workaday Wednesday

[marcicat]

My workplace is very enthusiastic when it comes to telling us about all the resources they offer to support our wellness. Physical wellness, mental wellness, emotional wellness -- so many resources! Gosh, look at them all!

I want to feel encouraged by their relentless parade of resources, but usually it just makes me feel uneasy, so I tried to figure out why. Probably all three things I came up with could be summed up by 'capitalism,' but since I spent so much time thinking about it, I wrote out the long versions.

*The company delightedly explains that 'well employees' make the company more money (through higher productivity), and they cost the company less money (through lost time and health insurance costs). And of course, wellness is good for the employees too! Win-win! But it's clear that the employee 'win' is secondary and coincidental.

*Offering resources is not the same as supporting their use.
-part 1: The company gets a lot of glow for offering things -- there's no extra glow for employees actually using the programs.

-part 2: The company wants well employees, broadly speaking. Which is not necessarily the same as wanting their specific current employees to be well. If you use the resources, you are admitting that your 'wellness' (and therefore your productivity) is not ideal.

*There's a fine line between 'we're offering all these resources to support your wellness' and 'so if you're not well, it's your own fault.'

Comments

[lilysea]

Also there's a lot of

eg free yoga classes

but they still make people work unpaid overtime which means people can't get enough sleep

even tho we know lack of sleep = one of the biggest threats to people's health

[marcicat]

Right? And it's not that I want them to *not* offer the free yoga classes, it's just weird when they fail to acknowledge the much larger organizational issues. Like getting a free popsicle in the middle of the desert. I mean, thanks, and I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough???

[china_shop]

It's so creepy when you lay it out like that. (They probably have no idea how creepy it is.)

[marcicat]

Ha! Yes, I always try to remind myself that it is *incredibly* more likely that the explanation for most things in workplaces is incompetence, rather than conspiracy or malice.