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The wellness industry is as weird and wild as ever, with more of us looking to alternative ways to stay healthy and improve our wellness. But while wellness tells us to drink the green juice, shouldn't we be questioning what's actually in it?
Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a deep dive into our love-hate relationship with the weird and wonderful world of wellness, self-development and spirituality. How do you look after yourself in the age of anxiety? How can you tell what to believe and what's bullshit?
Join us, Katie, a yoga teacher and coach, and Annabel, a writer about wellness, as we explore the world of wellness and self-improvement and learn how to do wellness, well.
[00:00:00] Katie: Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a podcast looking at how to navigate the wellness industry well, hosted by me, Katie Gordon, and Annabel Lee. Each episode we cover a different aspect of wellness and self improvement, looking at ethics, scandals, and red flags.
[00:00:21] Annabel: Hello.
[00:00:22] Katie: Hi!
[00:00:23] Annabel: Today we're talking about workplace wellness. Got any initial thoughts?
[00:00:31] Katie: Is it just a way to make people work more? I don't know, or work... let's keep everyone well so that they don't take any sick days?
[00:00:39] Annabel: Potential spoiler.
[00:00:41] Katie: I'm sorry.
[00:00:43] Annabel: But yeah, I guess, yeah, I think so. I think workplace wellness feels good, like a good thing. I often see it on job adverts or people will talk about their workplace wellness programs or that you can do yoga at lunchtime.
[00:01:00] Katie: But what is workplace wellness, Annabel? Because it could be anything.
[00:01:03] Annabel: Well I'm so glad you asked! I've got a couple of descriptors, but I think like many things in wellness, the actual, it's kind of quite hard to like really grasp onto like what specifically is workplace wellness and what might just be sort of like a HR policy or...
[00:01:25] Katie: Or a benefit.
[00:01:26] Annabel: Or a benefit, exactly and actually that, it was quite interesting and I was having a look at the size of the market. So the global estimates range quite significantly. So I read some stats that said it's 62 billion in 2021, expected to grow to 94 billion in 2026. But then I also saw some other stats which said it's predicted to get up to about 146 billion in the next couple of years. So it kind of varies, but it's big...
[00:01:57] Katie: Definitely increasing.
[00:01:58] Annabel: Definitely increasing and it's big business. So I've been back to my... I kind of trust this source, but I kind of also treat it with a pinch of salt, which is the Global Wellness Institute, which is an organisation which has some good content around wellness, but obviously is there to promote wellness and it says that workplace wellness is any workplace health promotion activity or policy designed to support healthy behavior among employees and to improve health outcomes, health comes, aka health comes. So it can consist of diverse activities. So on site health education or FAERS, medical screenings, health coaching, weight loss, stress management, support to help people stop smoking, wellness communities, fitness programs, health club memberships, on site kitchens, healthy food, competitions, apps, education, financial and other incentives for participation.
So I think straight off the bat, it's really important to talk about workplace wellness in America versus workplace wellness outside of America, because in the States, as we know, the healthcare system is different to us in the UK, and so in America, lots of workplace wellness activities are linked to insurance premiums. So sometimes, companies will subsidize workplace wellness programs in the hope that it will reduce costs on health benefits.
[00:03:42] Katie: Like if you go to the gym you get cheaper healthcare.
[00:03:45] Annabel: Yeah.
[00:03:46] Katie: That happens here if you get private insurance. You can get money off gym membership and stuff like that.
[00:03:52] Annabel: Right, so interesting that it's like maybe becoming more like that. But there's obviously a lot of issues with that in terms of who can access workplace wellness and the people that might be more likely to go to the gym, are sort of self selecting already. So you're kind of getting this system where it supports...
[00:04:10] Katie: Healthy people.
[00:04:10] Annabel: Healthy people that, you know, and then they get lower insurance
[00:04:15] Katie: Right.
[00:04:16] Annabel: Gym, which is, you know, but there's like not no access necessarily to xeverybody. But, and I've read that outside of the States it's known as Corporate Wellbeing, but I think, I'm not sure about that, I think Workplace Wellness is pretty well known here in the UK.
[00:04:33] Katie: I've thought of it as corporate well being, but I guess you would know what it is either way.
[00:04:39] Annabel: Either way, yeah, exactly. But yeah, it can be anything from installing bicycle powered desks, you know, the old walking desks, access to maybe therapists, I've seen that quite often where have like a sort of a corporate subscription to...
[00:04:56] Katie: To better help
[00:04:58] Annabel: Yeah, going on away days, doing like walk and talk meetings, having a yoga teacher come in, maybe do lunchtime classes, which we'll maybe talk about a little more later on. But yeah, I think a lot of businesses do it because ultimately they want healthy workers who, healthy workers, healthy bottom line, basically,
[00:05:23] Katie: Right.
[00:05:24] Annabel: So we think we might see these benefits and think, Oh, that sounds really good. I like yoga. I want to go to lunchtime yoga, or I like the gym, I like, I'll go to the gym, but actually it is not, it's not pure, it's not just pure like altruism from businesses. The reason they're doing it is so that they get something back out of it.
[00:05:47] Katie: Yeah.
[00:05:50] Annabel: And there's quite a lot of research that shows, doesn't actually really help.
[00:05:56] Katie: Is that because people don't do it or because it doesn't work? Do you know?
[00:06:00] Annabel: I think a bit of both. So I think there's a lot of issues with like selection bias. So people only doing it who would be fit and healthy anyway.
[00:06:10] Katie: So people who already go to the gym take up the benefits, but people who don't maybe don't.
[00:06:16] Annabel: Exactly, yeah and so there was a big study in the States 33, 000 employees and they kind of found straight after doing the Workplace Wellness Initiative that there was some kind of positive uptake. But then when they went back after 18 months, there was no difference in clinical markers between the people that had done it and hadn't done it and then after three years, literally nothing was different between the group that got it and didn't get it do it. So it's very... it's not like long term changes that people are making. It might just be that they go and they do like, you know, the six week mindfulness course, but then work is still stressful and life is still stressful.
[00:06:59] Katie: Do you know what markers they were using to study? Like, what were they studying?
[00:07:04] Annabel: I, so, okay, so healthcare, absenteeism, job tenure and job performance.
[00:07:11] Katie: So they didn't stay longer at the company or perform better.
[00:07:14] Annabel: Yeah, or have less absence or have any reduction in the spending on healthcare.
[00:07:19] Katie: You don't know about ones that potentially did the programs, did they have lower stress levels? Is there information...
[00:07:25] Annabel: No, I don't think so. I think that it was kind of, I'm not sure if it was like quite blinded and obviously it would be hard to have like a placebo in that study because you would know.
[00:07:35] Katie: Yeah.
[00:07:36] Annabel: But there's a really interesting study that came out actually earlier this year which was called employee well being outcomes from individual level mental health interventions cross sectional evidence from the United Kingdom and I love this study, it was really interesting. So it was by a person called William Fleming at Oxford University and it looked at well being interventions like stress management and mindfulness classes and wellbeing. What do you think it found?
[00:08:05] Katie: Didn't make any difference.
[00:08:08] Annabel: So it found that almost none of them had any difference on worker well being or job satisfaction.
[00:08:15] Katie: Is that when they were used or just in general?
[00:08:18] Annabel: When, I think they, I think, yeah, it was looking across basically, those interventions being used, so they didn't improve sense of belonging or reduce perceived time pressures, which obviously is a big issue at work. They didn't make employees feel supported or improve workplace relationships and in some cases, wellbeing interventions actually made matters worse.
[00:08:45] Katie: Okay, great.
[00:08:47] Annabel: So workplace resilience and mindfulness training, actually had a slightly negative impact on employees self rated mental health. So the fact that organizations were giving staff these tools, made them feel worse.
[00:09:03] Katie: Do you know what kind of mind, does it say what kind of mindfulness?
[00:09:07] Annabel: I'm assuming that that would have been like some kind of training or a kind of a short term intervention, I think. So the only thing that this study did find was positive was employee volunteering opportunities, which is really interesting because I think that comes back to this idea of sort of connection and community as wellness and well being and that when we're doing things for other people and kind of feeling a sense of like purpose and place and connection that could help. But the benefits of that were really small.
[00:09:46] Katie: What were the benefits with it?
[00:09:49] Annabel: I think that would have been in terms of those other things, other things in terms of belonging and time...
[00:09:55] Katie: Right, because you're building relationships as well, right?
[00:09:58] Annabel: Yeah, exactly and I think that is, I know we talk about this all the time, but that wellness, when it just focuses on yourself, actually, probably if you're at work and someone's giving you resilience training, you might think, Oh no, am I not resilient? Whereas if you're being given opportunities to go and volunteer, you're kind of getting out of your head, you're doing something really positive.
