Stop Asking Perks to Do a Strategy’s Job

Let us begin by clearing the fruit bowl of all charges.

Fruit is useful. A wellbeing app can be useful. A lunchtime yoga class may be just the thing—although perhaps not in a pencil skirt beside the photocopier.

The problem is not the perk. The problem is the expectation placed upon it.

Perks usually sit at the edge of the working day. Behaviour is shaped in the thick of it: the meeting that gallops through lunch, the inbox that breeds overnight, the 4pm raid on the biscuit tin and the manager who sends a 10.47pm email marked “not urgent”.

The CIPD’s July 2026 factsheet makes the strategic standard clear: employee health and wellbeing priorities need to be integrated throughout the organisation and embedded in its culture, leadership and people management. Read the CIPD guidance on workplace wellbeing.

So, keep the perks. Just give them the correct job description. They can create interest and access. The working environment has to help create action.

Target a Behaviour, Not a Handsome-Sounding Topic

“Healthy eating”, “better sleep” and “resilience” look splendid on a campaign calendar. They are useful destinations too. But nobody can practise “resilience” at 2.15pm on a Wednesday.

A stronger workplace wellness programme translates each theme into a visible choice:

• Add protein and fibre to the first meal of the day.
• Keep a reliable afternoon snack within reach.
• Move caffeine a little earlier.
• Take ten minutes of daylight before the diary fills up.
• Protect one uninterrupted lunch window each week.

Now people have something they can actually do.

Start narrow. Make the action specific enough to practise, simple enough to remember and useful enough to repeat. Grand intentions are lovely. They simply do not travel as well as a clear next step.

A topic fills a calendar. A behaviour changes a day.

Design All Three Conditions for Change

Good intentions matter, but they are only one member of the band.

The peer-reviewed Behaviour Change Wheel brings together three conditions: capability, opportunity and motivation. Known as the COM-B model, it shows that people need the knowledge or skill to act, an environment that allows the action and a reason to keep doing it. Explore the COM-B research.

Build Capability

Give people one clear principle and an ordinary example.

Show them how to build a balanced lunch from an actual supermarket, service-station stop or workplace canteen—not an imaginary kitchen where somebody has already washed the quinoa and arranged the herbs in little glass jars.

Turn nutrition science into a decision people can make under pressure.

Clear, credible and concrete beats complicated.

Create Opportunity

Remove some of the friction around the action. Protect the time. Improve the food choice. Put water where people work. Build recovery into demanding schedules. Give hybrid, shift-based and site-based teams options that fit their reality.

If the diary eats lunch every day, another handout about balanced meals is being asked to perform a small miracle.

The healthier choice must be possible before it can become probable.

Strengthen Motivation

Connect the behaviour to a benefit people can feel now: steadier energy, clearer focus, calmer evenings or stronger recovery.

Distant health warnings may be important, but they rarely carry the same persuasive force through a frantic afternoon. “This may help you avoid the 3pm slump and think clearly in the final meeting” has rather more life in it.

Make the benefit felt, not merely understood.

Create a SHIFT That Sticks

Over more than 25 years of working with organisations, I have seen plenty of good information disappear into folders, inboxes and the mysterious cupboard where unused wellbeing merchandise goes to retire.

That is why I use a simple five-part lens to move workplace wellness from information to implementation. It is the SHIFT framework.

Specify the Behaviour

Choose one action linked to a real organisational pressure point.

Replace “improve energy” with “build a protein-rich breakfast on three working days this week”. Replace “reduce stress” with “take a ten-minute daylight break before the afternoon workload intensifies”.

Precision gives people a starting line. It also lets everybody know what success looks like, which is helpful when “do better” was the original brief.

Humanise the Message

Remove judgement and perfection. Use ordinary food, familiar diaries and honest barriers. Show the workable choice on a late train, during a site shift or between client calls.

Nobody needs to be made to feel morally inferior because their lunch came from a petrol station.

People need a plan for real life, not a performance of perfect health.

Integrate It Into Work

Attach the action to something that already happens.

Fill the water bottle after the first meeting. Take the daylight break after lunch. Put the balanced snack beside the laptop before the afternoon begins. Ask managers to protect the same cue.

We are all much more likely to remember a behaviour when the day itself gives us a nudge. Memory, bless it, has enough to do already.

Follow Through

Reinforce the idea in short, varied bursts: a manager prompt, a one-minute video, a practical recipe, a peer example and a concise follow-up session.

Keep the core action steady while changing the way it is supported. This is repetition with a pulse, not the same email returning every Friday in a different hat.

Repetition builds recognition. Relevance keeps it alive.

Track the Shift

Measure whether people understood the action, tried it and found it useful. Add an appropriate business signal over time.

