Workplace Wellness Isn’t A Thing
Or at least employees don’t think so.
Good Morning!
If you’ve followed this newsletter for at least 2-3 months, you’ll know I’m a huge proponent of doing.
I’m not the self-help author selling snake oil “strategies” for success and charging a fortune. If anything, I’m giving you assignments to go out and try on your own, with every e-mail essentially being a call to action.
That’s why the most recent Deloitte report about Workplace Wellness really discourages me.
So far in 2023, only 63% of workers rate their physical health as “good.”
About 40% say a toxic, no-days-off work environment is harming their physical, mental, or social health.
Only about a third of employees reported improved health from last year, across all categories.
Despite these distressing numbers, 77% of bosses (somehow) believe that employee well-being is improving, with mental health cited as a particular area of progress.
I can’t imagine a worse dichotomy than your boss believing they’ve dramatically improved your life when all they’ve offered since the pandemic is one more alcohol-filled “team-building” event per month.
Go figure.
Wellness Starts With Us
Workplace wellness, to be fair, is not up to our bosses. If we expect them to make our lives a perfectly stirred cocktail of well-being and professional growth… well, let’s just say that’s a drink they don’t have behind their bar.
Wellness is up to us.
Among the respondents in the Deloitte survey, 74% of them answered that personal well-being is more important than career advancement. But that same percentage of people, for reasons both pertaining to our bosses and our personal boundaries, can’t seem to squeeze in their well-being-time.
74% have difficulty taking time off or disconnecting from work.
Only 48% engage in daily physical activity, while 55% get under seven hours of sleep.
Just 42% say they have enough time for friends and family.
The corporate world is clearly not going to look out for us the way we look out for ourselves.
Neither is anyone, for that matter.
The answer isn’t as simple as just moving to Europe (although I wish it could be), where there are flexible six hour work days and 4-day work weeks.
The good news is this — what the Deloitte Survey revealed is that 2/3 of workers are craving a work environment that prioritizes wellness just as much as it prioritizes profit.
Smart employers know that the two are synchronous, and good metrics in wellness leads to great metrics in profit.
There is a huge avenue for companies to make wellness a larger part of their offering to improve their bottom line. Now it’s just up to entrepreneurs, corporations and founders to carve out a lane.
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