Despite the increased focus and investment on training line managers in Health and Wellbeing, the number of employees who ‘strongly agree’ that their employer cares for their overall wellbeing has plummeted to a record low (21%), according to Gallup research last year.
There’s also evidence that line managers themselves recognise that they are not supporting their direct reports well enough, either, with over a third (33%) of them admitting to feeling out of their depth supporting mental health issues, for example, says Forbes.
A significant perception gap is emerging, too: while many managers believe that their employees are thriving (89%), only 24% of these employees agree, reveals research by The Grossman Group.
The story behind the stats
So why aren’t we seeing significant improvement in the effectiveness of line managers supporting their teams?
The first thing to make crystal clear is that this isn’t a line manager bashing article. With cutbacks and a seismically changed world of work in recent years, line managers have found more and more responsibilities landing on their desk – not just related to their team’s wellbeing.
It’s no wonder that so many of them are reporting burnout – 63% according to the same Grossman study – and this, clearly, detrimentally affects their ability to support others.
The core issue is…
The core issue here is the lack of real systemic change, despite all the discourse and virtue signalling around Employee Wellbeing. The reality is that the dial on effective line manager training isn’t meaningfully going to shift until the system does.
Bruce Daisley, formerly Vice President for Europe at Twitter and now a culture consultant, and author of Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength, sums up the cultural problem in this article on resilience, which can equally be applied to line manager training.
He says that in the current work environment, which is now characterised by high intensity, isolation and “no slack”, organisations are looking for easy wins at low cost.
Employers want to be able to say that they sent managers on a course, so they “ticked a box” and they are absolved of responsibility “if anything goes wrong”. But wellbeing cannot work like this. It’s complex, ever-changing and requires consistent, continuous, committed time and investment.
Damagingly short-termist
It’s also a damagingly short-termist view. Yes, doing a ‘tick box’ training may be good for a press release, or easing consciences that you’re ‘doing’ something about wellbeing but, in the longterm?
You won’t have a sustainable workforce. (We’ve said this before, here).
Younger generations – Gen Z in particular – have made it clear that they will quit jobs in unsupportive workplaces. One study, cited by Korn Ferry, finds that 40% of Gen Z employees plan to leave their job in the next two years and most of these (35%) will be prepared to do so without another job to go to. The research blames this trend on a sense of disconnection and not enough support regarding mental health and wellbeing.
“With Gen Z workers poised to make up a quarter of the labour force by 2025, engaging and retaining this talent pool is critical to the future of any organisation,” says Korn Ferry Institute’s Associate Researcher Amelia Haynes.
Are your senior management bought-in. Really?
If you’re reading this article and you work in Workplace Wellbeing, it is highly probable that you are already totally bought-in to the clear business case behind wellbeing and training line managers in wellbeing. But are your senior management? Really?
For many, that is the big sticking point. Many professionals don’t feel that their senior management realises the importance of Health and Wellbeing, as revealed in our newly published The Watercooler Whitepaper 2025.
For instance, one says: “senior leaders are still focused just on delivery rather than Health and Wellbeing” and another says “there is a lack of accountability for managers and leaders with regards to Health and Wellbeing”.
Leaders delegate involvement
While leaders often like to endorse wellbeing initiatives and sign off press releases, they often delegate direct involvement. But it’s their direct involvement that will have the biggest influence on culture and systemic change, not to mention their personal stance.
Direct involvement can change them, and the company culture (see this article for how reverse mentoring at Virgin Airlines transformed its CEO and working practices). Once they have been personally enlightened, that’s when they are more likely to take action on changing the systemic issues that really affect wellbeing – like job design, workload, flexibility and linking KPIs to employee wellbeing.
So, when it comes to manager training, perhaps the most potent way wellbeing professionals can use their energy, is towards training the top management and getting their genuine buy-in to the wellbeing business case.
Get your providers to help with the business case
Many providers are happy to help employers put this case together, which is a good place to start in engaging top leaders. In fact, as Anca Coriiu, Global Director at Wellcast ROI, says:
“This is exactly why we’ve developed ready-made HR ROI business cases for employee wellbeing programmes—so that senior management can say, ‘You have my full attention’.”
