Workplace Wellness Programs Have Little Benefit, Study Finds - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

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  "digital wellness solutions, mindfulness seminars, massage classes, resilience workshops, coaching sessions and sleep apps"
  
  I could see the massage helping some people (or chiropractic!), but the others are cheap checkboxes for companies to pretend they're doing something...while creating the problems via over worked underpaid employees.

  • by korgitser ( 1809018 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @04:36PM (#64161159)

    When the workplace itself is the cause of mental health problems, no amount of wellness programs is going to undo what should be solved at the root cause.

    • Re:

      China may be on to something...

      Tech startups in China are hiring women to socialize with male programmers and give them massages
      https://www.businessinsider.in... [businessinsider.in]

    • by bagofbeans ( 567926 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @05:16PM (#64161329)

      Have a look at the privacy policy. I did, and it essentially said nothing. I chased, and was told they follow HIPAA. Well, HIPAA doesn't stop transfers from 3rd parties or not explicitly medical stuff, so large holes there.

      TL/DR: Don't.

      • Re:

        I'd vote for such objectification of women, but they'd have to be white, fully functional and legal in to comply with DEI regulations.

  • Re:

    I don't find it surprising that it's ineffective. Most of the things on offer are rife with bullshit artists peddling guff. It just doesn't have the same association with snake oil that other scams such as healing crystals or astrology have with many people.
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    • Re:

      Most of the things that come from HR department, be it assessing new hires, performance improvement initiatives, DEI, or wellness are pure bullshit. Think about this, these are the same people that year over year fail to deliver a fun office party. This is because working in HR requires non-thinking conformity combined with CYB indecisiveness that is incompatible with delivering any kind of meaningful results.

      • Re:

        Maybe the stability is the intended result.

        Thought experiment: Would you like a job where there were frequent, drastic changes based on the whims of your friendly, local HR rep?

  • Re:

    Yeah, I enrolled in one of the wellness programs (Omada) for the step credit ($25/month). It was an extra $300 cash at the end of the year for doing what I was already doing (21 or more 10k step days per month).

    However, the credit has since gone away and I am just left with a program that I can't seem to unenroll from.

  • Re:

    It's not going to work if you treat it as an easy checkbox (or an easy payday, if you're giving the course). I've had my share of these workshops... and there are a few that stand out for having made an impact. One was part of a series of induction courses at the company I worked for at the time, called "team working". The usual stuff, like Myers-Briggs and Belbin Roles, but the trainer worked it all into little business simulations that let the participants discover their own strengths and weaknesses.

  • Re:

    Nope, that's snake oil, too. [nih.gov]

    The core concepts of chiropractic, subluxation and spinal manipulation, are not based on sound science.

    • Re:

      Most people go to a chiropractor who listens to them bitch and gives them a massage, which makes them feel good. Some go to an actual chiropractor who practices actual chiropractic and have a stroke.

• My work started on such activities basically the day that smartwatches became fashionable.

• • Re:

    It should, but here in the USA your general healthcare is most likely tied to your employment. These employee wellness schemes came about because health insurers offered businesses a discount if they offered them. The idea being that healthier people would result in less insurance claims. At the end of the day, it's just the for-profit healthcare industry attempting to maximize their profits.

• I've worked at 3 companies (and initiated one of them) that used a farm-to-office model. Every Monday fresh fruit would show up. Often different types; always bananas (they're cheap), and an assortment of avocados, grapes, apples, oranges, etc. Everyone grazed at the various storage locations, and they were re-upped every week. One place even did beef jerky, not the healthiest but it was protein and it was stable out of the fridge so not bad.

  It kind of depends on the program. Yoga retreats and meditation; that's a very personal like-it-or-hate-it kind of thing. But a wellness program that provides free fruit all day? I'm 100% behind this over salty snacks or fatty stuff all the time.

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• I remember reading years ago that wellness programs have no benefit. Companies would do better to drop the wellness programs and give their employees raises.

