GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - Wellness programmes, gym memberships and mindfulness apps may have become commonplace in the corporate world, but they cannot compensate for workplaces where employees face chronic overload, poor management, job insecurity or harassment.

As World Mental Health Day is marked on 10 October, Prof Renata Schoeman, head of the MBA Healthcare Leadership programme at Stellenbosch Business School, says organisations need to rethink how they approach employee wellbeing - moving beyond programmes designed to help people cope with unhealthy workplaces towards work environments that protect psychological and physical safety.

“Locally and globally, companies have spent decades investing in employee wellness programmes. The uncomfortable question is, what if the workplace itself is the problem?” she asks.

Prof Schoeman says the focus needs to shift from asking what employees can do to become healthier to asking what organisations can do to make work healthier.

She argues that employee mental health should move beyond the Human Resources department and become a boardroom issue, with leaders held accountable for creating psychologically safe and stable workplaces.

“Organisations that take accountability at the top for workers’ sense of psychological safety and stability benefit from a workforce that is not only healthier, happier and more satisfied, but more productive and able to contribute to organisational sustainability,” she says.

The cost of unhealthy workplaces

A recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that work-related psychosocial risk factors, including long working hours, job insecurity, an imbalance between effort and reward, and workplace bullying, contribute to the deaths of 840 088 workers globally each year.

The estimated economic losses linked to human capital and productivity are equivalent to 1.37% of global GDP.

In South Africa, one in four employees reportedly has a clinical diagnosis of depression, while the direct cost of absenteeism linked to depression has been estimated at R19 billion a year.

The gap between how executives perceive workplace wellbeing and how employees experience it is also concerning.

The 2025 Deloitte Well-being at Work report found that while two-thirds of senior executives believed employee wellbeing had improved over the previous year, only about a third of employees reported an improvement. Up to 30% said their wellbeing had deteriorated.

The report also found that at least one in five employees were trying to demonstrate their value to their employer by working while sick, skipping breaks, taking on additional projects or cancelling holidays – potentially at the expense of their wellbeing and personal relationships.

Prof Schoeman says this disconnect has persisted over the four years covered by the Deloitte report, despite continued investment in workplace wellness initiatives.

“Only one in five employees report that wellbeing is genuinely embedded in their job or workplace culture,” she says.

“This points to the fact that you cannot compensate for bad work design with wellness perks. For too long, corporate mental health has focused on helping people survive unhealthy systems. The next frontier is to design healthier systems.”

Treat psychological risks like workplace hazards

Prof Schoeman says companies should approach psychosocial hazards in much the same way as physical, ergonomic and occupational hazards – by identifying, assessing, mitigating and monitoring them.

These risks can include poor supervision, inadequate support, unreasonable demands, a lack of control, bullying, unclear roles and unfair workplace processes.

Many of the underlying causes are factors organisations can actively manage, including workloads, working hours, employee autonomy, role clarity, supervision, job security, harassment and fairness.

She also points to this year's World Mental Health Day theme, “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change”, which highlights the importance of not simply listening to employees but involving them in decisions that affect their working lives.

“The annual engagement survey or pulse checks are meaningless if we are not prepared to change something,” says Prof Schoeman.

“The employee voice needs to become part of organisational decision-making rather than something collected once a year and presented as evidence of action.”

Moving from coping to prevention

According to Prof Schoeman, organisations should focus on improving working conditions rather than relying primarily on individual interventions when employees reach crisis point.

This means shifting the emphasis of wellness and employee assistance programmes from helping employees cope with the demands of work towards designing and managing work in ways that are psychologically safer.

“Companies have historically focused downstream: EAPs, counselling, sick leave, disability management and return-to-work programmes,” she says.

“The new conversation is upstream and focused on first-line prevention rather than building resilience or managing the fall-out of work-related mental health risks.”

Key areas include managing workloads and setting clear expectations, controlling working hours and digital overload, giving employees greater autonomy, and demonstrating fairness through action rather than policy alone.

Image: Canva

What can companies do?

Prof Schoeman recommends several practical steps to improve psychological safety and make workplace wellness interventions more effective:

Measure wellbeing more consistently: Move beyond annual surveys and occasional pulse checks towards ongoing assessments that provide a clearer picture of employee wellbeing and engagement.

Give employees a meaningful voice: Create opportunities for employees to raise concerns through open forums, team meetings and one-on-one discussions, while ensuring their input contributes to policies and workplace changes.

Look beyond traditional indicators: Sick leave, absenteeism, working hours and self-reported wellbeing can provide useful information, but organisations should also monitor indicators such as whether employees are taking their paid leave, how often they work after hours and the volume of emails sent at night or over weekends.

Measure whether wellness programmes are working: Employee uptake and participation in wellness initiatives should be monitored to establish whether programmes are reaching employees and making a meaningful difference.

Ultimately, Prof Schoeman says workplace mental health cannot be addressed solely by teaching employees to become more resilient.

The greater challenge is to create workplaces where employees are not continually required to use that resilience simply to cope with the way work is designed.

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