What the Heck Is ‘Well-Being Washing’ and Why Is It a Critical Issue?

Does your organization talk big but act small when it comes to your employee well-being programs?

If so, then it may be unwittingly engaged in a practice known as “well-being (or wellness) washing,” which occurs when an organization publicly promotes their employee health initiatives and yet fails to implement meaningful, long-term solutions and support.

The term has picked up steam over the past year. Numerous LinkedIn and Reddit posts are dedicated to it, and several HR platforms placed it among their buzziest words of 2025.

Recent Deloitte research displayed a deep disconnect between employers and employees on the topic of well-being:

• 56% of surveyed employees think their organization’s executives care about their well-being; compared to,
• 91% of surveyed C-suite executives who believe employees feel their leaders care about them.

According to Jen Fisher, the founder and CEO of consultancy The Wellbeing Team (and the former human sustainability leader at Deloitte), today’s workers have developed “wellness literacy” — the ability to spot the difference between authentic well-being cultures and performative programs.

“When companies tout meditation apps while maintaining impossible workloads, employees are calling out that contradiction loudly and publicly,” she said.

Based on external research and interviews with experts, here’s what your organization should consider doing to calm any unhealthy noise around workforce well-being.

Access a bonus Workspan Daily Plus+ article on this subject:

• The Cynicism Tax: When ‘Wellness’ Costs More Than It Saves

Root Causes

During many organizations’ response to the global pandemic, well-being became the No. 1 healthcare priority, according to Regina Ihrke, a managing director and the North American health, equity and well-being leader at consulting firm WTW.

“It even surpassed cost management for the first time ever,” she said.

During those years, many employers developed a robust, new vision for well-being that set “priorities across physical, emotional, financial and social levels, with the goal of connecting to the overall employer culture,” Ihrke said.

But as organizational focuses have changed along with the post-pandemic business environment, employers are now forced to shift their messaging to decisions on cost management, she said, as well as make difficult decisions on what they can offer when healthcare costs are at an all-time high.

“Employers are contemplating what levers they will need to implement to manage cost,” Ihrke said, “but they want that lever to drive better outcomes for their employees, with an eye toward their well-being as well.”

Implement or Rethink

One of the main reasons for the negative “washing” reputation among organizations, according to Fisher, is they often treat well-being “as an HR program to implement rather than a fundamental rethinking of how work operates.”

Additionally, the focus on individual “self-care” places the burden on employees to manage their well-being within systems designed to deplete them, she said.

“This creates devastating unintended consequences,” Fisher said, “from increased cynicism that undermines future initiatives, to talent loss as high performers leave for authentic cultures, and reinforced hopelessness as employees realize the organization either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about real solutions.”

The negative repercussions don’t necessarily end there.

“Well-being washing doesn’t just fail to solve the problem,” she said. “It actually makes it worse by demonstrating that meaningful change isn’t possible.”

‘Washing’ Warning Sign

According to Christopher Hart, a WorldatWork council member and the head of total rewards at Boldyn Networks, a global communications infrastructure company, well-being washing usually occurs when an organization heavily promotes a well‑being initiative but then has low employee utilization.

To reverse this, he advised organizations to audit gaps between their promotions and actual employee experience, as well as “gather honest insights through pulse surveys, focus groups and exit data, and address structural offering issues like work capacity, flexibility, role clarity and pay equity.”

WTW’s Ihrke said the critical piece of any listening strategy is communicating with leaders on what they heard during interactions with employees “and providing transparency on how they will address the concerning trends that they hear.”

Hart added that integrating wellness into manager capabilities and leadership expectations can shift the overall workplace culture and improve how work gets done.

“It would ensure well‑being efforts are credible, sustainable and impactful,” he said.

Creating a Council

As well-being has shifted “from a benefits-focused strategy to a human-capital strategy,” Ihrke said organizations now need leadership sponsorship outside of HR to gain internal traction and help spread personal testimonials on how employees have improved their well-being.

“A dynamic well-being strategy has a large stakeholder team, including benefits, communications, total rewards, HR leadership, people management, talent and business leaders,” she said.

To that same end, Fisher advised the creation of a cross-functional well-being strategy council. “Such a group should have real authority,” she said. “This is not a siloed wellness committee, but a group that can challenge practices undermining well-being regardless of which department owns them.”

The council, Fisher said, also should include:

• Frontline employees with meaningful involvement in identifying problems and designing solutions;
• Middle managers who are critical to implementation;
• Senior leaders who model behaviors and make structural decisions; and,
• Finance team members who can quantify the business case.

She added that since well-being is embedded in how work actually gets done — within workflows, schedules, deadlines and resource allocation — operations leaders should be included in any strategy sessions.

“The solution to well-being washing isn’t ‘better programs,’” Fisher said. “It’s braver leadership with the courage to acknowledge that our current systems create the problems we’re claiming to solve.”

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

• Employee Benefits
• Employee Experience
• Total Rewards
• Well-Being