No benefit from employer wellbeing programs, new study finds

Businesses offering wellbeing support like mindfulness training, stress management and relaxation classes may be wasting their money and their workers’ time, new research suggests.

Employee wellbeing programs offer no benefit to workers, a new study suggests.

Businesses offering wellbeing support like mindfulness training, stress management and relaxation classes may be wasting their money and their workers’ time, new research suggests.

A British study has found employees who participated in individual-level mental wellbeing interventions ended up no better off than other workers, and possibly worse.

The study of more than 46,000 workers in the UK concluded firms were better off spending their time working on organisational interventions like staff resources, management practices and better job design if they wanted to support greater wellbeing in the workplace.

Published in the Industrial Relations Journal, the study by Oxford University researcher William Fleming found mindfulness classes, resilience training, massage or relaxation programs, events promoting healthy sleep, time management support, wellbeing apps and online coaching offered no discernible benefit.

“Those who participate in individual-level interventions have the same levels of mental wellbeing as those who do not,” it concluded.

Only employers supporting their workers to engage in volunteer or charity work appeared to move the wellbeing dial, it found.

“There’s growing consensus that organisations have to change the workplace and not just the worker,” Dr Fleming said. “This research investigates wellbeing interventions across hundreds of workplaces … and the lack of any benefit suggests we need more ambition when it comes to improving employee wellbeing.”

The conclusions in Dr Fleming’s study were scathing. “(They) pose a challenge to the popularity and legitimacy of individual‐ level mental wellbeing interventions like mindfulness, resilience and stress management, relaxation classes and wellbeing apps,” it said. “I find little evidence in support of any benefits from these interventions.”