees having adequate resources to meet the demands of their work.

The problem is that workplace interventions often overly focus on enhancing resources.

“Imagine someone under constant time pressure to get their work done. If their employer introduced an after-lunch mindfulness session, it would likely have negative rather than positive effects,” says Rivkin. “Instead of reducing stress, it would extend their working day, and while meditating, rather than relaxing, they’d likely be thinking of all the work tasks they still had to complete.”

He believes employers would be better advised to reduce job demands.

“Take the chronic staff shortages in the medical sector, for example,” he says. 

I can’t think of any wellness intervention that would alleviate stress on workers as much as increasing the number of employees.

However, because structural change is complicated, he understands why many organisations continue offering interventions aimed at changing the individual worker rather than the workplace.

“In many professions, specific demands are so ingrained that they are difficult or expensive to change,” he says. “This is the reason why organisations often introduce superficial interventions that are unlikely to be beneficial but allow them to claim they support the health and wellbeing of their workforce.”

Introduction of new ISO standard

O’Shea expects that even more employers will want to be seen to prioritise employee wellbeing following the introduction of a new International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) standard.

Dr Deirdre O’Shea, professor of work and organisational psychology at the University of Limerick. Photograph Liam Burke/Press 22

“ISO standards are internationally agreed benchmarks, and there’s a new one — ISO standard 45003 — that relates to managing psychosocial risks in the workplace,” she says. “It’s going to put greater pressure on employers to pay attention to the impact of work on the psychological health of employees.”

She advises employers who want to do this effectively to seek the help of experts trained in assessing a workforce’s needs, designing interventions that cater for those needs and then evaluating the impact of such interventions over time: “If that’s not possible, another option is to follow the guidelines in the World Health Organization document on mental health at work.https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240057944,”

This document separates workplace interventions into three broad categories:

1. Preventing exposure to risk through the design of the job and the workplace itself;

2. Promoting and protecting workers’ wellbeing by training in skills required to cope with and manage the demands of their jobs;

3. Supporting people with specific mental health conditions to participate in and thrive in the workplace.

“It’s a document that provides an easy-to-understand framework for implementing wellness interventions,” says O’Shea.

Whether or not employers use it, she believes all wellness interventions must start with a needs assessment: “Most organisations carry out some sort of employee engagement survey, and these could be used to ask specific questions to identify what issues would benefit from being targeted through interventions. Employees should then be given the choice to engage with these interventions, as there can be resistance when things are mandated from the top. Those who engage should be evaluated over time to see if the intervention was effective.”

Fleming hopes his research will encourage employers to invest more thought into supporting workplace wellbeing. He’d like to see them actively try to reduce employee stress rather than promoting programmes that enable employees to cope with it.

“We know there are enlightened organisations and HR managers who are well aware that a relaxation class won’t solve the problem of stress in the workplace,” he says. “I’d like my research to give those people the ammunition they need to argue for more comprehensive strategies that really make a positive difference to people’s working lives.”