The State of Employee Well-Being

I was in Tech Sales for 12 years, and having worked for one company who had an amazing culture, and another with…well let’s just say the opposite (not naming names ;)), I understand the importance of well-being’s role in cultivating a strong, honest, fun and high-performing team culture.

In this weeks edition I highlight why there is such a gap in the huge investment of employee well-being, $94billion by 2026 globally, and still the rise of burnout, stress and mental health struggles.

The Three Critical Shortcomings

1) They Overlook Route Causes

Digital initiatives are often "band‑aids" on deeper organizational injuries. Apps and resilience training do little to reduce unmanageable workloads or toxic scheduling. You can’t just always look for the solution to get out of a problem or to try and improve something, you have to understand how you ended up in that situation in the first place, what the root cause is.

Example: You want to lose weight, so what do you do? You look at the next best shining diet.

But in actual fact what you need to do is look for the root cause, what made you overweight? Stress eating? Lack of discipline? Environment? Once you actually understand the root cause, it makes the solution more successful.

2) Low Adoption Rates

Most apps and programs remain underutilized and without critical mass, even well-designed programs lack impact. Here are some possible reasons:

Lack of time, doing a self-program in an app seems like another thing to do.

Misalignment with actual needs, for example I don’t need to journal to get my thoughts out, what I need is my manager to stop messaging me at 10pm.

Poor communication, sometimes employees don’t even know what’s available, or they haven’t been informed what the actual value and benefit is

Stigma, employees still see using ‘support’ as a sign of weakness, unfocused or unfit for promotion, we need to change this mindset to well-being is another tool for high-performance, to improve confidence and results.

3) Lack Of Leadership Engagement

Some leaders treat well-being as an HR initiative rather than a core business priority, so it remains on the sidelines. Employees don’t just listen to leaders, they watch what they do. Strong leadership looks like:

Role-modeling, being open how they take breaks, set boundaries and prioritize mental and physical health.

Embedding into strategy, well-being should be woven into performance metrics, management training and team planning.

Active participation, they attend sessions, ask for feedback and fund improvements.

Creating psychological safety, foster a culture where people feel safe to speak up about stress, ask for help or suggest workplace improvements.

Designing a Better Well-Being Strategy

1) Diagnose root issues, survey high stress areas, leadership problems, schedule constraints and workload mismatches.

2) Choose interventions intentionally, use systemic levels like role redesign, team empowerment and leadership development, all before apps and yoga.

3) Engage leaders and employees, track metrics, embed accountability and encourage consistent tuning based on feedback.

4) Complement with individual tools, after the structural change then implement apps and coaching, just don’t throw apps out and see what happens.

Conclusion

Well-being in the workplace is still a new concept in my eyes, when I was working in tech it really didn’t become as noticeable until after 2020. Not saying it wasn’t there, but it wasn’t a big topic of conversation, there weren’t all of these new well-being apps and so on.

But also, the world itself is changing, just like it does for every generation, and in this particular change, it’s been the digital one. Where our work is now in our pockets 24/7, the speed of work and the amount of new aspects to our roles we have to deal with is incredible, so we simply have to adapt.

Let’s move well-being from a wellness perk to a competitive advantage.

My role is to facilitate the gap between high-performance and well-being, I’m a big believer that we can have both. With a purposeful and intentional mindset, combined with health habits, that’s what gives us the base and foundation to create our high-performing balanced lives.

See you next week

Billy Hudspith

Your Mindset & Habit Creator