In 2022, I worked with over 450 people in the tech industry and climate tech space. Their challenges and insights reflect what the research on employee wellbeing and mental fitness has told us for a long time now:

• People are exhausted. The risk of burnout has risen to 70% last year.

• More employees than ever experience loneliness at work.

• Priorities of people working in tech are shifting. More employees prioritise work-life balance, meaningful work and autonomy, a trend that Gartner identified in early 2022.

For leaders and organisations with a people-first culture, this is no news. However, many organisations struggle to put the right initiatives into place that tackle workplace wellbeing challenges in an effective way that creates lasting positive change. This article outlines three workplace trends that will shape further investment in employee mental fitness and wellbeing in 2023 for tech organisations that are serious about driving employee wellbeing.

Trend 1: More investment in employee mental fitness
Trend 2: Prioritising belonging & team collaboration
Trend 3: The democratisation of coaching for all employees

1. More Investment in Employee Mental Fitness

A mentally fit workforce has higher engagement and improved productivity. Mentally fit teams are great at creativity and innovation. Mentally fit employees also have a healthy work-life integration. For these reasons, more companies will invest in employee mental fitness programmes to boost employee wellbeing in 2023, and this will happen for two reasons. First, HR and L&D experts understand that mental fitness is crucial for organisational success. However, they need to convince the leaders in tech to do their part. Why? Because leaders contribute to 70% of the variance in how employees rate their overall wellbeing, according to Gallup. That means any mental fitness programme needs to have a dedicated learning track for leaders, empowering them with practical tools to create a positive work environment.

However, that might also be the biggest challenge for corporate mental fitness initiatives in 2023. Let me show you a few more mind-boggling statistics: 71% of leaders believe they build a positive work environment according to a recent Forrester study. So far so good. However, that self-perception doesn’t even come close to the actual employee experience! A shocking 49% of employees report that they fear repercussions for being open about their mental health challenges, including losing their job. Even worse, only 27% rate their company’s offerings around mental health as good or very good, according to a McKinsey study.

It becomes clear that leadership teams need to be at the centre stage for organisational mental fitness initiatives. Mental fitness starts at the top. It’s not a nice-to-have anymore. It’s essential for individual and organisational success.

This brings us to the second driver for higher investment in mental fitness programmes: the employees themselves. There is a growing demand from employees to get the right support to deal with increasing levels of change and uncertainty. Employees are driving the implementation of effective mental fitness directly. Why? Because they recognise that in-house L&D programmes often lack the expertise in equipping employees with effective strategies for stress management, burnout prevention and building resilience. Gen Z is the driving force behind this movement, with 72% in that group reporting that managing stress is their number one concern to maintain overall high wellbeing.

Together, this will significantly drive the demand for effective mental fitness programmes for teams in tech. What does that mean for you? If you are looking for evidence-based and effective mental fitness programmes that drive your employees’ wellbeing, I might be who you are looking for. As an established Positive Psychologist and accredited coach, I specialise in building mental fitness for people and teams.

2. Prioritising Belonging & Team Collaboration

One of the saddest trends last year was the further decline in a sense of belonging at work, a development that BetterUp calls the connection crisis. The biggest driver for employee belonging is engagement. Thanks to Gallup, we also know a lot about the state of employee engagement. And it’s bad. Engagement has dropped again in 2022. It's worst in Europe, where employee engagement numbers are the lowest globally: only 14% of employees report being engaged at work.

Many wonder how we got here. Similar to employee wellbeing, leaders are the biggest influence on employee belonging, contributing a whopping 70% of the variance in belonging. But there’s more. The move to hybrid and remote work has brought its own challenges. Many companies have not yet invested in designing effective ways to create engagement, collaboration and true team spirit in a remote or hybrid team setup. While we see some CEOs push to bring back the in-office culture, this is not the right solution for human-centric organisations. Remote is here to stay. Recent data from Gartner suggests that human-centric approaches to hybrid work that focus on flexibility, intentional collaboration and empathy-based management are the way to go for anyone serious about driving team collaboration and employee belonging.

