Step count, sleep score, mindful minutes, gratitude streak. At some point the to-do list for being well got longer than the one for work.
There’s a quiet irony in modern workplace wellbeing. The more we offer, the more some people feel they’re failing at it.
The numbers.
lululemon’s Global Wellbeing Report, now cited in the Global Wellness Summit’s 2026 trends, found that 45% of people report “wellbeing burnout”: exhaustion from the effort of trying to be well. 61% say they feel pressure to appear well.
That second figure deserves a moment. 6 in 10 people feel they need to look well, whatever’s actually going on underneath. In a workplace, that’s a direct route to presenteeism: the person who smiles through the Monday meeting, says they’re fine, and spends the afternoon running at half speed.
How wellness became a performance.
It’s nobody’s fault. Each initiative on its own is reasonable. A step challenge, a mindfulness app, a wellbeing week, a resilience workshop, a newsletter of tips. Stacked together, they can start to feel like a second job with its own targets and leaderboards.
3 things tend to tip it over:
Volume. Too many offers, each asking for a little more time.
Visibility. Leaderboards, streaks and challenges turn private habits into public scores.
Individual responsibility. The message, however unintended, becomes: if you’re struggling, you haven’t done your wellbeing properly.
That last one does the most damage. It moves the problem from the workload and the culture onto the person, who is now tired and also feels they’ve failed at self-care.
What actually helps.
Do less, better. 1 or 2 things people genuinely use beat a crowded menu. Ask what’s being used and quietly retire the rest.
Make it shared, not scored. Practices a team does together in work time build norms. Personal targets build guilt.
Put it in the working day. Wellbeing that has to be squeezed in before work or after the children are in bed will always lose.
Let people be honest. If 61% feel pressure to appear well, the most useful thing a leader can do is go first: say when they’re having a hard week, and what they’re doing about it.
Go for the body, not the scoreboard. The simplest practices are often the most sustainable. A few minutes of slow breathing, around 6 breaths a minute, is linked to more parasympathetic activity and lower anxiety. There’s nothing to track, no streak to break, and nobody needs to know you did it.
Wellbeing works best when it feels like relief rather than homework.
This is part of a series on where wellbeing spend leaks. Start with wellbeing apps.
The Working Well assessment shows you where your organisation sits and what dysregulation is likely costing you. Your Working Well briefing, with the full cost model, follows by email.
Take the Working Well assessment today. workerbe.co.uk/working-well
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