A recent article by Andre Spicer in the Guardian caught my eye.
It points to evidence that employee wellness programmes are mostly nonsense seized on by management too weak or stupid to address the real causes of employee non-wellness.
In essence, the research shows that wellness programmmes (mindfullness, stress-managment, the ubiquitous "apps", away-days, free pushbikes, pot-plants, your own guru...) have no lasting impact on the mental or physical wellbeing of employees.
What does have an impact is better managers, more flexible working arrangements, more autonomy, fewer crap systems, fewer angry customers, more job security, adequate pay...in fact all the things that good employers have known about and striven to put in place for decades.
The trouble is, these things are difficult to do - and getting more difficult as liberal democracies slide further into inequality, under-investment and precarious employment in pursuit of ever-diminishing growth. Much easier to give everyone a mindfullness app and move on.
After all, we should never let irrelevance or lack of efficacy get in the way of a money-making opportunity or inded the chance to build a whole new industry. Neither would we want to take away a simple way for managers and HR departments to look as if they are doing something and force the poor darlings to do some of the hard thinking and hard work that might actually make a difference.
