I recently learned a new* term for a familiar phenomenon. The term is “Carewashing.” I came across it for the first time while reading a Harvard Business Review article by Maren Gube, Cynthia Mathieu, and Debra Sabatini Hennelly.
(*Although the term has been around for a few years, it was new to me!)
What is carewashing, you ask? Good question! Carewashing is a workplace phenomenon defined as “a misalignment between what leaders portray as cultures of care… and employees’ actual daily experiences at work.”
Let’s break it down.
Burnout is rampant these days, and employers know it. Employers who want a productive workforce and lower turnover will naturally look for solutions to the employee burnout problem.
One common solution is to offer employees burnout-preventing wellness interventions. This can look like mindfulness trainings, yoga classes, free 15-minute massages, and that type of thing.
These sound great, right? A break from work for a free massage sounds nice! These types of offerings are relatively low cost to the employer, and give the appearance that employee wellbeing is important to the organization. At first glance it seems like a win-win solution that benefits everyone.
But there’s a catch. These interventions can fall short, even backfire, if the workplace factors driving burnout don’t change too.
As an employee, if your job conditions aren’t sustainable - for instance, if you are overworked, chronically stressed, or in an environment with a toxic workplace culture - a lunch-hour yoga class isn’t going to get to the root of your problems. In fact, these types of interventions can feel like extra pressure, because now you’re supposed to be practicing “wellness” on top of your already busy schedule. And then burnout can be blamed on you, because you haven’t been doing your free yoga.
Yoga is great! But an hour of yoga won't make it up for poor working conditions. (Photo by Cliff Booth, Pexels.)
I wrote about this phenomenon in my book ACT for Burnout in a chapter I called “Mindfulness for Burnout: It’s Complicated.” I didn’t use the term “Carewashing,” which I hadn’t heard yet when my book was published. But I did write about the general idea:
“There is a rising backlash against managers and organizations that offer their employees mindfulness and other self-care wellness programs without addressing the systemic problems that are at the root of burnout. In response to a rise in burnout, leaders will recommend, sometimes require, mindfulness interventions while changing nothing about workplace culture, busy schedules, understaffing, inadequate leave time, pay, and benefits, and so on. Rather than resolving the cultural and systemic problems driving burnout, these efforts miss the mark, sometimes angering employees who are tired of superficial approaches that put the onus of change on the employees themselves.”
- ACT for Burnout: Recharge, Reconnect, and Transform Burnout with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, by me, Debbie Sorensen
There are other types of carewashing too. Superficial gestures, like prizes or free pizza at lunch, often fall short. As does lip service to employee wellbeing without substantial culture and policy changes that make a workplace humane.
What can leaders of organizations do, instead of carewashing? If employers really want to sustain a satisfied workforce, they need to listen to their employees and address the real problems in organizational culture. They need to prioritize staffing, and keep employees from being overworked. They need to demonstrate appreciation for workers through fair treatment, and give them wages and benefits to match the work they are doing. They need to create a culture of psychological safety, in which employees are allowed to make mistakes and ask for help without fear of repercussion. And they need to role-model a healthy work/life balance by not overworking themselves, and not expecting overwork from employees.
As soon as that type of workplace culture exists, we’ll gladly take our pizza and massages, please!
Resources To Learn More:
Link to the Harvard Business Review article where I learned the term carewashing: https://hbr.org/2024/06/how-carewashing-alienates-employees
Check out my book, ACT for Burnout, which includes information about burnout, and a whole chapter on cultural and organizational changes to prevent burnout: https://bookshop.org/p/books/act-for-burnout-recharge-reconnect-and-transform-burnout-with-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy-debbie-sorensen/19930229
A few relevant episodes of my podcast: