Why doing something different at work matters more than ever
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There’s a lot of talk about workplace wellbeing at the moment.
Most of it comes from a good place. Businesses want to do the right thing. Leaders care about their teams and nobody wants burnt-out, disengaged people dragging themselves through the week.
But here’s what I’m noticing when I’m actually in workplaces, talking to people and working alongside teams.
A lot of organisations are trying harder when it comes to wellbeing at work.
They’re just doing it in the same old ways.
And it’s not quite landing.
Wellbeing at work isn’t the problem. Disconnection is.
Hybrid working, flexible hours, wellbeing policies. None of these are bad things.
But what I’m seeing more and more, particularly with younger team members, is a quiet sense of disconnection. Not always dramatic. Not always shouted about. Just a feeling of not really being part of something.
It’s not about salary.
It’s not about job titles.
People want to feel valued, listened to and looked after. They want to feel that their presence actually matters, not just their output.
If the working week becomes a cycle of logging on, cracking on and logging off again, it’s no surprise people drift. You can’t build connection purely through video calls. And you won’t fix it by forcing people back into an office that gives them no reason to be there.
An office full of desks is not a workplace culture.
The pressure nobody talks about in employee wellbeing conversations
When employee wellbeing does get discussed, the focus usually goes one of two ways.
Senior leaders at the top. Or employees at the coalface.
But the pressure I see most often sits right in the middle.
Frontline managers.
They’re managing expectations from above, supporting the people below them and trying to keep everything moving day to day. Often with very little breathing space of their own.
We expect managers to look after everyone else’s wellbeing, while quietly assuming they’ll just cope.
Culture doesn’t live in policies or values written on walls. It lives in everyday behaviour. And a lot of that behaviour is shaped by people who are stretched thinner than they’ll ever admit.
If workplace wellbeing matters in your business, this is probably worth paying attention to.
You can’t fix workplace culture with sticking plasters
This is where things often start to wobble.
Wellbeing becomes initiatives. Awareness days. Perks. Programmes. All well-intentioned. All added on top of working environments that are still stressful, rushed or disconnected.
From what I’ve seen, the biggest shifts in employee experience don’t come from adding more stuff. They come from stepping back and asking a simpler question.
What does it actually feel like to work here?
That includes:
- The pace people work at
- The way conversations happen
- And the workplace environment people spend most of their time in
If the fundamentals are off, no amount of good intentions will make up for it.
You can’t yoga your way out of a broken environment.
Doing something different at work doesn’t have to be complicated
This is the bit that often gets missed.
Doing something different doesn’t mean launching a shiny new wellbeing strategy or rewriting half the handbook.
Sometimes it’s about:
- Creating spaces that encourage people to stop and talk
- Giving teams shared experiences that aren’t about targets or outputs
- Making the workplace feel more human, not just more efficient
When people feel more connected to each other and to the environment they work in, behaviour changes naturally. Conversations open up. Energy shifts. People show up differently.
That’s not theory. That’s what I see when businesses take a more thoughtful approach to their spaces and how people use them.
A final thought on employee wellbeing
Workplace wellbeing isn’t another box to tick.
It’s the result of lots of small, everyday things being done with a bit more thought. How people are treated. How supported they feel. And whether the places they work in help or hinder that.
Sometimes, doing something different is simply about noticing what’s been missing all along.
If you’d like to talk about how your workplace feels, not just how it functions, I’m always happy to have a conversation.
So let's chat.