The mental health of people who undertake mindfulness or meditation courses offered by their employer is generally no better than those who are not offered such programmes
There’s the key phrase. I’ve worked at 5 different places during my professional career. Not once has any “wellness seminar,” “wellness week,” or wellness-what-have-you has been as fruitful as you’re describing.
I’ve never gotten a wellness day nor a bonus for wearing a pedometer or being active in any manner. At absolute best, in all the places I’ve worked, I went to an optional meeting that had an interesting breathing exercise. But the rest of the meeting was dumb fluff like “don’t work more than 40 hours,” “tell your lead that you are over stressed,” “don’t spend money on stuff you can’t afford.”
Absolute worst case scenario so far, a week of mandatory 1 hour meetings each day required from HR. Every day was repeating the same garbage as above and could’ve just been an email. Also, even though HR requires the meetings, your manager still requires 40hrs of “project effort.” Meaning required overtime. I did not stay long at this job.
Something like what you are describing would be a breath of fresh air.
We had a wellness seminar at one point, mandatory. There was an excercise where we stood in a circle and threw a ball around. During cold and flu season. Some of us expressed concern, and were ignored. Entire group got sick and took a bunch of sick days. How’s that for wellness?
There’s the key phrase. I’ve worked at 5 different places during my professional career. Not once has any “wellness seminar,” “wellness week,” or wellness-what-have-you has been as fruitful as you’re describing.
I’ve never gotten a wellness day nor a bonus for wearing a pedometer or being active in any manner. At absolute best, in all the places I’ve worked, I went to an optional meeting that had an interesting breathing exercise. But the rest of the meeting was dumb fluff like “don’t work more than 40 hours,” “tell your lead that you are over stressed,” “don’t spend money on stuff you can’t afford.”
Absolute worst case scenario so far, a week of mandatory 1 hour meetings each day required from HR. Every day was repeating the same garbage as above and could’ve just been an email. Also, even though HR requires the meetings, your manager still requires 40hrs of “project effort.” Meaning required overtime. I did not stay long at this job.
Something like what you are describing would be a breath of fresh air.
We had a wellness seminar at one point, mandatory. There was an excercise where we stood in a circle and threw a ball around. During cold and flu season. Some of us expressed concern, and were ignored. Entire group got sick and took a bunch of sick days. How’s that for wellness?