Ashish Kothari breaks down why wellness programs don't work: an Oxford study shows they fail because they ignore the real problems. Job design, team toxicity, lack of meaning, and poor psychological safety are what actually drain people. Programs that ignore these systemic issues show no ROI.
Chapters
If you look at most well being investments have zero roi. I know this is very, very hard to hear, but two weeks ago there was a study from Oxford that also proved and validated this that most individual well being interventions around mental health, etc. Don't resort to anything. Why? Because we are fundamentally not addressing the job, the team and the organization. The toxicity, not feeling valued as an individual, not finding meaning in what you're doing, feeling tremendous amount of pressure in terms of job time resources to get doing that, not feeling psychologically safe. There are so many of these factors that are missing and so unless we build these into well being programs, we're not going to move the needle. We're just not going to move the needle.