What if workplace culture enabled employees to be their best and do their best everyday?
Employers have spent years building wellness programs: screenings, coaching, mental health resources, incentives, challenges, apps, and campaigns.
Many of those efforts are valuable. But the research—and my own experience—points to something bigger: if we want healthier people at work, we have to look at the work environment itself.
I saw this firsthand while working with a high-tech employer to better understand what was driving employee absence and lost productivity.
We started by looking at the available data, but I also spent time interviewing leaders and talking with employees about their day-to-day experience. What emerged in our assessment surprised some of us. Lost productivity was more strongly associated with employees’ perceptions of supervisor support than with illness or injury.
That finding changed the conversation. Instead of asking only, “What wellness programs should we offer?” we began asking, “What is happening in the everyday work experience that may be affecting people’s health and ability to perform?”
Working with the leadership team, we developed a strategy that included training for new supervisors. We also created opportunities for employees to connect with and provide input and feedback to leaders. The goal was not simply to add another program, but to create a more supportive work environment.
That experience has stayed with me because it reinforced something that is easy to overlook: the manager, the team, and the culture employees experience every day can be part of the health intervention.
Current research increasingly supports that idea.
One recent JAMA Network Open study across healthcare settings, more than 14,000 U.S. physicians found that those with a stronger sense of belonging were less likely to report burnout, less likely to plan to cut back their hours, and less likely to intend to leave their organization.
Another large review examined 88 workplace health reviews and 339 meta-analyzed outcomes. The pattern was hard to miss: interventions focused on mental health, stress, psychosocial factors, and the work environment often showed meaningful impact.
The takeaway: employee health and well-being matter, but culture is not a side issue. It is part of the people strategy.
So before launching the next benefits or well-being program, app, or challenge, leaders might want to ask a few harder questions:
- Do people feel like they belong?
- Do teammates have each other’s backs?
- Do managers create psychological safety?
- Is the workload manageable?
- Does the culture actually support mental health, or just talk about it?
Sometimes the most important well-being intervention isn’t something we add to the workday.
It’s changing the workday itself.
This does not mean we stop investing in physical activity, nutrition, prevention, mental and financial health or chronic condition support. Those worksite resources still matter.
But those programs work best when they sit on top of a healthy foundation. They are much less effective when they are expected to make up for burnout, poor leadership, low trust, or unmanageable work.
Belonging, supportive leadership, psychological safety, manageable work, and healthy team norms are not just “well-being culture” topics. They are workforce health & productivity interventions.
So maybe the better question is not:
“What benefit program, or wellbeing solution should we offer next?”
It is:
“What about our work environment is helping people thrive, and what is getting in the way?”
If your organization asked employees one honest question about the work environment, what should it be?
References
Carlasare LE, et al. Sense of Belonging, Burnout, and Work Intentions Among US Physicians. JAMA Network Open. 2026;9(3):e264171. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2847121
Virtanen M, et al. Effectiveness of Workplace Interventions for Health Promotion: A Quality-Informed Horizontal Analysis of 88 Reviews and 339 Meta-Analyzed Effect Estimates. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. 2025.
These are the questions I help organizations explore—identifying the work environment factors, strengths, resources, and opportunities that support healthier, more sustainable workplaces and healthier more productive employees.