Wellbeing programs won’t fix burnout if HR can’t challenge how work is designed

Most people want to do their job well, but if we don’t reflect on how we’ve always done things, if we lean on processes that are invisible or broken or systems that simply don’t work anymore, and if we’re not innovating and finding new ways of working, then we’re at risk of losing great people, writes Amy Green.

In the last few years, especially post-COVID-19, we’ve seen a significant emphasis on workplaces prioritising and investing in wellbeing programs.

We know they’re needed, we know they matter, and we know they can support how people feel, work, and lead. But often these wellbeing programs, initiatives, and packages miss something completely.

When a workplace invests in a wellbeing program, what usually happens is that it focuses on the symptom, not the cause.

We teach people resilience strategies to cope in stressful work environments, we send them to workshops on sleep so they understand how to feel rested before they head back into the office the next day, and we put on yoga classes to help people feel a little calmer before they go back and tackle the emails that appeared in their inbox in the 60 minutes they were trying to perfect their downward dog.

These programs and initiatives are well-intentioned, but they neglect to actually look at why we need to teach people to sleep better, to build resilience, and to de-stress in the first place, and without attending to the cause, all we’re doing is putting a Band-Aid on a wound and hoping it doesn’t get bigger. I’m here to tell you, it will.

Creating sustainable work practices

A meditation class and a meeting-free week might seem like they help, and they do, for a short amount of time, but the honest truth is that if workplaces want to genuinely increase wellbeing for their staff, we have to go further than that. We have to support people to work well and work sustainably, not just meditate their way through an unmanageable workload.

Unfortunately, this is what too many workplaces do, and it’s where they completely miss the point. A workplace wellbeing program isn’t about addressing symptoms and helping people cope better; it’s about redesigning the work itself, how it happens, and how people function within it.

If how a workplace operates can’t be addressed alongside bringing in a resilience program, then we aren’t improving workplace wellbeing, we are telling people it’s their fault and to cope better because the conditions aren’t going to change, and that’s just not good enough.

It’s sometimes hard to know how to address wellbeing in better ways, especially when workplace wellbeing pulse checks and surveys ask questions like, “How stressed are you?” or “How would you rate your wellbeing at work?”

These questions are subjective, and they produce subjective answers. We find out things like 87 per cent of staff are stressed, or 64 per cent of staff report low wellbeing, but that doesn’t actually tell us why. It doesn’t tell us what the cause of this stress is. So, this is where we need to dig deeper. We need to have conversations with staff about what’s working and what’s not. We need to create space for people to specifically name their stressors and what’s causing them, and we need granular data that allows us to explore different ways of working.

That’s the difference between a wellbeing strategy that has a symptom approach and one that focuses on a cause solution.

Workplace wellbeing starts with leadership

Having done this work across many organisations, I know that people don’t actually want more morning teas, they don’t want to perfect their downward dog, and they don’t want to be told to cope better with a workload that is genuinely unsustainable. What they want is clarity in how to do their job. They want efficient systems and processes so they can work better and be more productive, they want to feel supported in the work that they do, and they want to know what “done” looks like so they can feel a sense of success, step away from work at the end of the day, and have energy left for the things and people they love.

To get this right, there are some key drivers we have to acknowledge. Leadership needs to be on board with making sure people know what’s expected of them, how to do their job well, and how to create psychologically safe environments where people can speak up about what isn’t working.

How work is done needs to be reviewed alongside efficiency and effectiveness, and through the lens of job/resource demands. And, most significantly, letting go of the idea that “how we have always done it” is best, and instead being open to new ways of working.

When we understand that this is what workplace wellbeing is, we become the architects and designers of wellbeing, creating places people are happy to be in, as opposed to places people are constantly trying to find ways to recover from.

Creating workplaces people don’t need to recover from

What I have found to be true is that most people want to do their job well, but if we don’t reflect on how we’ve always done things, if we lean on processes that are invisible or broken or systems that simply don’t work anymore, and if we’re not innovating and finding new ways of working, then we’re at risk of losing great people. Not because they don’t want to do the work, but because we didn’t build a workplace that was actually worth staying in.

This is the difference between a workplace that understands wellbeing as part of its infrastructure, woven into daily operations, into actions and behaviours, and one that treats it as something that happens on a Friday afternoon when everyone’s tired and needs a pick-me-up. Workplace wellbeing isn’t a program you can schedule. It’s the way work is designed from the inside out.

Amy Green is a keynote speaker, strategic adviser, and futurist focused on the future of work and life.

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