[00:10:18] Katie: Although who's doing your work when you're out doing your volunteering?
[00:10:22] Annabel: Nice bridge.
So what the study did find is that rather than focusing on these kind of interventions, these like things that we might kind of come in and like put a plaster on the top of a stress workforce that are individual level interventions, what actually makes people feel better is like, making structural changes within the organisation, which is...
[00:10:50] Katie: What a surprise.
[00:10:53] Annabel: So improving pay, secure contracts, flexible working, control over work schedule, opportunities for upskilling and mentoring, which is like a system wide thing, which is like harder to implement as a business or as an organisation. Yeah, totally, rather than hire a yoga teacher to come in and teach a little lunchtime vinyasa. So also cutting back on bureaucratic processes, time spent in meetings, make, helping employees feel like psychologically safe. So really, I just think it's really interesting that we like see wellness as this thing that could like come in and like save the day and make us all feel well. But it doesn't, I think this is just fascinating because it shows that it doesn't just sticking something on, doing something extra, giving people something else to do, taking them out of their work. They've still got the stress, they're bubbling up underneath it and it's like signing someone up for a meditation app or online therapy, when the reason they need it is because they're so stressed at work. It just kind of shows where wellness kind of fits in kind of capitalism.
[00:12:10] Katie: I wonder if there's something there as well about autonomy and like being sort of pushed into like doing yoga or mindfulness or whatever and being like suggested by your company. I don't want to be next to John from Accounts doing Downward Dog. I mean, no thanks and then if you're given more autonomy over your work and your job and your schedule, that has a positive impact. So the structural changes are to do with like being left to be in charge of your own workload, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
[00:12:46] Annabel: Yeah, it does completely and I think there was a story a couple of years ago. where somebody in France, I think, got fired or something bad happened to them because they sort of refused to engage in like work nights out or going out with their colleagues and they were just like, I don't want, I don't want to, I don't want to socialise with my colleagues. I want to just do my job and then be left alone and it's kind of a similar thing, I think, in that Yeah, do you want to be in the boardroom, like, pushing all the chairs back, doing a sort of sweaty hit class with your boss? No! No, it's and also, I think the other thing is that a lot of the, some practices, some of these practices can be quite sort of ableist in terms of their, around, like, being able to access certain physical activities or, you know, there's all numbers of sort of levels there in terms of being able to do these things or have if it's outside of work having the time to do it, the inclination, the child care.
[00:13:54] Katie: Maybe as well, like, I don't know how many people are offered choices. Like, do you want to do yoga? Do you want to do mindfulness? Do you want to go, I don't know, and do, what other things? Like...
[00:14:04] Annabel: Or just.
[00:14:05] Katie: ...life drawing, or like, a team day away, or like, if it's like, here is your workplace wellness intervention, you are doing mindfulness, here you go. It's not really...
[00:14:17] Annabel: Enforced fun vibes. We are having fun in yoga so we can put it on the website and show what a great employer we are to prospects.
[00:14:27] Katie: And I think those things that yoga and mindfulness have become this thing of like, we know they work, therefore we're gonna give them to you and they're gonna work whether you like it or not.
[00:14:36] Annabel: And that is the thing, isn't it? Because something like yoga, I mean this is all wrong but it does, it, we understand that when we see a picture of people in doing downward dog or doing tree pose, we understand what that is, and it does sort of strip away all the philosophy behind it all of that stuff it's just seen as a sort of physical thing that's kind of low impact, can be more...
[00:15:04] Katie: Yeah, or breath work or...
[00:15:06] Annabel: Can be accessed by more people isn't oh, let's all go on a group run, god forbid somebody suggests that. So it's this very kind of easy to understand. Oh, we've got yoga classes, we've got mindfulness, we've got a mindfulness app, we've got online therapy and we've got a breath work away day. Easy, just little things that you can sticky tape on, that's it. But you're not getting any of the sort of, kind of real benefits of it.
[00:15:39] Katie: None of it's individualized either, is it? Like, is this, I think, I'm gonna try and avoid going on a rant, but there's this idea that all yoga is helpful to all people and all breath work is helpful to all people and it's just not true. So, I mean, unless you are very skillfully offering these interventions, then I can imagine that it's not helpful to everyone, it might even be the opposite.
