The research proves it time and again: organizations succeed when their workers are happy and healthy — and they struggle when they aren’t. Absenteeism (and presenteeism) in Canada costs employers approximately $645 million CAD annually. In the U.S., the loss may be as high as $1.9 trillion USD each year; similar numbers and costs echo worldwide. People showing up and engaging matters.
But it’s not enough to simply “promote a culture of wellness” in your workplace. Actually building a psychologically safe environment that allows employees to thrive holistically requires an organization-wide strategy that everyone, from the C-suite down, can enthusiastically embrace and take part in, as well as handpicked programs that serve the unique needs of the people who make up your workforce. Through infrastructure, programming tailored to your organization, and strong communication that makes sure that programming reaches its intended audience, you can build a healthier, happier culture of wellbeing — not just wellness — among your employees.
Wellbeing goes beyond “wellness”
Many organizations in recent years have chased “wellness” as the ultimate goal when it comes to their workers. But in order to achieve the kind of workplace morale that actually drives success, people leaders need to be thinking beyond old ideas about wellness and focus on employees’ more holistic wellbeing.
What’s the difference? The concept of “wellness,” as it’s commonly understood, only covers a fraction of what goes into wellbeing. Wellness usually means physical health, and maybe mental health, as well — but financial, social, and environmental health are also critical components to a person's overall wellbeing, and they don't quite fit into the "wellness" category. These are essential aspects of a holistic approach to employee support. “Wellbeing” better encompasses the various aspects that may not be commonly thought of when workers hear the word “wellness,” and as we’ll discuss below, being able to effectively communicate your offerings is just as important as the kinds of offerings you choose.
The first step to a culture of wellbeing: organizational infrastructure
Before you can promote and sustain a culture of wellbeing in your workplace, you need to infuse your organization’s structure with norms that will make this kind of culture easy to spread and sustain. Wellbeing should be baked into every facet of the business in one way or another; seen from a bird’s eye view, it should be no wonder your employees’ wellbeing contributes to your success as a company.
Some facets to consider when looking for ways to keep your organization accountable to its culture of wellbeing:
- Governance structures: How will you ensure the programs and policies you implement will work as designed? What processes and reviews need to be put in place? Consider having experts on your team — people with specific accreditations in mental health and other aspects of wellbeing — who can use their expertise to keep the organization consistent and up-to-date on the latest developments in workplace wellbeing.
- Leadership training: According to the TELUS Mental Health Index (MHI), people leaders around the world would not know what to do to support an employee dealing with a mental health issue, and many of them say their organizations don’t offer training on how to handle these issues. The experts mentioned above, in tandem with learning and enablement specialists, can help you design training programs for your people leaders, ensuring sensitivity and a culture of wellbeing are baked into management styles across the company.
- Policies, commitments, and processes: You may want to start with the same kinds of national and international standards your competitors may have signed onto — like the Standard, from the Mental Health Commission of Canada; the UK’s Thriving at Work; or California’s Workplace Mental Health project — which you can adapt to fit your organization and its values. Commitments like these, made publicly and communicated internally, can guide decision making when leadership needs to develop policies for supporting employees when they’re struggling (and when they’re not).
Before you start, establish a baseline
Before you can design your overall wellbeing strategy, you’ll want to start with two critical levers: information about your employees and tools that will help you track your success as you hone your approach. The information part can be gained with the data you already have about your employees (who are they? What are their needs?). You can augment that data with voluntary employee surveys. This step is critical: according to the HUB International 2025 Workforce Vitality Gap Index, only 50 percent of employers analyze employee demographics when making benefits decisions, demonstrating a significant missed opportunity that can perpetuate utilization gaps (not to mention strain already-tight budgets).
Once you have your information, how will you define and measure employee wellbeing? Surveys can play double duty as a qualitative tool to help you keep tabs on your progress. If you choose to use them as a routine diagnostic, make it easy for people to weigh in quickly and get on with their workday. If you’re looking for more in-depth responses, you’ll have to make the asks less frequently. Either way, you can incentivize participation with programs you already have; things like gift card drawings or kudos on an employee recognition platform can maximize response volume.
Quantitative tools, meanwhile, can be any metric(s) that may link employee wellbeing (physical, mental, or otherwise) to your organization’s overall success. You can measure productivity with KPIs (key performance indicators), OKRs (objectives and key results), or other statistics. You can track the rate of absenteeism and / or the rate of long- and short-term disability leave.
No matter what you choose to track, keep in mind that the quantitative can’t always tell the whole picture of your program’s success. Morale, recruitment success, retention rates, employee satisfaction and engagement levels — qualitative measures that prioritize value on investment (VOI) over return on investment (ROI) — can be directly connected back to productivity and overall success, too.
