I judge my weekly meetings with clients and colleagues as a barometer of where the industry is. What is capturing people’s attention. And how do trends differ between US and European clients.
A quick sample of the last week has consisted of the following:
Where would you recommend getting an IV vitamin Drip?
Do we need a hyperbaric chamber?
Here are my blood results (which on closer inspection, had no validation or medical oversight)
And finally, and the most problematic, this from a new client:
I have more health data on myself than ever, yet I’ve never been so confused about how to exercise, eat, and recover(!)
These are some examples. I could go on. And on.
We are now approaching ‘peak grift‘ as wellness has become fashionable: post-workout shakes are status signallers, biomarkers are now firmly part of work and dating conversations.
As I mentioned in my book, I always encourage those around me to be critical of the wider wellness/health/performance industry and take nothing at face value.
But here’s the thing: it really is becoming more difficult to tell the ‘signal from the noise’ (domain expertise from the gurus).
In recent years we’ve seen the emergence of different types of gurus:
An Insta-expert with an impressive sounding (but unrecognised) qualification
A wellness practitioner who deliberately overcomplicates (adding ‘bio-’ or ‘neuro-’ to each statement)
The ‘biohacker’ or similar who has collected huge volumes of data on themselves (n=1), but with no qualifications or registration
An influencer who doesn’t declare their conflicts of interest when promoting their product
Even a brand positioning their product as the sole remedy for your ‘brain fog’ or fatigue?
Now, don’t get me wrong – it’s great to see people more interested in wellness and understanding their body – but gut-wrenching when people think they’re dialling in domain expertise to help them reach their goals, when in fact it’s a guru using them as a cash cow.
Trust the process?
My group is witnessing an increase in the ‘second wave’ of clients who have unfortunately been burned the first time round from a case of ‘the grift’- sold a solution or programme of support which left them injured, fatigued, confused, and back where they started.
I’ve also heard examples of high performers using two doctors, to conduct two separate sets of biomarkers to compare, just to avoid putting their trust in one expert.
The psychological scar tissue from the grift can be difficult to unpick and rebuild trust.
Like most market forces, I believe we’ll see a market correction – and a reliance on true expertise over fashionable products and services.
Until then, I advise anyone to take time to do their own due diligence on a health or human performance specialist or product. It’s wild out there!
Is anyone else seeing the grift in different forms?
Employee wellbeing: Why isn’t it working?
You can almost imagine the radio advert now: “So what does employee wellbeing mean to you?”
A diverse group of voices from a company pitch in, with the light jingle playing in the background.
“For me it’s financial wellbeing, ensuring mine and my family’s finances are in order”
“My mental health is my priority. Full stop.”
“Well, I’ve just taken up yoga and I’m eating more healthily, and generally I’m feeling better”
In my previous article on employee wellbeing, I discussed how wellbeing for many organisations is still just treated as a ‘perk’ and how provision is currently falling short. Judging by the comments and feedback, this article resonated with many of you.
So I wanted to dig a little deeper here…
Again, to clarify; this is drawing upon my work in high performance sporting organisations across Europe over the last 15 years, and more recently the work of our consultancy with different businesses within financial services, technology, utilities and luxury goods, sectors.
Covering all the bases
So let’s start by taking a step back to assess the current wellbeing landscape…
The first challenge is the sheer number of themes which fall under the current ‘umbrella’ of wellbeing.
With all of these competing wellbeing priorities, is it then any wonder that the current workplace default is to opt for a full selection of wellbeing ‘perks’ to cover all bases. This demand for light-touch support has led to supply of many light-touch offerings; wellbeing weeks, one-off talks and wellbeing hubs on a company’s intranet. All with very limited evidence that these corporate wellness initiatives currently work.
The second challenge is that most wellbeing initiatives operate in silo: Employees opt into the initiatives that interest them. Now this might be fine for learning about financial wellbeing, but it’s nowhere near sufficient for employees to learn the tools to improve their and health and performance, across different disciplines.
