While the goal of employers should be to support employees throughout the employee lifecycle from hire to exit, the reality is that this isn't always the case. Think about the internal employee processes in your organization. Where does your organization extend the most support for employees during their lifecycle?

If you’re like most employers you probably have a fairly robust new hire orientation that aims to integrate and support employees during their first few months of employment. A lot of attention is typically given to new hires to make sure that they have the training and resources to be successful and that the hire is a good investment for the company. But as it relates to support, attentiveness to needs and management focus, what’s happening after the new hire period is over?  

Results from our employee wellbeing research conducted between 2022 to 2023 with 900 individuals from a convenience sample of five small to midsized organizations suggests...

By Shanna B. Tiayon

How many downward facing dogs does it take to fix a toxic work culture?

How many liters of water does an employee have to drink to increase psychological safety in their department?

How many steps must an employee walk to be recognized for their contributions?

When you read these questions they sound silly, right? But no more silly than what’s common practice in many organizations – wellness washing.

I recently learned the term “wellness washing” – the promotion of corporate wellness activities like yoga, water challenges and mental health classes without organizational investment in addressing workplace factors that lead to poor employee mental (and sometimes physical) health. The term articulates perfectly the contradiction of corporate wellness programs that place the onus for change and improvement exclusively on employees, without corporate level introspection and commitment to address key structural issues....

By: Shanna B. Tiayon

This might be a controversial statement but I wholeheartedly believe that mental health days are a legitimate use of employee sick leave.

To be clear a mental health day is not related to leave taken due to serious mental health disorders. Instead, it’s a day taken off from work for the sole purpose of mentally and physically recovering from work related stressors. Thinking of sick leave as only for physical illness or serious mental health disorders misses the original intention of introducing sick leave into employee benefits programs – to facilitate the wellbeing of employees.

Perhaps my perspective on mental health days is skewed, because growing up the concept was introduced to me at a very young age. Starting when I was in elementary school my mother would periodically let me stay home to “play hooky” from school. We called those days mental health days. On those days I spent my time watching T.V., playing games and sleeping;...