take your rooftop yoga and shove it, respectfully 🌱

(4 minute read)

Hi! Welcome to Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work. 

Ok, I’m kidding. I love yoga. Truly. I have three mats: one for home, a slightly thinner one for studio travel, and a 1.5mm foldable mat for suitcase travel. I even got my yoga teacher certification a lifetime ago before I started my master’s in counseling. I wanted to learn more about how yoga can help with mental health. Ahhh, youth. The joy of wonder.

Sorry, 20-something-year-old Laura! While yoga has some tremendous benefits for individuals, it’s ineffective as a well-being intervention in the workplace.

“Laura, you’re being cynical.”

Of course I am. That doesn’t make it any less true.

Yoga isn’t the only typical workplace mental health & well-being intervention that’s a total dud. A 2023 study out of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford analyzed data from 143 organizations (27,932 workers) to evaluate the efficacy of convenient and individually targeted mental health and well-being initiatives in the workplace. These are the trendy, quick offerings we see organizations investing in, like mindfulness, well-being apps, and relaxation classes.

According to this study, they’re all a waste of time and money.  

Here is a wild one: training focused on building individual resilience and stress management negatively affected workplace mental health and well-being. Damn. Truly brutal. (I anticipated resilience being a problem, but stress management, too? Et tu, stress management?! I'm glad I stopped offering my stress seminar two years ago…)

Remember, we’re talking about workplace mental health & well-being: the well-being connected to our work and our feelings about work. Meditation apps might be great under other circumstances, but they do not show much benefit in the workplace.

It makes sense, though. Imagine you have this high-stress job; you’re doing the work of 3 people because the rest of your department was laid off, your vacation request was denied, and your organization started offering rooftop yoga and a mindfulness app. Or they have a speaker come in to tell you how to manage your stress and how to be more resilient (read: tolerant) to unmanageable stress in the workplace.

How frustrating is that? You need support and a reasonable workload, not an alert on your watch telling you to breathe.

I loved reading this article because it affirmed my instincts and critique of these workplace interventions. I’ve always struggled with the approach that we focus on the individual’s mental health because it’s inefficient. If the stress and diminished well-being come from the workplace, the solution is to….change the workplace? Right? Right?!

As I reflect on my own (current) offerings and training, I’m thinking about how all my talks and training are rooted in how we ultimately shift organizational culture and behavior primarily through building leadership skills.

But what I love most is working at the organizational level, strategizing and designing workplaces and roles that help people grow and thrive. I will always come and train your leaders and work with your teams, but we also need to take a structural and cultural approach to this work. This study argues that these institutional interventions are the way to go, which is good news for me because we love a good alignment of values, efficacy, and occupational joy. Yay.

Now, keep in mind that stress management training or rooftop yoga lands very differently if your workforce is already healthy and thriving. They’re lovely offerings, but get the rest in order before you ask people to download an app. Offering these trendy, individual-focused interventions without addressing the underlying issues is like a landlord painting over a cockroach.

Like, we still want a pizza party, but you have to consistently demonstrate proper appreciation for it to land without fostering resentment, you know? 

The study was not all bad news, however. One popular and easy intervention improved subjective workplace mental health and well-being. Do you know what it was?

Volunteering.

Community interventions are what’s up. Social support is what’s up.

See you next Monday!