The Failure of Wellness Programmes

The claim of no effect of corporate wellness interventions on mental wellbeing, is alarming for two reasons: Approximately US$56 billion are spent on corporate wellness annually (1), and if these programmes are not having any effect, the money could be better spent on other solutions that have a stronger positive effect. What the alternatives are will be a subject for another article coming soon.

To assess these claims of no effect, we have reviewed several scientific studies investigating the effect of corporate wellness programmes. The studies are primarily focussing on interventions that promote positive psychological functioning aimed at individual workers through practices such as resilience and stress management training, and general promotion of healthy lifestyles.

The most recent study by Fleming (2023) used survey data from 46,000 workers in 233 different organisations within the UK to investigate the effects of common individual-level wellbeing interventions promoted in corporate environments, such as resilience training, mindfulness, wellbeing apps, etc.

Fleming’s primary finding was that there is “no reliable difference in mental wellbeing across the various outcomes.” There were no discernible differences between participants and non-participants for the following interventions:

• Relaxation practices
• Time management
• Financial wellbeing programmes
• Wellbeing apps
• Online coaching
• Sleep apps

There were some small positive effects for some interventions, but overall, there was no support for the hypothesis that subject wellbeing would be improved through these types of mental wellbeing interventions.

The large number of workers spread over hundreds of workplaces makes this study unique and substantially expands previous findings – especially relating to trials taking place in individual organisations with varying degrees of outcomes.

Survey responses from the 46,000 workers were compared between participants and non-participants in different wellness activities offered in the respective workplaces. The survey data originates from Britain’s Healthiest Workplace which is a multilevel repeated cross-sectional survey collecting date from both employee and organisation levels. BHW incorporates 90 wellbeing interventions which Fleming classified into 12 different categories relating to mental health rather than physical health.

Analysis included comparing the effect of six different assessments of subjective wellbeing outcomes against the different intervention categories, as well as doing the same for six different work environment outcomes.

The study also investigated whether variables such as gender, ethnicity and salary would affect outcomes, but there were no notable group-level differences.

Results show that those who took part in individual-level interventions in any of these organisations have the same mental wellbeing as those who did not, and this was noticeable across multiple organisational contexts. These findings are remarkable because, even though the findings are not discounting positive effects for some individuals, negative effects somewhere else may average these positive effects out.

Similar results were found in two other large-scale studies by Reif et al (2020) and Song et al (2019), even though both trials focussed on the effects on physical health from similar workplace wellness programmes, but in both cases, there were no significant effects.

This study raises the obvious question why these results were found when positive results for individuals have been found in other much smaller trials, and what could be the reasons that positive small effects are averaged out?

We will explore this in another article to be published next week, which will seek to answer three main questions:

Why do the positive effects from smaller experimental studies average out when implemented across large-scale workplaces?

What could be the reasons for other negative effects within organisations that may contribute to an average effect of close to zero?

And finally, what are the alternatives to these wellness interventions – what can organisations do instead?

Please contact us if you have questions – we will be happy to assist.

1. Source for wellness programmes spend: Grand View Research (2021). Corporate wellness market size & share report. 2021-2028. www.grandreviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/corporate-wellness-market.
2. Fleming, W. J. (2023). Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: Cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom. Industrial Relations Journal, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12418
3. Reif, J., Chan, D., Jones, D., Payne, L., & Molitor, D. (2020). Effects of a Workplace Wellness Program on Employee Health, Health Beliefs, and Medical Use: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 180(7), 952. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1321
4. Song, Z., & Baicker, K. (2019). Effect of a Workplace Wellness Program on Employee Health and Economic Outcomes: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA, 321(15), 1491. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.3307