The Wellness Myth

A Business Insider Op-Ed I wrote a few years ago...

Some one asked about research regarding wellness, stress and pay.

Catherine Liu

Business Insider Op-Ed

Draft hed: Employers claim that they want to improve workers wellbeing but refuse to do the one thing that will help: pay them more

• Like sexual harassment training and gender equity initiatives, there isn’t much evidence that employee wellness programs work.

• Yet HR departments seem intent on pouring money into health-tracking and meditation apps.

• The best thing employers can do is pay their employees more and reduce their economic stressors.

I take the University of California online anti-sexual harassment training course regularly, and when I do, I believe I’m helping the world become a better place. Like most working women, I’ve suffered harassment at work, and despite evidence from empirical studies and from my own experience that the training doesn’t work and that I take it to limit the liability of my employer in a sexual harassment lawsuit, I will myself to believe in it.

Staff and faculty who have been harassed simply suck it up and move on, changing positions if possible or just avoiding the offender. Occasionally, a scandal breaks through and a harassment case leads to the dismissal of a famous professor or administrator; yet, the victims who brought the suit forward usually live forever with the reputation of being a “troublemaker.”

Despite countless initiatives, corporate and university gender equity programs failed to mitigate damage done to the lives of working women wrought by COVID lockdowns as work moved home and online, and schools and daycares closed. Women’s participation in the workforce has dropped to 1988 levels, with women bearing the brunt of COVID unemployment figures at every level of income and education: four decades of progress for women at work has been undone in one year.

Like sexual harassment and gender equity initiatives, employee wellness programs are another managerial innovation that large organizations love, despite mounting evidence that such programs do not significantly improve employee health or save employers money.