[00:16:04] Annabel: Yeah, and especially if you have to do it in your lunch break. Like, pay me if you want me to do the yoga. Because I think that's the other thing, or outside of work and there's an expectation that you will come after work, or...
[00:16:20] Katie: Or pay me enough to go and do yoga class in my own time without my colleagues.
[00:16:23] Annabel: Right, yes, 100%. So that you can access the class that works for you. You don't feel self conscious about having Colin from accounts, good show! Yes, I think, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. It's just very prescriptive and not taking into consideration what is going on for each person. So there was a great article in the Guardian, my actual favorite source, written by Andre Spicer, and in that piece he talked about one of the other things that can improve quality, or your actual well being at work is improving the quality of front line managers. So I love this sentence, getting rid of David Brent style bosses, giving managers proper training can significantly improve wellbeing. Most workplaces are not temples of wellness. In some cases, they may be quite the opposite and that these interventions that we try and put on them are probably making things worse. So the focus really should be on reducing the stressors rather than just chuck in some wellness sprinkles on the top.
[00:17:38] Katie: I don't think I ever had a manager who had any people management skills or had any training or had any time set aside from their job to do the managing. So just like almost all of them were so shit and made everything worse and that's partly the company's fault and it's partly I mean, shouldn't be managing people if you can't manage them, but like you should be given the skills and training to do so and the time That would make a massive difference, I think.
[00:18:15] Annabel: Yeah and I think there's, there is this pressure in work or in hierarchical culture, workplaces, where there is a sort of carer dangled in front of you which is like, I'll get promoted, I'll be a manager and then you get people doing that, who are still trying to, like you say, do their existing jobs, without the support that they need and taking on extra workloads for often not a massive amount more money, but that's just how society works or what workplaces work.
[00:18:49] Katie: Being good at your job doesn't make you a good manager.
[00:18:51] Annabel: Totally, it's a different, it's a completely different skill set 100 percent and I think that is interesting that actually... but, I think the thing is with that, it's kind of opening a whole can of worms, isn't it, around other things for business, for organisations that they think, oh, we can just fix this with a bit of breath work.
So workplace wellness doesn't really work, but what is interesting, and I think we've both seen this, and I mean, I've taught workplace wellness classes, full disclosure, I don't know how competent I was at them, but I taught, I did like chair desk yoga and mindfulness classes for a couple of organisations during the pandemic, which I enjoyed doing, but I don't know how much of an impact they had if I'm being brutally honest and I think that lots, I do see a lot of wellbeing practitioners interested in that work.
[00:19:50] Katie: I think the thing about that work and I've done it a bit, is that it's generally really well paid by the standards of a wellbeing practitioner, which is nothing to these corporate companies. But I had a class for a while that was something, it was over a hundred pounds a class and to me, that was amazing, that was great, that was a nice big chunk of money every month. To them it's nothing, but like you say, well, a lot of wellness professionals get paid really badly, which is a big problem with the industry and one that I have no idea how to solve. So corporate is quite often where people go to make money.
But, I mean, that's kind of problematic in its own way. I've lost my train of thought. So yeah, working freelance as a well being practitioner with no sick pay, no holiday pay, you know, which is something that's true of all freelancers and there are advantages to freelance life as well. but, so you can see why well place, well, workplace wellness is really attractive. Like you get paid quite a lot for seemingly not being many hours work, although of course you have prep time and training and all those costs as well. So this is a structural thing again, isn't it? Of those workers maybe being a little bit exploited by the corporates who are using them as a kind of lip service and paying them decently but probably not actually as much as they should be paying them, to deliver something that doesn't work anyway, it just, it feels very, like, empty.
[00:21:44] Annabel: There's also like, there's also kind of a meta thing going on around like the wellness of your well being professionals, the workplace wellness of your well being professionals who are, you know, there are, like moves towards like unionization or sort of more standardized things. I mean, I'm talking more about yoga, but I think there's Often, someone like a yoga teacher is essentially on like a zero hour contract, essentially they don't have, your yoga teacher doesn't get sick pay, doesn't, like, you know, and so that some of the thing... and because yoga is seen as an industry that lots of people want to do, like you say, like the pay can be low, like I know you run a yoga studio.z
[00:22:31] Katie: No, I mean, it's, complex. I struggle with it as well, like how do we make it more sustainable for everyone? How do I be a good manager to people? How do I look after people in a business model that is really tricky to make work financially? You know, I would love to offer my staff all sick pay, but they're not employed by me and some of them don't want to be employed by me and I can't afford to employ them. So it's a problem for yoga studio owners. I mean, some of them don't care, but like, it's a problem for the owners as well as the workers and I don't know really how to navigate that better unless you change the business model completely and I don't know what that would be to.
