Workplace Well-Being Programs Didn’t Improve Employee Mental Health, Study Says

A study just published in the Industrial Relations Journal found that a range of different employee … [+] well-being initiatives such as mindfulness, resilience, stress management and time management apps, coaching, classes and other programs were not associated with improvements in employee mental health and well-being. (Photo: Getty)

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“That ain’t working, that’s not the way you do it” isn’t exactly how the 1985 Dire Straits song Money for Nothing went. But such a line could describe what a study just published in the Industrial Relations Journal found about the range of different employee well-being initiatives that U.K. employers have been employing. The study revealed that such initiatives were not associated with any real improvements in employee mental health and well-being. In other words, different types of well-being coaching, classes, apps and other programs didn’t seem to be really working to address the mental health crises that are affecting employees in not only the U.K. but also other countries around the world. There was one exception, though. Would you care to volunteer a guess as what that exception was?

Before you do so, let’s take a closer look at how this U.K. study was conducted. For the study, William J. Fleming, PhD, the Unilever Research Fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre at University of Oxford, analyzed data from the 2017 and 2018 waves of Britain’s Healthiest Workplace survey that included 46,336 respondents who were working for 233 different organizations that were mostly office-based or service-based. The survey asked whether the respondents participated in around 90 different employee well-being programs that fell into one of the following categories:

• Volunteering or charity work
• Mindfulness classes or programs
• Resilience, energy or stress management classes or programs
• Well-being app on broad range of physical health, mental health and lifestyle issues
• Massage or relaxation classes or programs
• Workload or time management training
• Coaching (one-on-one sessions on mental health and well-being)
• Financial well-being programs
• Events promoting healthy sleep
• Apps/programs promoting healthy sleep
• Online coaching

The survey also asked a number of questions to determine the respondents’ current self-assessment of their well-being and life/job satisfaction. This included questions comprising the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (SWEMWBS), the Utrecht work engagement scale-9 and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scores. In addition, the survey asked respondents to rate statements such as “there is good collaboration between staff”, “relationships at work are strained”, “I have the training and tools I need to do my job well”, “I feel like I belong here”, “I have unrealistic time pressures” and “my organization supports me to manage stress at work” as to how well each statement applied to their current work situations. As you can imagine, most people wouldn’t say, “I’m working in place that had no good collaboration, lots of strained relationships, not enough training and tools to do your job well, unrealistic time pressures, and no real organizational support. So things are just fabulous.”

Well, how well did participation in all those employee well-being programs correlate with actual employee well-being? How about not well at all? In fact, Fleming found that none of these classes, coachings, trainings and apps had any association with any improvement in employee well-being with one exception.

Did you volunteer a guess as to what that exception was? Yep, it was volunteering. Those who had volunteered for some charitable causes offered by their workplaces did on average report better well-being. As I’ve covered before for Forbes, volunteer work can improve your mental health since helping others can make you feel better about yourself. Keep in mind, though, this could be a chicken-or-the-egg question thing, meaning that it’s hard to tease out cause vs. effect and not that offering employees chickens or eggs can improve their well-being. It’s difficult to tell whether the volunteer programs actually led to improved mental health versus the possibility that employees who already had better mental health were more likely to volunteer for charitable causes.

Regardless, the major finding from Fleming’s study is that what employers have been trying at work has for the most part not worked to improve employee well-being. Does this mean that employees should just give up on this whole well-being thing? Heck no. The bottom line is that employee well-being can greatly affect the bottom line of employers—you know stuff like profit and things that are linked to profit such as quality of services and products, customer satisfaction and employee retention. Plus, employers should be interested in other stuff as well such as making the world a better place. right?

In a piece for the American Psychological Association (APA) entitled “Why mental health needs to be a top priority in the workplace,” Amy Novotney wrote, “Extensive psychological research shows the importance of providing mental health coverage, appropriate training for employees, flexible work options, and equity in the workplace, among other evidence-based tactics to improve the workplace.” She also quoted U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, as saying, “A healthy workforce is the foundation for thriving organizations and healthier communities.” A report from the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office cited statistics that highlighted the mental health crises that employers and employees face now such as “76% of U.S. workers reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition” and “84% of respondents said their workplace conditions had contributed to at least one mental health challenge” from the Mind Share Partners’ 2021 Mental Health at Work Report and “81% of workers reported that they will be looking for workplaces that support mental health in the future” from the APA’s 2022 Work and Well-being Survey.

Therefore, much more work is needed to properly tackle growing mental health problems at work. The results of Fleming’s study don’t necessarily mean that you should throw out the baby and all the apps, coachings, classes, trainings and other existing well-being programs with the bath water. Such programs may still play roles in improving employee mental health. However, alone in their present forms, they may not be getting at the root causes of the mental health crises being faced by employees in the U.K., the U.S. and other parts of the world. Alone, they may not be getting at what’s really needed to improve employee well-being. Remember a complex system of factors do affect employee mental health and well-being. Failure to truly understand and address this system means that employers may continue to try to patch things up with Band-Aids rather than solve the existing base problems. And when you don’t make real changes in the system, you could just end up spending money for nothing.