Five big wellbeing trends for 2023.

Chief Business Psychologist, Maria Gardner shares her predictions for ‘what comes next’ for wellbeing in 2023.

Whilst I’ve never been one for following trends, when it comes to wellbeing, the events of the last couple of years has accelerated our collective interest and appreciation of the role it plays, in the attraction, retention and engagement. It’s no longer seen as a ‘nice to have’ or “wellbeing, for wellbeing’s sake”. So, in that context, it has been interesting to see how the field has grown, developed and matured as a result of the additional interest and investment. On this basis, here are my predictions for 2023…

1. Data analytics comes to wellbeing

For so long the purview of employee engagement, recruitment, retention, and even EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion), wellbeing is transitioning out of a ‘whatever it takes’ phase. Businesses now need to invest in data analysis to properly identify risks, effectiveness and missed opportunities, as well as ROI.

2. Full integration between wellbeing and EDI.

For the last couple of years wellbeing and EDI have been running in parallel with each other. Treated as separate issues, with separate budgets. However, the areas of the employee experience that they impact on are the same.  Now is the time for full alignment of these two areas, in the context of better integration with organisation-wide business goals…

3. Putting wellbeing at the heart of business…not just on a mug. 

It is a serious message playfully delivered, but right now, too many businesses still treat wellbeing as separate to the strategy of the business, creating a tension between performance targets and wellbeing objectives. With ROI as much as 5:1 (Deloitte, 2020) the business case is clear.

4. Upskilling managers to better support wellbeing.

They are front line when it comes to supporting and encouraging good workplace wellbeing.  Managers are also quoted as the number one reason why people leave their jobs. As wellbeing offerings become more expansive and systematic, support and training for managers has to keep up and absolutely cannot be overlooked.

5.  Multidisciplinary approach. 

As mentioned above, we are rightly starting to see closer alignment between wellbeing and EDI. However, I see more to be done in other areas. There is a wealth of brilliant work across the fields of wellbeing, stress, resilience, mental toughness, positive psychology, employee engagement, motivation and performance. However, the insights of these related schools of thought are rarely brought together. This is a missed opportunity.

My reflections of the above, is there is already clear movement in the right direction when it comes to the greater use of data analytics and integration between wellbeing and EDI. For the remaining three, I am hopeful we will see significant progress in 2023.

Find out more…

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In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed Maria’s ramblings why not check out some of our other blogs and thought pieces.  For real time updates and insights you can also find us on LinkedIn, our social media platform of choice: @PsychologyWorks and @mariagardner