[00:23:15] Annabel: And because the other Interesting thing is how tech is like playing a role in all of this as well and how actually I think a lot of workplace wellness interventions will be actually get a subscription to a software platform or get, you know...
[00:23:33] Katie: AI therapy. It's coming.
[00:23:38] Annabel: Okay. I don't know if I want...
[00:23:40] Katie: No, I absolutely don't!
[00:23:42] Annabel: ...if I want the algorithm to have my access to all my thoughts.
[00:23:46] Katie: I got most of them already.
I
[00:23:49] Annabel: know! But then you've got, so then you've got, you know, people just being given a meditation app to reduce their like overwhelm, which is probably a lot caused by tech. So it's just, kind of thinking about what, how it all, you know, how it all plays and how ultimately so much of it is, might be kind of big tech companies trying to get a slice of the corporate wellbeing action.
[00:24:18] Katie: Are you just asking people to do more things again? Like, is it more, just more work in a way? If they feel pressure to join these schemes or they feel pressure to go to yoga or they feel like they have to go to the gym in order to progress in the workplace, then isn't that just like asking them to work more, really?
[00:24:36] Annabel: Yeah, and then you're kind of getting back, so kind of circling back to this sort of, you know, the business deals being done on the golf course, or you might be able to kind of network with somebody on, in...
[00:24:46] Katie: On the Crosstrainer?
[00:24:46] Annabel: On the Crosstrainer. When actually, kind of what the things that have been shown to work, are kind of better organization or potentially like less work.
[00:24:58] Katie: Yeah, time away from work.
[00:24:59] Annabel: Or whatever it might be flexible working or so just I think it's just an interesting microcosm of a lot of the issues with wellness, a lot of kind of where people kind of see it as a opportunity to kind of improve things. But if it's just kind of slapped on the top...
[00:25:18] Katie: But I wonder how many companies genuinely see it as an opportunity to improve conditions for their workers and how many companies are doing it because, oh well, our competitors are doing this and it looks good if we do this. I mean, call me cynical, but I wonder how much of it is out of a genuine desire to help workers, because if you really want to help workers, why don't you ask them what they want, and what they want is going to be more holidays, less work, the ability to go on holiday and not look at emails, you know, those kinds of things where you can actually have a proper break from work, or be paid more, or, you know, those kinds of things, I imagine would be the response by a lot of people.
[00:25:58] Annabel: Yeah, because I think one of the things, certainly, like I felt personally, learning, sort of, balancing having a family and having work is you can't do it all at once. You can't do everything, well you can't like be like the best, you can't be like nailing like work and family and friends and you're running and whatever. So and Workplace Wellness to me feels a bit like that, like we're trying to bring health and wellness into work, when actually maybe the two should be slightly more Yeah. separate.
[00:26:34] Katie: Yeah. I mean, I guess there are useful things you can do at work, like, for example, like, if you have a workforce that has neurodivergent people, maybe some like ADHD coaching or like planners or scheduling or help with like workload and tasks would be helpful, or there are things like that, or, you know, Having an option to go to therapy paid for by your work could be helpful, but like how much autonomy does that person have over what therapists they see, when they see them, those kinds of things, or do they just get directed to better help which is problematic anyway for another episode?
[00:27:14] Annabel: And then do you have to go like cap in hand to your manager and like, please, can I...
[00:27:19] Katie: Please can I go to therapy? And then how is that going to reflect on you?
[00:27:23] Annabel: Totally, so what are we thinking then overall on workplace wellness?
[00:27:30] Katie: I mean, maybe you think about overhauling a workplace first, or like conducting some meaningful market research with your employees about what they actually want and that might be a gym membership. I had a gym membership that was either free or subsidised at a job and it was great. It was in the basement, took my lunch break, I went to the gym, great. That was nice, but not everybody wanted that. So maybe have a conversation with the people who work for you about what they want and think about some structural change instead of yoga.
[00:28:05] Annabel: Wellness, but not in the boardroom.
[00:28:09] Katie: Not on a carpeted floor in a boardroom where someone's had some sandwiches it smells of B.O. Like, it's just not, you're not gonna get good vibes from that, are you?
[00:28:19] Annabel: *Laughter*