Your Employer's Wellness App Isn't Helping - Here's What Would

There is a particular kind of workplace cynicism that builds slowly, almost without you noticing. It starts the day your company launches a meditation app subscription as a response to a staff survey about workload. It deepens when the free yoga class is announced in the same week as the third restructure in eighteen months. By the time the pizza party invitation lands in your inbox during what is, objectively, the most stressful quarter anyone can remember, the gap between what is being offered and what is actually needed has become almost comic.

This is wellness washing. And it is, according to the numbers, everywhere.

Mental Health UK reports that one in four women is severely burned out in the workplace. AllBright's own Future of Work for Women research found that 38% of women want to leave their current role within the next year. Most strikingly, 60% of women believe their employer doesn't care about their wellbeing at all. Not that they're doing it imperfectly. Not that they could do more. That they don't care at all.

That last figure is the one worth sitting with, because it suggests something more serious than a gap in provision. It points to a breakdown in trust, one that perks and programmes cannot rebuild, because the problem was never about the absence of a mindfulness app. It was about workloads that keep growing, flexibility that keeps shrinking, managers who don't listen, and the structural reality that 63% of women shoulder more than their fair share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities outside of work. When you come to work already carrying that weight, a free class on your lunch break is not the answer. It is, at best, a distraction.

Wellness washing works, insofar as it works at all, by shifting responsibility. If the employer has provided tools for managing stress, the implicit message becomes that stress which persists is a personal failing rather than an organisational one. It locates the problem in the individual rather than the conditions that created it, which is both unfair and, from a retention and productivity standpoint, deeply counterproductive. A Forbes survey found that 68% of employees don't feel their manager listens to them. No meditation app closes that gap.

What does? The answers are less glamorous than a new wellbeing platform but considerably more effective.

Flexible and remote working arrangements are not perks. For women navigating caregiving responsibilities alongside careers, they are the difference between a working life that is manageable and one that is not. As more organisations push for a return to the office, often without accounting for why hybrid working mattered so much to so many people, the conditions for burnout are being actively recreated. The decision to reverse flexibility is a wellbeing decision, whether it is framed as one or not.

Leadership culture is where most wellbeing initiatives succeed or fail, regardless of what the HR policy says. An organisation where managers are trained to have real conversations about workload, where it is genuinely safe to say you are struggling without it being read as a performance issue, where the person who stays latest is not quietly celebrated as the most committed, is a different kind of workplace. Not a perfect one. But one where the gap between stated values and daily reality is small enough that people can trust what they're told.

The habit of overloading the people who seem best equipped to handle it is worth naming specifically, because it is one of the more insidious ways burnout spreads in otherwise functional teams. High performers absorb extra work because they can, until they can't. Measurable frameworks that allow managers to actually track what their teams are carrying, rather than operating on impression and assumption, are not bureaucratic overhead. They are basic management.

None of this is complicated in theory. In practice, it requires organisations to be honest about the difference between doing something about wellbeing and being seen to do something about wellbeing. The free classes and app subscriptions are not worthless. As additions to a culture that is genuinely supportive they are fine. As substitutes for that culture they are, at best, a waste of money and, at worst, a signal to employees that their actual concerns are not being taken seriously.

Sixty percent of women already believe their employer doesn't care. The organisations that will change that number are not the ones launching the next wellbeing initiative. They are the ones asking, honestly, what is making people want to leave, and doing something about it.

Worryingly, a further 60% of women believe their employer doesn’t care about their wellbeing at all. The statistics paint a worrying picture. Wellness washing only exacerbates the issue- not only by being surface level at best but also by placing the responsibility back on the employee. So, what should workplaces be doing to make actionable, genuine change, when it’s clear that a wellness app subscription as a job ‘perk’ isn’t working?

We delve into the truth about wellness washing, and what employers should actually be doing to combat the burnout epidemic.

What is wellness washing?

Wellness washing in the workplace happens when employers provide so-called health and wellbeing initiatives, like apps, free classes or team lunches, to appear as though they are considering employee stress. Whilst it may seem this means employers are looking after employee wellbeing, wellness washing initiatives are often surface level. They rarely combat the issues their staff are experiencing, mainly because they don’t really tackle the deeper cause.

Genuine wellbeing issues in the workplace include growing workload, burnout, a toxic team culture, lack of flexibility, poor management practices or unrealistic expectations. While these perks seem positive from the outside, they are often just that. Perks. And they do little to support what employees need to avoid the issues they’re facing at work.

Genuine wellbeing measures, not apps

Whilst meditation apps serve a great purpose in helping us take time to reflect and relax, women in the workplace often do not have that time to take in the first place. With the Office for National Statistics reporting 63% of women do more than their fair share of shouldering household and care responsibilities, workplaces are in desperate need of genuine wellbeing measures.

Strategies like flexible working hours and remote working which allow women to strike a better work/life balance. As more and more companies move away from hybrid working and towards Return to Office Orders, we are looking at more women experiencing issues like burnout on a wider scale. It is down to organisations and the leaders that represent them to make a genuine action plan for employee health and happiness.

Supportive leadership, not pizza parties

No one can argue that team lunches are a good opportunity to bond with colleagues and build friendships, they will not fix issues like over expectation and mounting workloads. They’re also an extremely one-size-fits-all measure for a very deeply individual problem.

Some colleagues may have challenges that make experiences like these uncomfortable, and they are also the wrong forum to get to the heart of personal issues that may be impacting performance.

This is where supportive leadership is essential. A Forbes survey revealed 68% of employees do not feel like their manager listens to them. This can lead to increased frustrations, a lack of retention, or worse still, employees quietly ‘getting on with it’, whilst burning themselves out. Instead of perks like pizza parties, organisations should prioritise fostering a supportive, open workplace, where employees and leaders alike have the forum to discuss issues like increasing workloads, stress or burnout and then strategize on the best ways to solve the issue together.

Promoting balance, not overwork

Most of us will have worked somewhere where being ‘first in and last to leave’ is worn like a badge of honour. But this kind of toxic mentality will only make the issue of burnout worse. Instead of organisations rewarding this type of behaviour, to avoid wellness washing, it’s essential to instead reward for contribution and discourage ‘living to work’.

This could mean arranging drop-in clinics for employees to discuss their workplace challenges with their manager, measurable frameworks for leaders to analyse how their employees are coping with their workloads, celebrating the ‘small wins’ of each employee, or even setting a hard finish time in the office.

By creating an environment that celebrates the value every employee brings to the team, rather than how long they spend doing it, organisations prove they trust their employees and care in tangible ways about their workplace wellbeing, as opposed to washing over their concerns.

So, what can be done to combat wellness washing?

Whilst free team lunches, exercise classes or app subscriptions truly are nice additions for employees to enjoy, they allow more toxic workplaces to ignore the issues at hand. To avoid wellness washing, employers instead need to walk the walk when it comes to employee wellbeing.

To help combat the burnout epidemic, organisations should instead create safe, supportive environments, avoid overloading the employees who seem equipped to handle it and ensure employees are able to approach their managers and leaders. Bringing the mental wellbeing conversation out into the open, rather than disguising it, is key. It is when organisations find tangible, genuine and effective strategies to deal with the issues causing burnout that the balance between workload and wellness will truly be achieved.