Build organizational awareness with leadership buy-in
Just because you’ve adopted a wellbeing program doesn’t mean people know about it, much less want to use it. To grow a healthy culture of wellbeing in an organization, its leaders need to communicate not only what’s available, but also that it’s worth exploring — building organizational awareness in the process. Participation and modeling behavior that promotes wellbeing can be key components. If leadership wouldn’t use a resource the company is offering, why should their employees?
Another way to normalize wellbeing across your organization and reduce stigma around seeking support is to build community hubs (events, social media platforms, messaging channels, etc.) that can encourage and support conversation among employees about their own wellbeing journeys.
Train managers to connect dots and improve trust
Another key to making a culture of wellbeing truly flourish: recognizing how managers and non-managers might perceive “wellbeing” and organizational efforts to support it differently.
A 2024 Johns Hopkins report analyzing Great Place to Work data found a huge difference between how individual contributors and executives rated their workplace’s “climate of wellbeing,” suggesting a serious disparity in how employees experience wellbeing programs. This kind of contrast — where leaders don’t know how their direct reports feel — can have a serious impact on workplace morale overall.
The workplace is an uncertain place for employees these days, even with the most stellar wellbeing programs. It’s essential for people leaders to maintain their workers’ trust and keep morale in the workplace up by listening, both informally and formally. Training leaders can help organizations apply data about the benefits of wellbeing programs; managers can translate statistics into reasons that resonate with their people, because they know them best.
Design targeted programming
The third component of a strong, organization-wide culture of wellbeing is the part most people think of when they hear the words “wellness program”: the individual offerings, flexible plan designs, specialized programs, and inclusive resources that cater to your unique workforce.
This is where the information you gathered at the outset will come into play, helping you make targeted programming choices based on who you have working for you and what they need, rather than going with generic options that don’t speak to lived experiences. The “targeted” part is key to how employees perceive, and thus engage with, wellbeing programs. According to the MHI, American and Canadian women, for example, were 70 and 60 percent more likely than American and Canadian men, respectively, to rate employer support for their physical wellbeing as poor, suggesting that default, cookie-cutter programs are less likely to resonate with more marginalized workers who don’t see themselves in the default model.
Organizations need to build a bespoke set of offerings that tailor to varied needs. For instance, you may want both a specialized program to support the heart health of older employees and a more flexible program like a wellbeing stipend that appeals to younger workers. To make sure you get it right, consider consulting and collaborating with stakeholders and subject matter experts from across your organization, including people leaders, unions, health and safety representatives and your executive board.
Track and measure employee buy-in over time
As mentioned above, a culture of wellbeing can falter when buy-in stops at the management level. It’s common: according to the MHI, American non-managers are 60 percent more likely than managers to rate employer support for their physical wellbeing as poor, and are 50 percent more likely to rate employer support for mental wellbeing as poor. In Canada, that divide is even wider: Canadian non-managers are twice as likely as Canadian managers to rate employer support for their physical wellbeing as poor, and are 60 percent more likely than managers to rate employer support for their mental wellbeing as poor.
These numbers — which are echoed in countries around the world, from France to South Korea —underscore the disconnect between leadership and workers and shows just how essential buy-in on the employee level — not just leadership — really is. As you test programs, use the results you get from employee surveys and adoption rate data over time to make your decisions. Which resources are popular throughout the organization? Which are heavily used by the people they’re meant for, if not by everyone else? Remember, “buy-in” will mean different things for different resources.
Once you’ve gotten your mix right, you can expect to see employee performance improve markedly. In the case of TELUS Health’s EAP, for example, 45 percent of employees report more engagement at work after accessing counseling services , and 51 percent say they no longer dread going to work. When employees access their TELUS Health EAP, they gain about 66 hours of productivity, as well. While not every EAP offers the same resources, it’s not hard to see the positive impact an EAP can have on both your employees and your business’s bottom line. (Read more about employee support and its impact on performance with our ebook here.)
Wellbeing isn’t a program — it’s an ethos
All the mindfulness coaches in the world can’t heal an organization with unrealistic expectations, bad leadership and a culture of 24/7 hustle. People need to be able to take advantage of programs and have jobs that accommodate that culture. That’s why promoting a culture of wellbeing at work requires weaving wellbeing throughout your organization’s values framework. It should be evident in goal-setting and performance review frameworks, in key skills and competencies for every role, and in the kinds of behaviors leadership expects from employees on a day-to-day basis.
When you start with healthy working norms and reward behaviors that support wellbeing, it’ll be hard to miss the changes that ripple through your organization. A truly healthy culture of wellbeing isn’t hard to see — if your strategy is successful, you’ll notice the difference, even without data.
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