This unfortunately means that the initiatives targeting the health and performance of employees is falling short. How do I know this? Well, each day I see how these are applied with high performance sport, where the health and performance of athletes is of prime performance, and the outcomes are measured.
In my opinion, the wellbeing industry really needs to do have a close look at what is being delivered and how this is structured…
Interdisciplinary
Taking the model from high performance sport, there are a number of disciplines that support an athlete’s mind and body, to sustain health, energy and performance over long and often gruelling seasons.
The most common that transfer from sport into business include;
Psychology – tools to manage mental (cognitive) demands
Nutrition – to fuel brain and body according to the daily demands
Exercise – activity to maintain brain and body
Sleep/recovery – to adapt and regenerate following the days cognitive workload
But here’s the key word. Interdisciplinary. These services have to be interdisciplinary, as there is significant overlap between all of them.
Within a sports organisation, each specialist practitioner discusses their programmes and how these disciplines link together as part of an overall programme, working towards a performance goal.
And it should be exactly the same within a business.
There needs to be cohesion with the approach: shared language, the coaching/delivery style used (e.g. guided discovery – allowing employees to learn and test/refine the tools).
Having a ‘tapas selection’ initiatives/products could be causing more harm than good, unless these are working together in an interdisciplinary way. Without this cohesion, services are likely pull in different directions, creating an extra layer of friction for employees.
A clearer structure
To be clear, I’m not proposing that this should be the end of wellbeing.
But I believe that there urgently needs to be a separate definition/department for employee health and performance, and there needs to be capital ring-fenced for this.
This can either sit alongside or under the overarching wellbeing umbrella.
Investing in health and performance won’t deliver return instantly, or perhaps significantly in the short term, but when embedded consistently will compound in value over time.
To stress, the organisations that are doing this well, are slowly and sustainably building a culture, that is apparent each day:
Shared language around health and performance.
Peer support/coaching within the office environment (supporting and also holding each other to account).
Physical work environment with ‘nudges’ to support employee health objectives and growth for the long term. Rather than just keeping employees happy with an endless supply of comfort food/sweet treats (which ironically is in direct conflict to these goals).
This culture is slowly developed through consistent ongoing strategic support, through individual consultations or focus group education sessions with competency-based outcomes (at each level of the company).
As I previously mentioned, impact needs to be measured, and should form part of a longer-term roadmap, to build the right culture within the organisation.
Circling back to the title, across the industry there need to be a significant shift in how health and performance services are structured and delivered, if employers really want to see their talent reach their potential.
Next time I’ll be exploring potential models for this…
As always – if this article resonates with you, let me know.
James
Employee wellbeing: Please stop calling it a perk
“We need to lure staff back to the office. Some breakfast or healthy snacks should do the job. That will keep them happy.”
Cue the breakfast treats lined up at the entrance, ready for the day ahead. Like the siren playing the harp in the distance, luring in the tired and hungry employee closer to the workplace, with sweet granola and smoothies.
I say this tongue in cheek of course, but there is some truth in it…
Increasingly I’m being asked to apply our learnings from high performance sport into different business settings. I feel this give me a somewhat unique perspective of what is possible within an organisation, and with individual ‘talent’.
So it’s important I disclose from the off that my consultancy, INTRA, provides services within this space.
And it’s only as I’ve become more immersed in this sector that I’ve noticed what I consider some pretty fundamental flaws in the way that corporate wellbeing/wellness is approached.
There are of course many different components of wellbeing – the focus under my ‘umbrella’ are those primarily translated from sport; physical activity, nutrition, psychology and sleep/recovery).
P is for Performance
I’ve mentioned a few times that ‘performance’ can often be seen as a hard and intimating word in the workplace – but the truth is that many employees want to feel energised and at their best in different aspects of their life – at work, during their workout, and in their leisure time away from the office.
Within high performance sport, we have a multidisciplinary team of experts (coaches, doctors, physios, nutritionists, psychologists) working with athletes to personalise their programmes, to sustain health and performance over long and often gruelling seasons.
