From professional development opportunities, to iPhone or Fitbit-fueled steps competitions, to virtual therapy sessions, companies have invested heavily in employee wellness programs hoping they’ll bring happier, healthier, more productive workers. Yet a recent University of Oxford study finds that rates of success—and thus ROI—are murky at best.
“Across multiple subjective well-being indicators, participants appear no better off,” concluded University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Center professor, William Fleming, in a January 2024 paper published in Industrial Relations Journal. He broadly defines workplace well-being as “how positive an employee feels in their job, which inevitably influences their sense of purpose, belonging, and productivity.”
The study compared the data of nearly 50,000 workers at more than 230 companies to see if those who take advantage of wellness benefits fare better than those who don’t. Fleming found that, with the lone exception of volunteerism initiatives, virtually every element of the programming—including online coaching, access to sleep apps and resiliency training—failed to affect a positive impact on overall employee well-being.
Experts say this comes as no surprise. “Implementing cookie cutter well-being programming is unlikely to move the dial in any significant way,” says veteran workplace wellness guru and customer experience consultant, John DiJulius, CEO of the DiJulius Group, whose list of clients includes Nestle, Marriott, Lexus, Starbucks and The Ritz-Carlton. Instead, he writes in his 2024 book, The Employee Experience Revolution, employers must create an intentionally crafted culture “where every member of the organization wants to play a role in their own well-being and supporting that of everyone around them. We have to engineer [the workplace] so that every long-term employee believes their choice to join the company was one of the best decisions of their entire life.”
Here, DiJulius shares three things companies can do right now to improve employee experiences and not only hypercharge wellness, retention and engagement, but boost their bottom lines.
Grow Your Own Talent
Let’s look at some numbers. First, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national average for annual employee turnover for 2022 was 47%—and 70% of that was voluntary, an all-time high that’s more than doubled since 2011. Second, a recent Gallup study finds the cost of replacing a quality employee ranges from half to two times their annual salary. That means companies that pay an average salary of $50,000 and have 100 employees can expect annual turnover costs of about $2.6 million a year.
Now, more than half of all voluntarily exiting employees said nobody in a management position had bothered to talk to them about their job satisfaction or future with the organization for at least three months before they left. Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s 2024 Workforce Learning Report found 94 percent of employees say they’d stay at a company longer if it invested more in helping them learn. That interest is stronger among younger workers, with more than a quarter of Gen Zers and millennials citing ongoing learning as the top determining factor for their happiness at work. They also said not having opportunities to learn and grow would be their number one reason for leaving.
So the takeaway is pretty clear. First, we need to train managers and leaders to have frequent, meaningful conversations with employees about what really matters to them. What are their frustration points in the workplace? Where do they see themselves going in their career? How can we help them grow? What projects are they passionate about?
From there, leadership needs to be proactive about using that information to provide actionable results. Offer administrators coaching classes to help them become better leaders. create mentorship and shadowing opportunities to foster a culture of learning that helps incoming workers master the ropes and others grow into new roles.
Offer incentives for completing new certifications or online learning courses and support those opportunities by building pressure-free time into employees’ schedules. Encourage workers to attend conferences then make time for them to discuss what they learned. Follow-up with talks to help them find ways to incorporate new learning into their workflow and daily routine.
Provide Consistent Feedback & Recognition
Gallup’s latest annual “State of the American Workplace” report found that 40% of staffers actively disengage from their work when they feel they’re being ignored by administrators.
This is important, because employees who are regularly acknowledged for the work they do say they’d be highly unlikely to look for a new job.
Expressing gratitude at work doesn’t take much effort, but it can create an incredibly memorable professional experience: Thinking you did a good job is one thing, but getting public props from your boss or coworker takes things to the next level.
The point is, we need to instill a culture of positive reinforcement through persistent employee acknowledgement. It’s saying thanks when a task gets completed, opening or closing emails with a note of appreciation, writing cards or direct reports that let employees know they’re doing great work, taking your team out for lunch, throwing a party, texting congrats for professional anniversaries or personal milestones. The goal is to create a culture where everyone is on a mission to catch their employees and coworkers doing something right and letting them know about it.
We all want to be seen, heard, and valued for our unique skills and contributions. And the data shows over and over that employees who receive weekly light-touch attention from their managers are three times more likely to be all-in at work.
Prioritize Employee Mental Health
According to the National Institute of Mental Health one in five Americans (about 58 million people) are living with mild, moderate, or severe anxiety or depression. The problem is so pronounced, BrightPlan’s annual Wellness Barometer Survey on the state of workforce well-being reported that 53% of C-suite and HR leaders ranked supporting the holistic well-being of employees as their biggest people-related challenge of the year.
“It’s easy to put resources on the workplace mental health buffet, but like so many ‘all you can eat’ menus, the quality of what’s served is not usually great,” Dr. Richard Safeer, chief medical director of employee health and well-being at Johns Hopkins Medicine and author of A Cure for the Common Company told Forbes last January. “The workplace culture is complex and the expectation that simple solutions will prevail is naïve.”
He goes on to advocate for implementing highly intentional mental health benefits and support structures tailored to the personal needs of the employees they’re intended to serve. But he stresses that the number one thing companies can do to promote mental well-being in the workplace is to seek to create supportive workplaces that feel psychologically safe. He defines psychological safety at work as “the ability to bring your full self to work, take risks and allow yourself to be vulnerable without fear of negative consequences.”
Leaders need to let employees know that they care about them, and that they’ll be there for them when they’re struggling. And, they need to cultivate an authentic atmosphere of trust. Empathy and trust are organizational elements that that shouldn’t be taken for granted. They go a long way toward cultivating a strong sense of belonging in their employees and can support psychological well-being.