So what does that mean for organisations that want to prioritise belonging and increase collaboration across teams? It means that companies need to make a strategic investment in professional development on all levels. It means that leaders, HR folks and L&D specialists need a solution that empowers individuals but also gives the organisation an easy-to-integrate framework for positive change.

One proven strategy to support that need is to roll out strengths-based approaches to work. Working from strengths combines two decades of research in the fields of Positive and Organisational Psychology.

What are strengths-based approaches to work?

To understand this new way of work, we first need to travel back in time. Traditional management styles focus on identifying weaknesses and blind spots. Here, learning and development goals are defined to mitigate these weaknesses. The idea is, that mitigating individual weaknesses will improve productivity and performance. This deficit-based approach to professional development is a relic from the past. It worked well in traditional, linear organisational structures, where the main goal was to maximise output and reduce time. But it takes a toll on job satisfaction and energy. Where is the joy when all you try to do every day is to become better at something that is really, really hard for you?

Fast forward to 2023, modern knowledge work’s main goal is to connect the user with a product or service and to do so at scale. Output today is not measured in something tangible at the end of the day, but is a collection of tasks that include communication, collaboration, coordination of stakeholders and influencing people to grow the user base. To be successful in this interconnected and complex web of stakeholders, people need a way to shine, to be confident, to be able to influence and communicate well. They need to be mentally fit to act effectively in a fast-paced environment. This is where strengths-based approaches to work come in. But what does it mean, working from strengths?

Everyone has strengths. After two decades of research into what makes people perform at their best, we know that promoting individual strengths boosts wellbeing, job satisfaction and overall performance. Additionally, organisations with a strengths-based feedback culture report a reduction in employees’ leaving the company, a strong indicator for a sense of belonging. I also make my own work measurable and have repeatedly demonstrated that a team that works from strengths reports higher confidence, stronger collaboration and a deeper sense of belonging in hybrid team setups.

The big difference with focusing on one’s strengths as opposed to fixing weaknesses, lies in the joy of doing so. When people operate from their best, they are motivated, energised and ready to embrace change. That’s why human-centred leaders will prioritise investments in building strengths-based cultures to drive belonging and collaboration in 2023.

3. The Democratisation of Coaching for All Employees

Last, but not least, we will see a further democratisation of coaching in the workplace. Coaching used to be an effective but somewhat exclusive professional development tool for executives and senior leaders. As an evidence-based management tool, coaching has proven to effectively boost performance across the organisation, as well as being a driver for better wellbeing and goal attainment.

Because of its success in creating positive change in the workplace, it’s probably not a surprise that we are currently experiencing a democratisation of coaching. This means coaching is becoming more and more accessible for all employees, from early career starters to mid-career professionals, from the employees driving product support and development to customer success, marketing experts and operations roles.

This trend is accelerated by prominent coaching platforms like BetterUp and CoachHub, who offer evidence-based coaching for all employees at scale - while at the same time also driving the adoption of digital coaching via video and conferencing tools. Additionally, we see more organisations work with coaches directly, offering localised support through coaches that can offer in-house as well as digital coaching sessions.

For organisations serious about building better workplaces, expanding their coaching offering to employees outside the C-suite and leadership teams, offers two important advantages. First, adding individual coaching for employees significantly accelerates any L&D programme focused on mental fitness and team collaboration. Why? Because coaching is the place where individual, positive behavioural change is cultivated and put into practice. It’s a place for deep personal enquiry with the goal to support employees with personalised strategies for success.

Secondly, offering 1:1 coaching addresses the need of today’s employees for personalised, impactful professional development. I see many people in tech seeking out career coaches or working with mental fitness coaches privately because their employer does not offer coaching to their employees. Companies who realise that and consequently invest in individual coaching for all employees, will become more attractive to future talent, which will support hiring and maintaining top talent in 2023.

So, dear reader, are you ready to build happier teams in tech this year?

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