Financial Review
Employers who are serious about improving the wellbeing of staff must tackle the root causes of stress instead of relying on “easy actions” such as offering free access to health apps and mindfulness workshops.
That’s the key takeaway from a new study from the University of Oxford, which delivered a scathing assessment of wellbeing programs aimed at changing individual workers, rather than improving their workplace.
Based on survey data from 46,336 workers across 233 organisations in the UK, the study found that relaxation practices, time management, coaching, financial wellbeing programs, wellbeing apps, sleep apps and sleep events delivered no improvement in average employee wellbeing.
And resilience and stress management training was even associated with a negative effect on wellbeing.
The only “individual-level wellbeing intervention” associated with a positive effect was access to volunteering opportunities.
Change the workplace – not workers
“The key takeaway is that easy actions that only seek change in individual employees won’t have any meaningful impact for employees or for the business,” Dr Fleming, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, told The Australian Financial Review.
“Employers have to be more ambitious and get to the root causes of stress, and enhance how work is undertaken.”
Dr Fleming said changes at the organisational level, including to management practices, staff resources, performance reviews and the design of jobs, had a far greater influence on employee wellbeing.
His findings did not surprise Zena Burgess, an organisational psychologist and the chief executive of the Australian Psychological Society.
“It really is the way the organisation operates, and the system-wide interventions, that have the most impact,” she said.
“It’s about helping people work out the best way to do their job, looking at negotiated schedules and deadlines, allowing people to work in teams, and having constructive performance reviews.”
Soliciting staff feedback is key
Dr Burgess said organisations that want to make their staff happier and healthier should conduct regular surveys to find out what workers like and dislike about their jobs and what managers could do differently.
Smaller organisations typically did better on employee wellbeing than their larger counterparts because they were less bureaucratic and typically had higher levels of freedom and trust, she added.
And flexible working had the potential to improve workers’ mental health by giving them greater autonomy.
The university’s research echoed the findings of a 2022 report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, which found that popular measures such as free yoga sessions and fruit boxes did little to improve employee wellbeing.
CEDA urged employers to instead give staff more say over how they did their jobs and to train managers on how to identify the signs of poor mental health.
According to employee experience platform Culture Amp, the top three reasons why people stick with their employer are: when they feel informed about what’s happening at their company; they have control over their wellbeing; and they believe there are career opportunities in the business.