More Benefits, Worse Outcomes: The Well-Being Paradox

Editor's note: Posts published on From the Workplace are written by outside contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of SHRM.

There's a growing paradox in the workplace: Employers are investing unprecedented resources into employee well-being, yet seeing diminishing returns in engagement, retention, and mental health outcomes.

Over the past decade, organizations have poured billions into expanding benefits: mental health apps, resilience training, mindfulness programs, coaching platforms, and more. On paper, the modern workplace has never been better equipped to support its people. In practice, employees are increasingly burned out, disengaged, and skeptical of employer intent.

The problem isn’t a lack of investment. It’s a lack of connection with employees.

Fragmented benefits, vendor proliferation, and performative programming define today's well-being model. It has created the illusion of progress without delivering meaningful results. Employers have focused on offering more but failed to improve outcomes for employees. The result is a system that looks comprehensive but feels disconnected, transactional, and out of touch with how employees experience support for their well-being.

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Finding a Better Approach

To unlock real return on investment (ROI) from well-being benefits investments, organizations need to move beyond adding more and start rethinking their foundational approach. Three shifts will make the biggest difference.

1. Stop treating well-being as a perk. Start treating it as performance infrastructure.

When organizations frame well-being as optional, it competes with work instead of enabling it. Energy, focus, and mental resilience aren't side benefits. They are core drivers of productivity and the essential infrastructure that determines an organization's ability to execute. This is especially true in moments of transformation. As organizations navigate technological change, workforce restructuring, and new competitive pressures, change strategies require human capacity, which is a direct function of well-being.

The body of research exists already. Aetna ran a rigorous, double-blind study on mindfulness and yoga for employees, framing the benefits as a performance investment with measurable ROI. The Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute explored the best approaches for helping employees improve their vitality, general health, and energy levels.  In practice, McKinsey & Company is connecting well-being support with productivity improvements specifically for organizations navigating change, since proactive well-being support strengthens resilience and adaptability, leading to productivity improvements of 10% to 21%.

2. If employees aren't engaging, it's not a motivation problem. It's a distribution problem.

Fewer than 40% of employees rate their organization’s benefits communication as effective. In many organizations, accessing support means navigating multiple platforms, deciphering eligibility rules, or stepping outside the natural flow of work. The primary channels used to promote resources — HR emails and intranets — are among the least effective at driving behavior. Messaging often feels generic, leaving employees unable to answer the most basic question: Is this for someone like me?

Successful well-being communication strategies go beyond centralized communications and leverage peer networks, front-line managers, and leaders across organizational levels. They also contextualize benefits, helping employees understand not just what exists, but when and why to use it, improving their understanding of what support might apply to them. 

Starbucks combined employee feedback on which benefits people would most like and use with a range of communication channels beyond email to reach their deskless employee population through their partnership with Lyra. In another example, TD Bank tapped into its employee network to equip “peer communicators” about company initiatives at the regional level.    

3. Leaders can't just endorse well-being. They have to model it.

No amount of programming can overcome a credibility gap created by leaders who consistently reward overwork, expect constant responsiveness, and normalize unsustainable levels of activity. When leaders promote well-being resources but never visibly use them, those resources remain stigmatized, regardless of how well designed they are.

Deloitte organizes corporate events where employees share personal stories to normalize health and well-being challenges and introduced “collective disconnect” days that allow the entire workforce to take restorative time off.  Leaders at Patagonia model work/life balance, support outdoor recreation when conditions are good, and foster the attitude that employees will return to work refreshed and reinvigorated.   

How much companies spend won't define the future of workplace well-being. Instead, it will depend on whether employees experience that investment in ways that improve their work and lives. Shifting from coverage to impact, and from communication to activation, is the only way to avoid the same disappointing returns that have plagued employers for too long.

Workplace well-being is no longer about helping people cope with work. It's about enabling them to do their best and keep doing it as the demands of work continue to evolve.

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Katy Riddick is a managing director at High Lantern Group, a communications strategy firm specializing in workplace well-being communications.