Carewashing and the limits of conventional workplace wellbeing approaches

Moving towards genuine practices of care.

Work and wellbeing are often an awkward pair, at odds with each other in many ways. When they are brought under the same banner ('workplace wellbeing'), the strongest expressions tend to emerge organically: from shared experience, mutual care, and genuine intention. But even the most organic efforts are hard to sustain in environments shaped by neoliberal logics such as surveillance, competition, precarity, and an unrelenting focus on productivity.

The corporatisation of care

The term carewashing was coined by Andreas Chatzidakis and Jo Littler of The Care Collective. It describes the ways in which corporations use (and abuse) notions of 'care' to improve their image, often without making meaningful changes to how they treat their workers or communities. The authors suggested that the biggest risk with carewashing was a Gramscian 'passive revolution' whereby corporations become the accepted providers of care, shifting expectations away from collective or public responsibility and reinforcing existing power structures.

The bandaid approach

Workplace wellbeing programs, wellness surveys and lunchtime yoga programs, whilst well meaning, are often an attempt to put a very small bandaid on a much bigger issue. In the worst case scenario, a workplace wellbeing program can actually cause more stress, especially if scheduled during working hours, or if the workplace doesn't feel safe enough for employees to engage in anything related to personal wellbeing. Workers are often rightly suspicious of bandaid wellbeing initiatives, especially when working conditions are poor and power dynamics are elevated.

This trend was captured by André Spicer in a piece for The Guardian with the title 'Work wellness programmes don't make employees happier - but I know what does'. According to a meta-analysis of workplace wellbeing research, truly caring work environments are not defined by the wellness packages they offer, but by the quality of working conditions, specifically:

• secure contracts;

• good pay;

• flexibility;

• worker agency; and

• opportunities for professional development.

Additionally, when these foundational needs are met and sustained, workers tend to have more capacity for and interest in adjunctive offerings like workplace yoga, resilience training, and other wellbeing enhancing offerings. These findings mirror related research findings that wellbeing initiatives often achieve their strongest outcomes among employees who feel supported and competent in their work. Employees experiencing high levels of stress, burnout or other workplace strain are less likely to engage and may derive limited benefits from programs focused solely on individual behaviour change.

'More than policy' approaches to care

In their seminal 2018 paper 'The Waters of Systems Change', John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge advocated for three dimensions of systems change:

• structural change: policies, practices, and resource flows;

• relational change: relationships, connections, and power dynamics; and

• transformational change: mental models.

More recently, through his work at Collective Change Lab with Louise Marra and Laura Calderón de la Barca, Kania has added a new layer to this model - embodiment.

This model provides a helpful framework for workplace wellbeing strategies:

• structural change ensures that good working conditions are in place;

• relational change focuses on trauma-informed and care-centred practices within client and work and within teams;

• transformational change addresses bigger cultural and organisation-specific challenges around power, ways of thinking, and ways of working; and

• embodiment reminds us that change is something that we practice together, as opposed to a policy or framework that is compiled and filed away.

Towards a genuine practice of care

In addition to working conditions, there are many subtle producers of stress and strain in workplaces: pace, pressure, relational complexity, emphatic strain, secondary stress, and vicarious trauma. Sustained, care-centred workplace wellbeing is near impossible without a willingness to challenge the neoliberal values that underpin the practices, processes, and mental models of contemporary work.

Genuine care exists within every organisation and service. What extinguishes it is rarely a lack of goodwill, but the weight of everything the broader structure does not provide.

Beyond good working conditions, it is crucial that workers and leaders are supported to regulate their nervous system, build emotional recovery time into work, and embody steadiness and connection.

This work is just as important as policy change and trauma-informed training. This is systems change in motion.