As Rachel Lewis, Managing Partner at Affinity Health at Work, says, if your objective is to “change behaviour and actually make an impact on the wellbeing of teams” you need to first recognise that this is completely different from “a tick box activity to ensure that all managers have wellbeing knowledge”.
She believes that achieving behaviour change requires a bespoke approach which starts with a comprehensive psychosocial analysis of your specific working environment. For instance, Affinity Health at Work has been working with gambling brand Flutter over the past year to do this.
Psychosocial analysis
Lewis and her team conducted a working well maturity assessment of Flutter UK & Ireland before carrying out any manager training. Affinity reviewed all documents, data and practices, as well as gathered insights from site visits and more than thirty stakeholder interviews across its Head Office and Retail Estate.
Conor Galloway, Inclusion, Wellbeing and Community Leader at Flutter, is convinced that the time and investment has been worth it:
“We are now aware of the psychosocial risks to our colleagues’ wellbeing and how we can mitigate these throughout our people experience. We used these findings to work on bespoke wellbeing interventions across 10 business areas which positively impacted the wellbeing of an estimated 400 people. We aim to reach over 6000 people by the end of 2025.”
Senior management will appreciate this rigorous data-led approach of Affinity’s, if not the inevitable expense this comes at.
Bespoke doesn’t have to mean ‘expensive’
“But, actually, it doesn’t have to be more expensive to go for the bespoke solution [rather than the tick box training all managers solution] because if you take time to understand the organisational context, you can just target the group that has the most reach, impact or cascading power – the top leadership,” says Lewis.
For those grappling with small budgets yet big ambitions, she recommends starting with senior leaders because “they have so much opportunity to have a contagious effect”. Byproducts, too, are they will likely become advocates and understand the business case better via the training.
However, approaching training senior leaders in wellbeing needs to be approached differently to middle management.
“Generally we find senior leaders don’t want to be in a room with other people to talk about these things because it feels like too much of a risk for them,” says Lewis.
Talk in KPIs
Instead, she suggests running a specific group session just for top management which is heavily focused on “why wellbeing is important for productivity and in terms of KPIs”.
“It’s so important to talk their language in getting them to realise the significance of it,” she says.
Another powerful way to train leaders and increasing their buy-in is short coaching interventions. This is where Affinity Health at Work takes leaders through the content of the line managers’ course but on a one-to-one basis.
What tends to happen with this approach is leaders move from a position of ‘what’s my wellbeing like?’ to the realisation that the important business-critical question is actually: ‘how is my wellbeing impacting on others?’
Coach leaders
Via coaching, the leaders come to important realisations themselves, which make them resonate deeper.
“You don’t start with ‘you are causing the problem by stressing your team’,” says Lewis. “You start by empathising that ‘you have all these needs and complaints and pressures piled on you, so let’s do something to support your wellbeing first’”.
Once leader wellbeing has benefited from some of the tools, Affinity encourages them to think about their impact on others and what they can do to be more supportive.
“We get them to think about how much better they feel from a quick intervention, and therefore the positive, productive impact on the entire business if all employees had access to this,” says Lewis.
Way to hearts is via data
Arti Kashyap-Aynsley, Global Head of Wellbeing & Inclusion at Ocado, vehemently agrees that the way to senior management’s hearts is via the data.
“Tell them a data story,” she says. “My experience has been that, unless you have that story to tell them, it’s really hard to truly engage leaders. Without this, you’ll find they may say yes, and agree it’s the right thing to do, but then push it down to their next layer. But, oftentimes, what you need is not that lower layer, it’s the one above.”
Leadership Development is a hot topic which will be discussed at our forthcoming event, taking place on 7th and 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, The Watercooler Event is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to creating workplaces that empower both people and business to thrive.
Now in its fourth year, it’s two days of cutting-edge employee health, wellbeing, workplace culture, networking and product discovery – celebrating the future of work. Co-located with The Office Event for the full 360 degree workplace experience.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
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