The emergence of the Chief Wellness/Well-Being Officer role signals a serious and growing commitment to workplace health beyond the reach of an HR department. What began as an effort to stymy burnout among health care workers is slowly but surely gaining traction among employers across the spectrum of industries. Could it be time to add a CWO to your own executive leadership team?

Origins of the CWO

The CWO position came about largely in reaction to the burnout prevailing among healthcare workers prior to – and then enormously exacerbated by – the pandemic, when workloads and stress levels of physicians, nurses and other health care workers skyrocketed. Today, the position continues to gain ground, and thanks to stress and burnout levels at all-time highs among workers in general, many companies beyond the medical world are jumping on board.

Big names like Deloitte, Delta, Aon, AT&T and EY, for example, have all brought CWOs (though some may refer to the position by a different title) into the fold.

Even the CIA hired its first within the last year. Spurred much in part by the aftereffects of 9/11 compounded by stresses of the pandemic, the position was created last fall and its responsibilities include:

• expanding opportunities for CIA employees to practice health and wellbeing activities during the work day;
• providing additional mental health resources to officers and their family members;
• increasing access to childcare subsidies; and
• identifying additional flexible work options for officers.

CWOS are becoming more common on college campuses too. The Ohio State University, University of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma State University are just a few of the schools who’ve added one to leadership. Smaller institutions like Dartmouth also have chosen to go this route.

So What Exactly Does a CWO Do?

As part of a company’s C-Suite, a CWO oversees the well-being of a workforce by propagating a culture of holistic wellness, which encompasses not just physical health but also mental, financial, social health and more. The CWO role goes beyond the purview of heavily burdened HR departments to focus exclusively on wellbeing with the aim of building a more resilient workforce. Often the person assuming the post possesses a health or clinical background, and many companies have hired licensed physicians for the role.

Benefit of Having a CWO

If you’ve already got wellness programming in place, what added benefit could a CWO offer?

For starters, having a CWO would lighten the load on HR departments that have added – seemingly overnight – management and oversight of mental health and well-being, return-to-office and remote work policies to their standard job functions like recruitment, hiring, training and even firing. As a result, according to Executive Networks, 44% of those working in HR are experiencing high levels of burnout. (That number is significantly higher than those who work in finance (34%), operations (32%), and sales and marketing (29%).) A CWO could take some of the stress off HR – and potentially achieve better results in terms of workplace wellness thanks to it being the sole focus of the job.

Additionally, with an overwhelming majority of workers saying their next job search will focus on companies that support mental health, having a CWO on your executive leadership team is the ultimate way of showing the world your commitment to wellness. The position is catching on, but the number of employers who’ve added one to their team remains limited. So the existence of a CWO could serve as a strong recruiting tool and differentiate you from your competition when it comes to attracting new hires.

Wellness Is Worth It

When you equip your workforce with the resources and tools needed to reduce stress and pursue healthier lifestyles, you set your business up to experience fewer worker absences, greater productivity, lower health care costs and improved morale. There are myriad ways to achieve these benefits, and while adding a CWO to the payroll is not an option for every employer, for those with the capacity to do so, it might make good business sense.

Ready to determine what approach to wellness would best serve your employees? Contact Aquila to get started.