Ahead of the virtual roundtable we’re running for members of the Make a Difference Leaders’ Club, focused on best practice in employee health and wellbeing communications, comms expert Sally Pritchett shares her perspective on how overload, friction and timing impact uptake — and how to cut through the noise.
If you’d like to join the Leaders’ Club, you can find more details and apply here.
Most HR and wellbeing leaders I speak to are not light on effort. They’ve designed thoughtful health and wellbeing strategies, secured the budgets, influenced leadership for support, launched benefits, platforms, perks, policies and initiatives with genuine care and good intent.
And yet, they’re not getting the results they’re after, worst still there’s a worrying pattern:
- Rising sickness absence
- Increasing complaints of overload, stress and burnout
- Growing pressure on already overwhelmed middle managers
- All whilst frustratingly low take-up of the very health and wellbeing support designed to help
When you’ve poured time and energy into creating support, it’s hard not to feel demoralised and frustrated by low engagement. It can even make you question; what’s the point?
But before you give up, here’s what I see as a communications leader:
Most wellbeing communications aren’t failing because employees don’t care about their health or even that they think the solutions they promote aren’t seen as useful. They’re failing because, like other internal comms, they’re landing in an environment that’s already overloaded.
When wellbeing becomes “one more thing”
For many employees, the working day already feels relentless.
Back-to-back meetings.
Constant messages.
Multiple platforms.
Endless context switching.
In that environment, even well-designed wellbeing communications can feel like another task to manage.
Another email to read.
Another portal to log into.
Another choice to make.
Another thing to remember, schedule, or self-initiate.
The irony is pretty painful, the very messages intended to reduce stress are being delivered in ways that are adding to it.
From the employee’s perspective, wellbeing has just become another thing on the list.
Low uptake isn’t indifference, it’s overload
It’s tempting to assume that if people aren’t engaging with wellbeing initiatives, they must not value them.
But what if the opposite is true?
What if people care deeply, but don’t have the capacity to act?
When employees are already stretched, depleted and overwhelmed, accessing support requires:
- Attention they don’t have
- Energy they’re short on
- Decisions they’re tired of making
In those moments, even small frictions become barriers.
An email that requires scrolling and decoding.
A platform that needs a password or an employee number.
A link that leads to options.
A webinar that needs diary time.
A programme that needs “signing up to”.
None of these are unreasonable in isolation. But together, they quietly filter out the people who need support most. When weighing up tasks to tackle; the business-critical ones, the urgent and often the easiest tasks will often get chosen over the more nuanced wellbeing ones.
Worst still, often the most conscientious, loyal and committed employees are the very group that find putting themselves and their own health first the hardest, yet these are the ones we need to engage the most.
The messages start to stack
In the fight to cut through, another challenge, that’s a bitter pill to swallow, is that wellbeing messages and campaigns have started to stack.
Mental Health Awareness
Men’s Health
Women’s Health
Resilience programmes
EAP reminders
Benefits refreshes
Well-intended awareness weeks and campaigns, mean the noise spikes even higher until people tune out. They’re hitting overflowing inboxes, until instead of standing out, they simply blend in and become the easiest to ignore. Let’s face it, when did anyone get sacked for not engaging in a wellbeing initiative? That’s the brutal thought that employees weigh up when choosing which email to respond to first.
Awareness is clearly no longer the answer. In fact, many employees already know support exists, they just can’t reach the help in the moments they need it most.
Less is more
To cut through the noise, wellbeing communication needs a fundamental shift in mindset.
Away from:
- Broadcasting information
- Promoting programmes
- Driving clicks and sign-ups
And towards:
- Reducing friction
- Simplifying choices
- Making the healthy option the easy option
It’s less about saying more, and more about removing genuine obstacles.
If you want to increase engagement, here are a few things to consider:
- Embed appropriate wellbeing messaging into everyday communication so it’s landing in a moment that matters rather than in isolation.
- Create space with protected quiet times. Whether it’s a time of day, day of week or a seasonal peak, create a movement towards recognised quiet times like meeting or email black outs.
- Action speaks a thousand words, get managers to role-model healthy boundaries, or sharing their experience of handling overwhelm or stress. This will be more powerful than several emails.
- Simplify your wellbeing messages, get to the point quickly, ditch the puff and head straight into the guidance.
- Use the insight you have. The traditional, ‘You said, so we’ve acted…’ approach to employee feedback is still important. Question your activity against what employee feedback is telling you and make sure you’re removing the obstacles.
- Consider the key moments when wellbeing can be tested, change programmes, job changes and promotions, peak business periods? Think about how to discretely communicate wellbeing support in the moments that matter.
You don’t cut through the noise by shouting louder than others. You cut through by being more relevant, and timely.
The focus this year for most HR / Health & Wellbeing leaders might not be on launching new initiatives or doing more, instead scaling impact might be by making what they already have easier to access or by engaging employees in the right moment.
About the author
Sally Pritchett is CEO of a strategic people and culture communications partner, Something Big, working with organisations to create fairer, healthier and happier workplaces. With nearly 30 years’ experience advising leaders, HR and communications teams, she specialises in helping organisations engage their workforces in a way that delivers culture, commercial success and meaningful impact. Her TEDx last year and upcoming book, Overloaded, focuses on the human drivers behind overcommunication and how poorly managed communication and information flows have become one of today’s biggest business risks.
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