The Hidden Weight of ‘Being Well’ at Work
- tanyakabote
- Jun 12
- 3 min read
You’re tired. You’re overworked. But your company has launched a new wellbeing programme, yoga at lunch, an app that tells you to breathe, and an all-staff email about resilience.
It sounds supportive. But why does it feel like just another thing on your to-do list?
Because in most workplaces, wellbeing isn’t care. It’s another quiet demand.
The Illusion of Support Wellbeing initiatives often come wrrapped in good intentions. But if you scratch the surface, you will find a clear message.....If you're not well at work, you're not trying hard enough to fix yourself. Take a break. Meditate. Speak up.
The advice is well meaning, but it places the responsibility squarely on the individual. There’s rarely, if ever, a conversation about workloads, poor management, or team dysfunction. And it’s showing.
A 2024 report by Deloitte found that 60% of UK employees feel their organisation’s wellbeing efforts are performattive rather than impactful. Meanwhile, only 1 in 3 workers say they feel safe discussing mental health with their manager.
Shifting Accountability This subtle shift of responsibility, from organisation to employee, lets companies tick the wellbeing box without making any real change.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
A burnout prevention webinar delivered during lunch, with no break before or after.
Encouraging staff to “speak up” but punishing honesty with subtle exclusion.
Celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week while ignoring overwork every other week.
Wellbeing becomes performance, smile, stay positive, don’t rock the boat.
And yet, as far as I am aware, burnout isn’t caused by a lack of breathwork. The UK Health and Safety Executive reported that 875,000 workers suffered from work-related stress, depression, or anxiety in 2023–24. That’s not a breathwork problem. That’s a system problem.
When ‘Wellbeing’ Gaslights You There’s a name for this approach, and it is called ‘institutional gaslighting’. You’re struggling, but the systems causing your stress are invisible in the wellbeing narrative.
It’s like giving someone a mindfulness app while setting their desk on fire. You’re told to stay calm while the pressure quietly smothers you.
This weakens trust. It disconnects people from their feelings and pushes them to suppress, not express. Over time, suppression can lead to burnout, disengagement, and even long-term health issues.
Take the case of Sarah Jurek, a former employee at BrewDog who spoke out in 2021 about what she described as a culture of fear and burnout. Despite the company’s public wellbeing messaging, dozens of ex-employees signed an open letter criticising its toxic environment. They described feeling gaslit, told to access wellbeing resources while being overworked, intimidated, or emotionally undermined behind the scenes.
What Real Wellbeing Would Look Like Real wellbeing isn’t about lunchtime yoga or weekly affirmation emails. It’s structural. It’s embedded into how people are treated, not what they’re handed when they’re at breaking point.
Real wellbeing includes:
Reviewing workloads and job design
Training managers in psychological safety, not just productivity
Allowing anonymous feedback with actual consequences
Treating wellbeing data as seriously as financial data
It's not about adding more tasks to an already strained employee. It’s about removing what’s doing the damage in the first place.
We Don’t Need More Perks, We Need Permission to Be Human True wellbeing at work doesn't ask people to cope better. It asks employers to do better.
If your wellbeing programme demands your energy instead of restoring it, it isn’t working.
It’s time to stop confusing care with control. We don’t need more box-ticking. We need workplaces that allow people to breathe, not apps that remind them to.
If this resonated with you You’re not imagining it, and you are not alone. If you want more straight-talking content about mental health at work, explore more articles on our site or follow Every Wellbeing for updates.
Further Reading & Sources
Deloitte UK (2024). Mental Health & Employers Report
Mind (2023). Workplace Wellbeing Index Summary Findings
CIPD (2023). Health and Wellbeing at Work Survey
The Guardian (2021). “Burnout Culture: When Wellbeing Becomes Another Job”
Mental Health Foundation (2023). “Toxic Positivity and Mental Health: A Growing Workplace Issue”