  • Re:

    In our case, the wellness program is the health wellness program. All you have to do is get your finger pricked once a year and have a rapid test done on the spot to look at your cholesterol (hdl and ldl) and sugar, get weighed, blood pressure, and check your height. For that you get a discount on your health insurance and you don't have to do anything with the results of the tests. You can be as fat and artery blocked as you want.

    In a round about way it is a pay raise since you're not paying as much for

• "Workers who were given the opportunity to do charity or volunteer work"

  Guess what, all workers have that because they can do it while they're not at work.

  I don't get why people want their job to structure their non-job lives.

  • Re:

    Perhaps it was an opportunity to take a work day to volunteer for some organization doing charity work while still receiving pay for it.

  • Re:

    It can serve as motivation, the proverbial kick in the butt to get up and start doing it rather than just talking about it. If the company organizes it, provides transport, maybe even pays for the day, that's much easier to go along with than having to plan it all out yourself on a day off where you really just wanna crash on the couch and not move.

• Human resource departments are the problem, not spending on employees. If you don't want results for any kind of budget then just give it to HR for any initiative they can come up with and 100% waste is guaranteed.

  • Re:

    It's almost impossible to run a large company without an HR department. That said, they are a huge money pit. When it comes to staffing an HR department, I firmly believe that less is more. If they aren't working 12 hour shifts during a hiring frenzy, then your HR department is way too big. Because during a hiring freeze they are going to have less than a full day of work to do, unless they invent new and unnecessary things to do.

• My goal each day is to get into work, get things done, and get home. Ideally getting things done in a way where my boss doesn't have any new work to deal with. So if there are bugs, I try to deal with them before they are escalated. If people on different teams need to meet to solve an engineering problem, I set up the meeting. I send out minutes and action items after the meeting so that the managers know that we have it in hand. Then I go home to my wife instead of hanging around work for a massage or bee

  • Re: Get in and get out

    They actually don't want you to solve everything before it gets escalated. The small stuff, yeah, but systemic problems SHOULD bubble up to the level where they can be effectively solved.

• The most effective wellness program my company has ever instituted was the work from home program. Morale skyrocketed, we retained our best employees, employee sickness was all but eliminated, and productivity went way up.

• I'm sure it helps with the "we tried" defense against work-stress related suicide claims.

• Not surprising, since all those "wellness" programs are aimed at managing the symptoms rather than doing anything about the problems that are at the root of it.

• So none of these having any benefits is quite surprising, since the famous Hawthorne experiment might suggest some improvement, even if not for the expected reasons. The fact that there was no improvement leads me to believe that employees don't see this as a sign of a caring employer but just something to be taken for granted - like having pens in a cupboard or toilet roll. The expense of these schemes is not insignificant but obviously not in the same ballpark as a more concrete example of a company carin

• In other news: People with large salary are just as unhappy as poor people. This is thinking, we spent all this money, you have to be better. They probably are, but it doesn't mean they're better than you.

  Happiness depends on socio-economic, environment and lifestyle, genetic and personality factors. Obviously, people in the same town in the same company are facing the same limitations to happiness.

• If you want folks to be healthier, keep their workloads reasonable, make it part of your culture to take your vacation days off and take time off when sick.

  Instead we mostly have few days off to start, you get side-eye for taking it, and if you take time off work just piles up for when you return. Worrying about falling behind in particular makes it hard to actually relax when you take days off.

  All that costs money, at least short term money, so it will not happen. Wellness programs are cheap per employee

• We have an economy where people are 'human resources' to exploited as profitably as possible, just like any other resources. Any such economy will never be good for mental health, and 'workplace wellness' stuff is just a sticking plaster, if anything.

• At my company, I do not think those are available under our wellness programs. There is mental wellness like counseling and therapy available. Other forms of wellness include physical wellness like nutritional counseling as well as incentives for employees to get physicals every year. Vision and hearing checks are encouraged. I think those have benefits to the company.