workplace wellness

The Power to Change

When I was researching the article on the “right to disconnect” that I recently wrote for The Conversation, one of the studies that I referenced was one exploring over-connectivity and gender equity in the legal profession. The Australian researchers interviewed 63 lawyers about the effects of newer digital technology tools (e.g. email, Zoom, Teams, texting, mobile phones) on their work. The legal profession is a good place to study these effects, because lawyers do complex work in time-sensitive situations that can unexpectedly change. They also simultaneously manage multiple clients, cases, and commitments.

The interviewees appreciated the work flexibility that digital technology gave them – particularly women with family or household commitments outside of work. But they reported that they were experiencing more challenges around setting boundaries between work and non-work times, due to their increased availability. Many also said that easier communication had intensified clients’ expectations for fast turnarounds and responses.

The interviewees discussed individual and firm-level strategies they used to deal with “digital overload”. These included clearly defined work hours, limiting the methods by which clients could contact them, and organizational policies with guidelines such as expected response times to messages from client. However, this part of the discussion really stood out to me. (more…)

The Dark Side of Workplace Wellness

The Report on Business section of the Globe and Mail newspaper recently ran an interview with the authors of a provocative new book, The Wellness Syndrome. The authors, Carl Cederstrom and Andre Spicer,  argue that the ideal of “wellness” has become distorted into a “dangerous ideology”. Promoting “wellness” as a virtue, they suggest, implicitly promotes discrimination against those who have difficulty being “well”, such as people with chronic weight or health issues. And framing “wellness” as an individual issue deflects attention from larger societal conditions, such as poverty, that have much more impact on an individual’s health than their individual choices. (For example, it’s hard to get regular outdoor exercise if you live in an unsafe neighbourhood, or to eat well if the stores in your area don’t stock healthy, affordable food.)

The authors’ perspectives make a lot of sense. And, I would argue, their take on the misuse of “wellness” is also applicable to many “workplace wellness” initiatives.  There are good employers with sincere intentions who run “workplace wellness” programs because they genuinely care about their employees’ well-being. But there are other, less admirable aspects to some of these programs. (more…)