The significance of workplace wellbeing has skyrocketed in recent years across the UK. During the coronavirus pandemic, organisations quickly pivoted to wanting to support the health and wellbeing of their employees and rushed to put interventions in place. This legacy has lasted, and although senior leadership focus on workplace wellbeing has dropped slightly since then, there is still a feeling amongst many businesses that there is a need to continue to support their staff in order to get the best out of them, prevent them from leaving, and encourage younger generations into the workforce. But we are at a crossroad.
Unfortunately, as much as the pandemic may have brought workplace wellbeing to the forefront of many organisations’ strategic priorities, because of how quickly interest grew in the area, it also meant that many organisations jumped into “quick-wins”. Interventions like one-off webinars, free fruit, wellbeing events on health awareness days. And although at the time this may have met the needs of the organisation and their staff, times have changed, and people are back working harder than ever, but at the same time expecting more support from their organisation than ever.
The overnight emergence of workplace wellbeing
The issue that came with the almost overnight rise of workplace wellbeing, was that with demand, almost expectedly came an increase in supply. For most industries, this wouldn’t have been an issue, with expectations of certain qualifications, experience and professional memberships required in order to practice. But Workplace Wellbeing wasn’t like most industries. It was new, it was exciting, and scarily, it was unregulated. And the number of workplace wellbeing and mental health “experts” and consultancies grew exponentially.
This combination of factors, although sufficiently meeting the needs of organisations at the time, has now led to a landscape where there are huge inconsistencies. Huge differences in what Workplace Wellbeing Professionals are doing and in essence anyone who would like to, can now say that they can “improve the wellbeing of your employees”.
Not only are we seeing inconsistencies in results, which in itself has given Workplace Wellbeing as a profession a bad reputation in certain areas, but it has also led to a lot of confusion on what organisations actually expect from the Workplace Wellbeing Professional.
Bringing consistency to workplace wellbeing
For anyone that has ever searched a job board for a Workplace Wellbeing role in the UK, something that becomes apparent very quickly is that two roles with the same title “Workplace Wellbeing Lead” often have very different expectations. One hiring organisation could be asking for someone with HR experience and CIPD qualifications, whereas another could be looking for someone with a background in Health and Safety, with the accompanying IOSH/NEBOSH qualifications. Organisations may even be looking for those with occupational health, reward and benefits or even clinical psychology backgrounds.
Just by looking through the job adverts that are out there, it is very clear to see that there is no consistency in what organisations expect from a Workplace Wellbeing Professional. Someone with a HR background will come at workplace wellbeing at a totally different angle to those who are chartered clinical psychologists. This has resulted in huge inconsistencies in the approaches taken, some with much more impact than others.
Avoiding becoming a “glorified contract manager”
I was speaking to someone in the industry recently about the barriers they were encountering that were preventing them from making a real impact upon their organisation’s culture. They put it so much better than I could have when they told me that they felt like a “glorified contract manager”. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attack on contract managers out there, but instead a point that Workplace Wellbeing Professionals are so much more than what they so often become, a wellbeing programme lead.
With no clear guidance from a regulating body on what organisations should be looking for when hiring a Workplace Wellbeing Professional, they end up hiring someone to manage an employee assistance programme contract and organise a series of awareness day rather than really looking to prevent work-related ill-health. Without meaning to, they hire someone to lead a wellbeing programme rather than hiring someone to think strategically about the wellbeing of their staff. These two roles are very different.
This is one of the main reasons why at the end of 2024, I set about researching exactly what it means to be a Workplace Wellbeing Professional. Scouring through job adverts and specifications to see what is expected, and almost more importantly, what the evidence says works when it comes to workplace wellbeing. The result was our Workplace Wellbeing Profession Map™. The first evidence-based framework in the UK that allows Workplace Wellbeing Professionals to benchmark themselves and identify areas of development so you can make the biggest impact possible.
Taking on the challenge ourselves
But as much as the Workplace Wellbeing Profession Map™ is a great tool to help you develop, it is also important that those outside of the profession, and senior leaders see and acknowledge it. So that they can really start to appreciate the role of the Workplace Wellbeing Professional.
Every single one of us in the Workplace Wellbeing industry needs to challenge what the senior leaders believe our roles to be. Talking to them about how we can help prevent ill health and poor wellbeing in the workplace, not just support someone once they’re already ill. Showing them the multifaceted aspects of our role, rather than just organising events.
It seems that at the moment, the workplace wellbeing industry is at a bit of a crossroads. In one direction, continuing what we are doing and risking organisations forgetting about the importance of employee wellbeing all together, in the other direction, organisations really starting to embrace the potential of their workplace wellbeing professionals.
It really is up to us to drive this change, as without a governing body, no one else will.
About the author:
Elliot Foster is a Workplace Wellbeing Strategy Consultant at SuperWellness, a workplace wellbeing company focused on prevention. As a qualified Organisational Psychologist, Elliot has helped organisations from many different sectors move away from “tick-box” wellbeing to thinking more strategically. He is hugely passionate about supporting Workplace Wellbeing Professionals, having developed the Workplace Wellbeing Profession Map™, its free self-assessment tool, and the groundbreaking Level 5 Diploma in Leading Strategic Workplace Wellbeing.