Each of these services are integrated, to provide the unique blend support/programming that each individual requires (for some it might be more nutrition, for others more psychological support).
Within each organisation, thereaccepted ‘norms’ or ways of doing things – how to ‘prepare’ and ‘recover’ from competition, utilising the expertise of each of the performance services.
Yes, the training centres are generally world-class facilities with the best equipment (cryotherapy, medical suites, restaurants) and often garner a lot of attention – but it’s the culture of high performance from the leadership team and across all athletes and staff, which normalises how athletes are expected to look after their body and mind. And this extends to how athletes look after themselves at home, away from their ‘workplace’.
None of these organisations are perfect of course. But the intention and focus on high performance is clear.
Mind your language
In stark contrast, the best way I can describe the way the standard industry approach to employee wellbeing is ‘scattergun’ – A tapas style selection of wellbeing initiatives on offer: Free food, smoothie stations, massages, health appointments, and mindfulness apps.
The language itself encapsulates the issue – these are fundamental ‘first-principles’ for human health and performance – but are still often referred to as ‘perks’ or products.
For most organisations the approach to employee wellbeing is well intentioned, but isn’t embedded within the organisation. Staff at all levels don’t live and breathe the culture each day – it’s more of an option they can select if they are ‘interested in wellbeing’.
Initiatives are often run by individuals who are trying to make a change, but through no fault of their own, aren’t empowered to build the structured support that organisation desperately needs, and often don’t know where to start. In this case they opt for the well trodden off-the-shelf options:
Off-the-shelf
He are some of the common off-the-shelf options and issues, in my opinion:
Wellbeing week – A week-long focus on various wellbeing topics – often evaluated by the number of employees which attended (however briefly), rather than if any behaviours have been changed 1, 3 or 6 months later.
Wellbeing hub – Larger companies may have static resources on their intranet or through an external benefits provider – However without these being fully integrated into an overall company ethos or wellbeing/performance strategy, they remain underused. Often the resources themselves; 1) lack authority or execution (bland corporate branding) or 2) are fragmented, with no strategic objective.
Guest speakers – I speak to many firms who would like a talk to ‘pep up’ employees. My response now is actually pretty similar. It won’t work. Do something meaningful or don’t waste your money…
Currently only 9% of companies measure return on investment (ROI) from their health & wellbeing programme, which highlights how much room for development there is in this space.
I have witnessed some organisations approaching wellbeing in a very progressive way, but they are in the minority. The current investment on wellbeing is often significant and could be redeployed on initiatives with greater impact.
Attracting and retaining talent
Employers are desperately searching for ways to engage and retain talent. And younger generations are increasingly demanding a greater focus on health…
Providing employees with the tools (within a company culture which actively support this) to self-manage their own health and performance in relation to their daily demands (both cognitive and physical), both in and out of the workplace, will become increasingly important.
My bet is that in the near future providing food will no be longer enough – progressive workplaces will not only increase/improve their food offering, but also provide education on personalising nutrition to performance-related outcomes (e.g. improved energy, sleep/recovery).
It is of course an open market and employees will migrate to progressive organisations offering a holistic culture which better fits their needs.
D is for discovery
So how can an organisation take the first step towards meaningful change?
Well the first step is really to internally define objectives (or the questions they are trying to answer) with buy-in from exec/senior leadership.
The brief can then be discussed with a suitable professional or organisation to develop a service plan/roadmap.
There should be a period of discovery. And often this should look quite messy, while the organisation tests and refines how services should be adapted and embedded within their unique culture.
A business must resist the urge to choose something off-the-shelf. Of course this is the path of least resistance, but is highly unlikely to deliver long term impact.
If a business starts with a clear objective, and appreciates there will be a discovery process to build a culture for the long term, then anything is possible – in my experience employees will appreciate and join the direction, and often be the biggest allies.
I think it really just depends whether an organisation wants to do something meaningful, or just dish up some more perks.
