The Mindset Problem at Work

After 25+ years in the industry, it still shocks me how little attention employers pay to employee health and wellness.

Here’s a sample conversation that sums up lots of training and education, but becomes particularly relevant to employee health and wellbeing.

CFO to CEO “What if we invest in our people, and they leave?”

CEO to CFO “What if we fail to invest in them, and they stay!”

Very few companies have a set budget for wellness related programs. Those that do rarely have a strategic plan around how to implement the budget. Plus, any budgets that do exist are minuscule in comparison to the overall company revenues.

The current mindset of CFO’s, Controllers, and most executives is to view “Wellness” as a line item expense to be minimized.

Keep in mind that I’m mostly referring to Canadian companies.

My estimate is that the US is at least 10 years ahead of Canada in terms of awareness and how many resources are focussed on wellness.

This is because employers are on the hook for much more of the health care expenditure of each employee. Perhaps this is one downside of the public healthcare system in Canada. Employers get to (literally) “pass the buck” to government (and taxpayers).

Do You Have a Killer Job?

Consider that the majority of our waking hours are spent at work.

Those hours have a tremendous impact on our health, happiness, and well-being. Yet, virtually nothing is being done to provide an environment that helps employees thrive.

Companies that do have a budget for wellness, are quick to cut it at the first sign of a downturn, when stress, uncertainty, burnout, and mental health challenges are at their peak, and employees need these resources most.

I have worked with large companies that cut highly effective and employee requested programs because the “optics” of wellness investment “didn’t look good” when people were being laid off.

This is essentially telling employees:

“Hey, stop whining and be grateful you still have a job. We know you are doing double or triple your current workload for less pay (due to wage rollbacks), but protecting our bottom line is more important than your physical and mental well-being.

To show you that we aren’t completely heartless bastards, we are rolling out some mandartory stress reduction and residency workshops because our legal team told us that it will help us cover our a** in case you sue us, or have a mental breakdown”

While this may be (somewhat) dramatized, it’s not been too far off the mark for a number of companies over the past few years. I’ve head many stories from our clients that shocked me into disbelief.

Of course, that’s one way to look at it. Here’s another one? I would love to hear which you think makes more sense.

A clear message from leadership explaining that…

Yes, times are tough, and people have been laid off. However, each of you reading this are the foundation of our success.

We understand that stress levels are high, workloads have increased, and the future may seem uncertain. Please know that we are committed to working closely with you to support your health, happiness, and performance during these though times.

This is why we are investing/continuing to invest in strategic workplace wellness programs that will help every employee and our entire organize emerge stronger and healthier from this current phase in our development.

We may not have the budget we would like to have around these programs, but your health and well-being is paramount to all of our success. We will do everything possible to help. We welcome ideas and feedback from every employee to help improve your working environment.

Which message do you think would produce greater performance for a company during challenging times?

It’s critical to understand that wellness is an INVESTMENT.

In fact, virtually every study done on proper workplace wellness programs show that the AVERAGE ROI is between $3-8 for every $1 invested, and it’s an extremely reliable return that takes 2-5 years to produce.

The interesting thing is that a properly designed and run wellness program is “pocket change” compared to the operating budget of most companies.

In fact, other than a few hours of professional consulting to set up a strategic plan structures, many programs can be run internally for very little ongoing cost.

If this was any other type of business investment, companies would be lining up to throw money at it! Yet, investments in employee wellness continue to languish.

This is for a number of reasons. Here are a couple key ones…and what you can do about it.