The Problem with Wellness

How self-care became another job.

Illustration: Ernest Ange Duez via Wikimedia Commons.

In 2020, June’s* father was dying of cancer at the height of the pandemic. June was also getting a divorce—lockdown had undone her already fraying marriage. Because of this, she was having a tough time staying on top of her work.

An executive at an international-management consulting firm, June’s mornings started at 7 a.m. when she connected with clients in London, and usually ended after 7 p.m., when she briefed the China team. Her long days were fast-paced, as she rushed from one task to the next: giving presentations, writing client reports, analyzing data, editing her direct reports’ work, and ghostwriting speeches for her boss.

June had worked this way for years, and had done exceptionally well. But now she couldn’t maintain the pace. She started making mistakes—missing deadlines, missing meetings. She was having trouble focusing and concentrating, and it was showing in her work.

June’s boss called her to discuss the situation. No, the boss did not want to outline a plan to lighten her workload—how about a nine-hour day instead of 12 or 13? Instead, she asked June a question that stressed-out employees across corporate America are now hearing: What are you doing to take care of yourself?

“She wanted to know what kind of plan I was putting into place—therapy, meditation, etc.—and what is the proof that I had a plan,” said June.

June promised to double-up her therapy, get to the gym, and start meditating. The trouble was: when? June’s workload was unchanged. “It’s hard to even take 10 minutes out of your day to do a meditation when your phone is still blowing up with emails and Slack texts. It was like that game, Don’t Spill the Beans. They keep adding more beans, and eventually it spills, and then they say look at the mess you made,” said June.

Employers know workers are stressed. Fifty percent of North American workers said in a Gallup survey that they experienced a lot of stress the previous day, and 41% worried a lot, too.

This distress is significantly impacting corporate bottom lines. As Ronald Purser reports in his book McMindfulness, stress-related absences cause U.S. employers to lose an estimated $300 billion a year, and lack of employee engagement loses an estimated $500 billion.

To address this problem, Corporate America has embraced “wellness.” The Harvard Business review reports that more than half of large companies offer employees some form of mindfulness training. Other popular self-care offerings include meditation apps, online therapy, and vouchers for massages or yoga classes.

But, as Purser notes, if employees are perpetually stressed, the solution can’t be found in a Headspace app. The problem is coming from inside the house. Research by Stanford University Graduate School of Business professors finds that higher employee mortality is associated with workplace stressors resulting from poor management practices such as high job demands, long work hours, lack of organizational justice, low social support, work family conflicts, job insecurity and low job control.

So why aren’t more companies examining their own practices and expectations? Or, as journalist

Rina Raphael

asks in The Gospel of Wellness, “Why the hell is the advice always yoga?”

For her book, Raphael interviewed a young nursing student who was fast-tracked through graduation in early 2020 so she could help with the pandemic. The work was, of course, heart-breaking and stressful. But like health-care practitioners across the world, the young nurse accepted the long and grueling shifts and devoted her slim spare time to staying up-to-date on fast-changing COVID-19 policies. She and her colleagues spent their days rushing from crisis to crisis, doing their best to provide care and comfort to their terrified patients, only to see them die anyway.

After many of the nurses felt they’d reached their breaking points, they asked the hospital for support—extra staff members to help carry the load or at least extra compensation to help them manage the rest of their lives.

Instead, management asked them to consider the same question that June heard: “What are you doing to take care of yourself?” At a Zoom presentation, the nurses were advised to drink more water, and take up running or yoga.

“Employers can dangle workplace wellness initiatives to offset the stress they create in part because we’ve accepted the concept en masse: it’s our job to fix what’s ‘wrong’ with us,” Raphael writes. “Consequently, employers are always suggesting ways to get well, yet never offering less work or more substantial help.”

For June, it was worse than that. June was ordered to take care of herself, but with her job in jeopardy she knew better than to be caught actually practicing self-care.  “You don’t want to say, ‘I just got a really upsetting phone call from my dad’s doctor. I need to take two hours to myself to take a walk or work out.’ Because that will only amplify that you're falling behind,” she said.

As we spoke, June reflected on this a little. “I could have just said, ‘Eff you, I'm going to the gym every day at lunch. For an hour and 10 minutes, you won’t be able to reach me. You said for me to take care of myself, so that's how I'm doing it.’ You really need to have that kind of fighter mentality to pull off what employers are asking us to do for ourselves.”

I repeated this sentiment back to her: You have to have a fighter mentality to obey your employer’s mandate to de-stress.

She laughed, agreeing that this was nuts.

June did find a way to take care of her mental health. She now feels calmer and happier, and she’s flourishing at work. Was the answer a new meditation app or fitness tracker? I’m sure you know the answer is no.

She got a new job.

What’s your experience with workplace wellness programs? How do you handle work-related stress?

*name and some details have been changed for privacy