Attendance matters, but it cannot tell you whether anyone changed what happened next. A full webinar room is encouraging. It is not yet an outcome.

Measure movement, not just membership.

Use Nutrition as a Visible Engine

Nutrition is powerful inside workplace wellness because it creates immediate, everyday practice. Everyone eats. Every working day contains decisions about meals, snacks, hydration and caffeine—even when the decision is “coffee now, think later”.

A practical nutrition session can help a team build steadier meals, plan for predictable energy dips and make healthier choices without rigid rules or dietary theatre.

The aim is not perfection. It is better fuel for clearer thinking, steadier energy and stronger recovery. If it also makes the biscuit tin slightly less magnetic at 4pm, so much the better.

Nutrition therefore makes an excellent entry point for a wider behaviour-change campaign. Explore a practical nutrition and energy programme designed around healthier workplace habits.

Build Five Years of Proof, Not Five Days of Promotion

One of the clearest lessons from my 25-plus years in corporate wellbeing came through years of work with Skanska.

We returned to health, nutrition, energy and performance across a series of programmes. The delivery stayed fresh, but the foundations did not vanish simply because everybody had heard them once.

Skanska’s Health and Safety Manager, Joel Forarth, described seeing the impact move “from small change to complete transformation in some individuals”. Read the original Skanska testimonial.

That did not come from a novelty perk or a heroic burst of January enthusiasm. It grew through relevance, repetition and long-term commitment.

See information here about workplace wellbeing programmes with Skanska.

Real change rarely needs more noise. It needs a useful message, delivered well, supported properly and repeated with purpose.

Align Managers, Meetings and Messages

Employees are excellent contradiction detectors.

A wellbeing campaign loses credibility when its advice says one thing and the working day says another. “Please protect your energy” rings a little hollow when lunch has just been replaced by three consecutive calls and a cereal bar eaten with one hand.

Managers Create Permission

Equip managers to model the action, protect small boundaries and talk about wellbeing without being expected to become amateur clinicians. Their behaviour quietly sets the permission level for everyone else.

Meetings Create Conditions

Protect lunch when practical. Add a small recovery gap after demanding sessions. Make food, water and movement easier during long events. Sometimes the most effective wellbeing intervention is simply not booking over every breathable inch of the day.

Messages Create Meaning

Frame workplace wellness around energy, resilience and performance as well as long-term health. Keep the language practical, positive and inclusive.

When managers, meetings and messages align, behaviour change feels supported rather than merely sponsored.

Measure the Change That Matters

A credible workplace wellness dashboard does not need dozens of measures, seventeen tabs and a colour key that requires its own induction.

It needs a short, sensible chain from reach to action and from action to organisational value:

• Reach: attendance, access across locations and representation across the workforce.
• Relevance: whether employees felt the advice reflected real pressures and practical barriers.
• Readiness: confidence in using the targeted behaviour after the session.
• Repetition: self-reported use of the action at agreed follow-up points.
• Results: appropriate trends in energy, engagement, absence, retention or performance, interpreted carefully alongside other organisational factors.

The aim is credible progress, not inflated promises. We are looking for a pattern of participation, action and value—not trying to claim that one lunchtime webinar single-handedly transformed the annual report.

Launch a Six-Week Behaviour-Change Sprint

A focused sprint gives HR and L&D teams enough structure to test the approach without launching a wellbeing empire by next Tuesday.

Week Zero – Listen

Identify one pressure point through workforce feedback and existing people data. Choose one behaviour worth practising.

Week One – Ignite

Launch with an energetic, interactive session. Make the science memorable and the first action immediate. People should know what to do before they close the laptop or leave the room.

Weeks Two and Three – Integrate

Add manager prompts, environmental support and concise reminders around the same action. Notice where real life gets in the way and remove what friction you can.

Weeks Four and Five – Reinforce

Share practical variations and peer examples. Keep the core idea familiar without making the campaign feel as though it has become trapped on repeat.

Week Six – Review

Measure understanding, use and usefulness. Keep what worked. Refine what did not. Choose the next behaviour.

One behaviour. Six weeks. Clear learning. Stronger foundations.

Make Workplace Wellness Part of How Work Works

Workplace wellness does not need to become worthy, heavy or complicated. It needs to become useful.

Start with a real pressure point. Translate it into one practical behaviour. Build capability, opportunity and motivation around it. Reinforce the action. Measure the shift. Then repeat with intelligence.

Perks can still play a part. The fruit bowl may remain exactly where it is. It simply no longer has to carry the entire wellbeing strategy on its bananas.

Move beyond perks. Build healthier habits, stronger resilience and better working days.