How reward communications can prevent wellbeing washing in your business
Employee wellbeing is a critical focal point for HR, reward and internal communications leaders with companies increasingly promoting their commitment to wellbeing initiatives. However, there’s a growing concern about ‘wellbeing washing’, a practice where organisations give the impression of prioritising employee wellbeing without backing it up with genuine effort.
Wellbeing washing is akin to greenwashing in the environmental sector. It's the act of promoting employee wellbeing initiatives more as a PR exercise than a sincere commitment to workers’ health. This can lead to cynicism, distrust and disengagement among employees, undermining the exact goals these programmes aim to achieve.
Even if your organisation has a tonne of employee wellbeing benefits, if you don’t communicate them effectively, you could be at risk of claims of wellbeing washing. To prevent this from happening, your organisation must ensure its wellbeing initiatives are genuine, impactful and transparently communicated. Here’s how you can do this.
How to promote your wellbeing programmes with effective employee communications
When employee reward communications are done well, they ensure employees know about, understand, use and appreciate the wellbeing initiatives on offer. Taking your wellbeing plans from done and dusted to living, breathing programmes that people regularly engage with.
Here’s how robust reward communications can prevent wellbeing washing in your business:
1. By ensuring transparency and clarity
Effective reward communications give employees a clear understanding of the wellbeing benefits and initiatives available. By providing clear, appropriately detailed, transparent information, companies can demonstrate their genuine commitment to employee wellbeing. This includes making it easy for people to find the specifics of all your programmes, how they’ll help your employees and how employees can access these resources.
How to do this: Instead of vaguely mentioning “mental health support,” detail the types of services available, like counselling sessions, mental health days and stress management workshops. Providing case studies or testimonials from employees who have benefited from these services can be a powerful way to showcase how your wellbeing programmes have real-life benefits for your people. Both for existing employees and new hires.
2. By delivering consistent messaging
Consistency is key to building the trust that will help you avoid the perception of wellbeing washing. Reward communications should be accurate, providing up-to-date information about your wellbeing benefits and initiatives and communicated in a single tone of voice that aligns with your company values. Any discrepancies between what’s communicated and what employees experience can lead to negativity and distrust.
How to do this: If your organisation has a flexible working policy, for example, make sure it’s genuinely available across all departments and levels of the company. Highlight stories where employees have successfully used flexible working arrangements to improve their work-life balance. Ensure you’re speaking to all your people, not just those with families. This could include people with caring responsibilities or those with health conditions who find flexible working supports their needs.
3. By taking an employee-centric approach
Putting employees at the centre of your reward communications will ensure interesting, relevant and authentic messaging. You’ll need to actively seek and incorporate employee feedback into the design and communication of wellbeing initiatives. Or develop employee personas to help you understand what’s important to your people so you can develop campaigns and messaging that will resonate with them. This will help your communications cut through and land.
How to do this: Conduct regular surveys or focus groups to gather employee feedback on wellbeing programmes, how people use them and how they enhance employees’ lives. Use this feedback to refine and enhance your employee personas and to develop your communication narratives.
4. By highlighting genuine impact
To counteract wellbeing washing, it’s essential to communicate the real impact of wellbeing initiatives. This involves sharing data, success stories and tangible outcomes that demonstrate the positive effects of these programmes on employees’ lives.
How to do this: Publish reports or infographics that show the usage rates and satisfaction levels of various wellbeing programmes - one company I collaborate with does this in their benefits newsletter partway through the year and at the end of the year. This kind of data can be useful for your recruitment socials too.
5. By integrating wellbeing into company culture
Wellbeing shouldn’t be a one-off or standalone initiative but an integral part of the company culture. Employee communications should emphasise how wellbeing is embedded in the organisation’s values, policies and everyday practices.
How to do this: Promote a culture of wellbeing by creating narratives that highlight the link between your wellbeing programmes, company values and leadership practices. Highlight leaders who champion wellbeing and showcase initiatives that encourage work-life balance, such as regular wellbeing check-ins, wellbeing ambassadors and peer support networks. Having a regular wellbeing section in an employee benefits newsletter could be a great way to do this.
When your organisation has invested a lot of time, money and effort into your wellbeing programmes, you want to make sure your people are reaping the rewards. By creating and delivering transparent, consistent and impactful reward communications, you can ensure your wellbeing initiatives are perceived as genuine and beneficial. Enhancing your reputation as an employer and fostering a healthier, more motivated workforce that’s even more likely to stay.
Not got the time or resource to create and deliver wellbeing communications? Then outsource this job to me! Book a free, half-hour chat or drop me a line at becky@clarioncallcomms.co.uk.