Everyone's talking about wellness, but what does it mean?

By Ethan Huckel

Huckel Inclusive

If your employer has jumped into the well-being marketplace, you may be seeing “wellness” initiatives popping up like wildfire. But what is employee well-being, and why are employers suddenly using this language?

Well-being is an umbrella term that will look different depending on each organization’s priorities. When done well, well-being efforts encompass a wide range of things (benefits, compensation, workplace safety, and inclusion efforts, to name a few) to ensure that resources are used in collaboration to effectively create a thriving workplace culture.

When done well, well-being supports inclusion. A workplace where difference is not valued and systemic bias is unchecked would certainly not be a healthy workplace where employees engage in healthy collaboration and innovation. By contrast, employers that prioritize inclusion are more poised to establish well-being as a viable goal. It makes sense, then, that inclusion and well-being often go hand-in-hand and that wellness is emerging as a term that may overtake inclusion as the new workplace buzzword.

So, do wellness efforts always support inclusion?

Of course not! As in all other areas of work, there are wellness initiatives that are taken on with thoughtfulness and care, strategically implemented to have a powerful and lasting effect, and there are initiatives that feel disconnected from the needs of employees, put in place to appear employee-centered, while jobs are being cut in record numbers. Let’s be real. People who are struggling to pay rising housing and food costs or are worried that their job will be the next lost in a long string of “restructures” are probably not going to feel like their employer is really prioritizing well-being. Likewise, if an organization has a toxic culture where bullying thrives and bias goes unchecked, it won’t matter how many “wellness” efforts are added. In these times, workplace wellness initiatives probably feel more like a small bandage on a gushing wound.

That said, when you see “wellness” and “well-being” programs popping up at work, you should take a critical look at how these are structured, resourced, and implemented to evaluate their intent and potential efficacy. Your organization may be one of the good ones, really committed to building a positive culture where you can feel supported to do good work.

How do you know if your employer’s wellness initiatives are genuine?

The first thing to consider is how these efforts are resourced and who is in charge of them. That doesn’t mean that we’re looking for a single tried-and-true structure, so it won’t be as simple as glancing at an org chart. Is well-being included in the organization’s strategic goals and positioned for success with leadership support or is it a “special project” with little integration and strategy? Is it just focused on physical wellness with sporadic health offerings (like yoga classes) and health-related facilities (like chest-feeding/pumping spaces) or does it take a comprehensive approach to health—inclusive of factors that impact psychological safety? Are well-being efforts connected to an annual benefits review (looking to cut employee costs and improve access to services)? Are well-being efforts supported and integrated throughout the organization? Does your manager demonstrate inclusive leadership on a daily basis and encourage you to take advantage of offerings that support your wellness? Are well-being efforts being implemented while other inclusion work is being undermined?

These are just a few relevant questions, but they establish a clear point: intention is in the details.

Should you be worried if you’re seeing the language of wellness and well-being replace “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? The short answer to that question is maybe. Language is not universal or static, and change is inevitable—many of the things we currently call inclusion used to be known by a different name—but when organization’s shift their language, we need to pay attention to the context to understand the change. Let’s look at an example (this is hypothetical, but it may sound a lot like your company):

Company A has existed for decades and (despite annual anti-harassment training and the occasional foray into inherent bias) didn’t invest in diversity and inclusion until the summer of 2020. When the murder of George Floyd flooded the media and a population stuck at home due to COVID was forced to focus on racism and systemic oppression instead of simply looking away, Company A joined the flood of organizations finally investing in DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). Chances are they believed they were a good place to work already regardless of diversity but felt peer-pressure to take a clear stand “on the right side of history,” as they say. Maybe they jumped in with gusto and hired a full staff for these efforts. More likely, they added “inclusion” or “culture” to someone’s already full plate and established a “council” of similarly over-burdened employees (who also likely cared very deeply about the work).

In the last four years, Company A was pushed by this team of workhorses to develop employee resource groups, to acknowledge the impact of bias on hiring and advancement, to evaluate gender and racial equity, to look critically at benefits, etc. Some of this work lead to meaningful changes and perhaps measurable goals were established (at times even met!).

But, by the summer of 2024, the politics of inclusion have changed and that team of council members and overburdened DEI leaders is burning out. At the same time, AI is threatening to eliminate jobs at an alarming rate and the future of work is cloudier than it has been in years. Not to mention the now challenging but delightfully flexible circumstances created by remote/hybrid work.

What is Company A to do? They have shareholders to answer to, so they are unlikely to maintain jobs that could be phased out or automated. They want employees to feel safe at work, but shifting costs and the paramount virtue of money, money, more money means that profits are priority. They don’t want everyone to be afraid that their job may be eliminated, but who knows what the next wave of tech advancements will bring? Company A needs to be flexible to chase profit where it comes up.

You may note a touch of cynicism in my tone because I am not inherently a capitalist at my core, but I also firmly believe that capitalism can coexist with humanity, when it exists within a strong social contract. For companies, that means honoring the commitment of workers with investment in individuals and communities. Our hypothetical Company A is like many organizations currently reimaging their approach to employee engagement… inclusion… wellness.

Hopefully, over the last four years, Company A’s leadership has moved beyond DEI-as-a-result-of-peer-pressure and has realized that inclusion is effective. Diversity is what drives the innovation that moves us forward and inclusion means that organizations are best poised to foster and harness that innovation. Leaders that understand this power are unlikely to abandoned course, but they may be less invested in the words “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” than they are the goals that they have outlined. They may want to change language in order to side-step the politicization of “DEI,” so they aren’t distracted by external pressure. (See SHRM’s statement about their decision to drop “equity” from DEI.)

And they may have a more comprehensive view of the employee experience than they previously did, so they recognize that inclusion is integral to wellness.

So, back to that question of language: does shifting language mean that the investment is shallow or insincere? Not necessarily. Changing language could very well move the work forward and tying inclusion efforts to well-being in a coordinated effort may ultimately make the work more effective (even if it means a shift in the financial commitment to DEI specifically). Putting fewer dollars into inclusion or wellness doesn’t necessarily mean that a company isn’t committed. Sometimes fewer dollars better spent is more effective. Sometimes it means that the company is finally implementing those dollars strategically.

What really matters is whether well-being is strategically integrated to establish a culture of inclusion and to address barriers to psychological safety. Wellness cannot address “health” without an honest acknowledgement of the ever-shifting landscape of work and the impact of restructuring. Employees are not “well,” if they cannot feed their families and feel secure in their housing, and no wellness initiative will succeed if it believes its responsibility to employees ends when they walk out the door or sign off of Teams.

But wellness initiatives that bolster the organization’s role in the great social contract could very well be what carry us all through this period of uncertainty and ensure that inclusion efforts begun over the last four years are not washed away but rather focused on fostering our collective well-being.