Most workplace wellness programs a waste of money: study

Corporate wellbeing is a $3 billion industry in Canada, but new research suggests it may not be money well spent.

Employees who participate in workplace wellness programs, such as mindfulness classes, resiliency training or relaxation exercises like yoga, reap no discernable benefits, according to a recently published study in the Industrial Relations Journal.

The study’s author, a research fellow at Oxford Univerity’s Wellbeing Research Centre, said it’s possible wellbeing initiatives could even negatively impact some employees.

“If a training course is trying to enhance your coping mechanisms, but you still can’t manage your job demands, this might make you feel worse,” said William Fleming, who scrutinized data collected from 46,336 workers at 233 companies during Britain’s Healthiest Workplace survey in 2017 and 2018.

These findings echo observations from the U.S., where about 80 per cent of large employers offer workplace wellness programs as a way of lowering privately paid healthcare costs, according to data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Economists from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, speaking to the school’s business journal Knowledge at Wharton, said the “reasons why wellness programs don’t work are multifaceted, but the main reason ties back to behavioural economics.”

“While incentives do work in some cases, randomized trials found no difference in health outcomes, cost savings, or absenteeism for workers in wellness programs,” Wharton management professor Iwan Barankay told the publication.

Only one type of individual-level program examined by Fleming showed any potential advantage.

“Volunteering is the only type of intervention to suggest benefits for workers’ wellbeing,” he said. 

“Based on other studies, it seems like these programs offer time off from regular work, enhance a sense of social purpose in one’s job, offer more time for socializing and maybe even teach new skills.”

That finding doesn’t surprise Sona Khosla, chief impact officer at Benevity, a Calgary-based company providing volunteer-management platforms to corporate clients.

“There is plenty of research that shows that volunteering and other positive social actions play a role in increasing oxytocin levels, which creates a sense of cohesion and connectedness while also reducing stress, depression and anxiety,” she said. “So there’s science to this.”

Apart from building stronger ties with colleagues, volunteering also builds community connections and lowers turnover rates, Khosla said.

“[This] can contribute to longer lifespans and an overall sense of wellbeing,” she said. 

“Whether the relationship is causal or correlative may still be debated, but the undeniable positive influence of volunteerism, whether personally or professionally, remains evident.”

The study’s findings, while preliminary, echo what she’s heard about workplace volunteer programs anecdotally, said Renata Rusiniak, who heads corporate community engagement at Volunteer Canada. 

“There’s an awful lot of empirical evidence available to connect employee volunteerism to retention and high performance, and that goes back 15, 20 years,” she said.

“But beyond this, specifically speaking about the mental health aspect, the feedback we receive from employees that are engaged in different group volunteering activities slants towards being pretty positive.”

However, having hard data to back those anecdotes up is invaluable, Rusiniak said.

While research on volunteerism’s impact on staff retention exists, she said having new information about how it impacts employees’ mental health and wellbeing could strengthen the case for corporate volunteer programs.

Rusiniak would like to see this study followed by long-term research focusing on the relationship between volunteerism and mental wellness.

“An offshoot of studies or data like this could be better bridges between social impact practitioners and health and wellness professionals within organizations. It’s almost allowing them to team up in a way that they hadn’t done in the past,” she said.

“And I think there’s real power in doing that effectively and thinking about volunteerism as part of the overall wellness picture.”

Growth in employer-led programs could also help address lingering volunteer shortages. The pandemic saw volunteer numbers drop dramatically, and many who left never returned; 55 per cent of Canadian charities reported fewer volunteers in 2023 than they did in 2019, Rusiniak said. 

Study limitations

However, Fleming cautioned that the study and the data it relies on are not without limitations.

“Employee volunteering opportunities do offer one possible exception, but the estimated effects are small, probably selection-biased, and these initiatives would not engage with the job demands and resources central to theoretical and empirical understandings of work wellbeing,” he said.

In other words, even beneficial wellbeing programs don’t address the root causes of work stress. 

“So I think volunteering is more of a nice-to-have than a vital wellbeing policy,” said Fleming. 

The study’s findings are also limited because the data it uses was collected at one time, he said. 

Additionally, Fleming was unable to fully control for selection bias, making it impossible to ascertain respondents’ prior levels of mental health.

“For volunteering programs, happier workers are more likely to participate, but for something like resilience training, more stressed workers will likely be more likely to participate,” he said. 

“I apply a variety of techniques to address this limitation, but it still remains.”

Limitations notwithstanding, the study is poised to challenge the popularity and legitimacy of many individual wellbeing interventions like mindfulness, stress management tools and wellness apps, Fleming said.

“It tells us the ideal worker is a fantasy,” he said. 

“Management can’t cajole employees into specific optimal mindsets. For the ideal workplace, we need to focus on good quality jobs. This includes socially meaningful work that is well paid, with supportive management and colleagues, and employees having control and flexibility over how, when and where work gets done.”