Workplace Wellbeing

I think of thoughtful facilitation as a form of hospitality: the care with which someone welcomes you into an experience. In The unfiltered realities of life, I wrote about the Sri Lankan family who included me in their lives when I was nineteen in Australia, from family celebrations to meals of coconut roti. That memory offers a way of thinking about corporate wellness workshops: beyond what people will do, how will they be received?

For an HR organiser comparing two appealing proposals, that can be difficult to judge. You may already have considered which wellness activities your team needs. The next question is who you trust to guide them.

Over time, you get to know the people you work with in a particular way. 

You learn who can untangle an invoice, who stays calm when a presentation goes wrong and who will always find an answer to a tricky question. You might rely on each other every day, yet know very little about one another beyond work.

In Restorative Yoga, small adjustments can make a difference. 

Moving a bolster or adding a folded blanket might help someone’s shoulders soften and allow them to settle more comfortably.

Health and wellness at work also calls for practical attention: what would help, and who can make it happen?

We often say that everyone has a part to play in workplace wellbeing. 

But it’s easier to take action when we know what we can do ourselves and where we need someone else’s help.

You send the wellbeing invitation, remind the team to take a break and make sure everyone knows support is available. But when the session begins, you’re still at your desk, catching up on everything else. 

In Resourced for the Road Ahead, I wrote about making time to replenish before a busy season of holding space for others. I return to that intention when I think about mental wellness in the workplace: HR professionals, managers and wellbeing champions deserve a place in the care they help arrange.

For me, a wellbeing session begins with the invitation.

Before anyone takes a seat or pauses to notice their breath, they’re already wondering: What will this involve? Will I be comfortable? Is this for me?

You may have spent weeks finding a thoughtful facilitator, getting the budget approved and setting a date. But the person opening your announcement won’t see all that work. A message like “We prioritise your wellbeing” can still leave them wondering what support is available and how to take part.

I have learnt that the value of a corporate wellness day cannot be measured on the day itself. The more honest measure arrives later, on an ordinary Tuesday, when someone meets a familiar pressure with a little more awareness, language or choice. This is where a wellness program becomes part of working life—or remains one lovely afternoon.

The day can open a door. What follows determines whether people can find it again.

Over the years, I have come to think of some workplace wellbeing sessions as being offered on borrowed time. The hour appears protected in the calendar, yet an employee may quietly repay it through a missed lunch, unfinished work or a longer evening.

This is how even well-intentioned corporate mental wellness programmes can begin to feel like more work: care is offered, but the cost of receiving it still falls on an employee whose capacity may already be stretched.

When organisers begin searching for wellness activities, the request can sound deceptively simple.

“Our team is tired. We would like to do something for them.”

From there, it is tempting to look through a menu of options and choose what appears most enjoyable: yoga, meditation, sound healing, a seminar or perhaps something more interactive.

But tiredness does not always look the same.