Online Reporter
Employee Relations
Dr Request Machimbira
Every October, social media feeds go pink.
Every June, we see sneakers and step counters.
Every World Mental Health Day, the CEO posts a quote about “it’s okay to not be okay” next to a branded banner. Let us call it what it is: Wellness has been hijacked as content.
Many organisations have turned wellness into a photo opportunity.
A single walkathon near the head office, a Zumba session on a Friday, a retirement talk when someone turns 55. The key performance indicator (KPI) becomes likes, shares and fire emojis. The board sees the pictures and assumes “wellness is covered”. It is not. Wellness is not a public relations (PR) stunt. It supports performance, retention and risk management.
And if we keep treating it like a commemorative event, we will keep paying for it in burnout, absenteeism, claims and quiet quitting.
Here is the truth, and what to do about it. We confused visibility with value. Wellness became a vehicle for social media because it is easy to measure visibility. You can count attendees at a walk. You can count impressions on a cancer awareness post.
You cannot easily count the cost of a toxic manager, or the productivity lost to financial stress, or the claims that come from years of untreated hypertension. So, we defaulted to what photographs well. A walkathon in a park is more of a commemoration than an intervention. A Zumba class does not fix the fact that you have no wellness policy, no standard operating procedures (SOPs), no budget line and no one accountable for outcomes.
A retirement planning talk at age 55 is not wellness. It is damage control.
It is the fire extinguisher approach: wait for the fire, then spray. That is opportunistic programming. It chases trends, not needs. It reacts to calendar dates, not data. Cancer month comes, so we talk about cancer.
Financial stress peaks in January, but we only talk about money in November during Global Money Week.
The result: Employees clap, take pictures, go back to the same stressful environment on Monday and the leadership wonders why “wellness isn’t working”.
A wellness culture is not created by hacking into trending hashtags. It is engineered. Think of it like safety.
No responsible organisation waits for Safety Week to talk about personal protective equipment (PPE). Safety is built into design, training, supervision and accountability. Wellness must be the same. Culture is what happens when no one is watching.
Do managers check in on workload before burnout? Do teams have meeting-free blocks for deep work? Do people know where to get counselling without stigma?
Do we design jobs that do not break people? Culture only happens when there is strategic intent.
Every event must answer one question: What organisational problem is this solving? Match the intervention to the strategic intent. Not every event delivers on your strategy.
The mismatch is why wellness feels hollow. If your organisation does not have a wellness policy, SOPs, a wellness committee or a budget, your strategic intent for this year should be governance.
You need to establish the rails first. A Zumba session will not cure a governance gap. It will only create better dancers in a broken system. If your data shows young staff are taking loans at 28 percent interest, your strategic intent should be financial wellness. A retirement talk is irrelevant to them. If your medical aid claims show rising hypertension and diabetes, your intent should be preventive health.
Waiting for Cancer Month is too late and too narrow. The fire extinguisher leader waits for the crisis. Staff is 55, now let us talk about retirement.
Claims are high, now let us do a health talk. Turnover is up, now let us do a wellness day. The fire guard leader forecasts. They look at demographics, claims data, exit interviews and engagement surveys. They invest before the fire.
Fire guard means:
i. Starting retirement planning at 30, not 55. So compound interest can work.
ii. Talking about cancer risk all year, not just in October. So screening becomes a habit.
iii. Training managers on mental health before the resignation letter lands.
To the executives still wielding the fire extinguisher, it is time to smell the coffee. The cost of reacting is always higher than the cost of preventing.
Make it measurable: You need goals and a wellness dashboard.
If you cannot measure it, the business will not fund it. And if the business does not fund it, it will remain a PR stunt.
Wellness strategy must be summarised into clear goals and those goals must live on a wellness dashboard that is reviewed like sales or safety.
What goes on the dashboard:
i. Leading indicators: percentage of staff who completed health screening, percent of managers trained in wellbeing conversations, utilisation of employee assistance programme (EAP), participation in financial wellness.
ii. Lagging indicators: Absenteeism rate, medical claims trend, turnover, engagement score, presenteeism.
iii. Return on investment (ROI) indicators: Cost per claim, cost of replacement hire, productivity metrics linked to wellness participation. Without a dashboard, wellness investments look like charity. With a dashboard, they look like risk mitigation and human capital optimisation.
That is the language the chief financial officer (CFO) understands.
If your organisation does not have a wellness strategy and a dashboard, then yes — you are chasing rituals and content. Wellness is not about looking good. It is about enabling human capital to perform sustainably. When we reduce wellness to content, we insult our people. We tell them: “We care enough to photograph you, but not enough to fix the system that is breaking you.”
A real wellness culture is boring to post about. It is a policy. It is data. It is managers having hard conversations. It is prevention. It is a dashboard reviewed in board meetings.
So the next time you are planning “an event”, pause. Ask: What is the strategic intent? What problem are we solving? How will we know it worked?
If you do not have answers, do not hold the event, because wellness is not a PR stunt. It is a strategic enabler. And it is time we started treating it like one.
Dr Request Machimbira is the executive director of Proficiency Consulting Group and the International Wellness Institute. For feedback, email request @proficiency international.com or phone +263772693404.
