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You read about the massive costs generated by burnout, you create a wellbeing strategy, you invest in webinars… and it doesn't achieve much. If you have already experienced a similar scenario or are afraid of it happening in your organization, this conversation is for you. How can you look after wellbeing so that it delivers real results? What mistakes do even experienced managers make? What can you do to ensure your team appreciates your efforts? Maciej Żylewicz, an experienced business consultant and trainer specializing in wellbeing and technology, answers these and many other questions in a conversation with Dr. Andrzej Silczuk.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:13 What are wellness and wellbeing
00:03:04 Expectations of leaders and employees
00:05:04 Career sacrifices and leader wellbeing
00:06:10 What is wellbeing from an organizational perspective
00:08:59 Reactive vs. proactive wellbeing initiatives
00:11:51 The role of top leadership and organizational culture
00:14:35 Why it is better not to use the word "wellbeing"
00:19:42 Where not to start with wellbeing initiatives
00:22:22 How to assess employee needs
00:30:16 Where does low employee engagement come from
00:33:02 Communication and building trust in an organization
00:42:10 Designing wellbeing at work
00:51:50 How to manage energy
Transcript
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Welcome to the Multi.Life space and our program "Well Said." My guest today is Maciej Żylewicz, an experienced business consultant supporting HR departments and a trainer specializing in employee wellbeing and technology. For over 20 years, he has been working with companies across various sectors, translating complex technological issues into accessible, human language.
He has hosted podcasts, such as "Happiness at Work." He designs workshops on wellbeing strategies and combines coaching with strategic games to increase team effectiveness. I value Maciej not only for his wisdom but also for his great sense of humor. Please welcome Maciej Żylewicz.
Maciej ŻylewiczThank you very much. I’m probably blushing a little, though you might not be able to tell under the makeup.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: I hope I haven’t embarrassed you, as I’d like to start with a strong point. You’ve been working with companies for many years, supporting them through crises as an expert in employee care. But first, I’d like to ask you, as an employee yourself: what does well-being mean to you?
Maciej Żylewicz: It’s interesting that you use both terms, because the word "well-being"—and this might be our first controversy today—is quite loaded, and not always in a positive way. Some people roll their eyes when they hear it, while others think, "Okay, that sounds good."
I think the Polish term "dobrostan" is closer to what I mean by well-being. For me, it comes down to three things. First, you are healthy, both physically and, metaphorically speaking, in spirit. Second—and I have to use the English term here—you are "sustainable." This means your career trajectory isn't one where you lose energy and motivation every year; instead, you’re either maintaining your level or even growing.
The third thing, which is super important in this context, is that you feel safe. You don’t treat coming to work like a game where you have to constantly worry about every step you take because of potential consequences. This applies to physical safety, if you work in a factory, but for most of us, it’s about psychological safety—knowing that what you say won’t come back to haunt you months later and cause you trouble.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: That’s fantastic, because if I understand correctly, you’ve defined "well-being" as a sense of health, sustainable growth, and safety.
Maciej Żylewicz: Exactly.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: So that’s what an employee needs to feel properly cared for. But what about from the perspective of a leader or an employer?
Maciej Żylewicz: That’s where things get a bit complicated. We can separate the leader from the employer, because often, on a superficial level, their goals might seem contradictory. Someone who prioritizes their health might work less, or someone focused on their well-being might set firmer boundaries at work. But that’s a very basic analysis. Unfortunately, I get the impression that from a leadership perspective, we often don’t move past that level. There’s a bit of a disconnect: if you’re a successful leader in today’s business world, having climbed the ladder from expert to manager, you’ve made sacrifices along the way. Those sacrifices likely cost you in terms of family relationships or health. So, when people tell you, "You know, let’s take care of our employees' well-being," you might think, "Well, I already went through my own path."
Even if you don’t say it out loud, you often think it, living with the assumption that your world should be like your employees' world. But it isn’t, and I think that’s where most of the challenges in understanding well-being arise. Because leaders chose to invest heavily in their careers, they often sacrificed something. I’m still looking for leaders who can say, after years of success, with a clear conscience and complete peace of mind, that they didn’t sacrifice anything.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Exactly, because the word "sacrifice" resonates very strongly here. It’s a form of investment that involves a loss. Is it true that to be a fulfilled person, to be a leader, you always have to leave a part of yourself behind?
Maciej Żylewicz: I have a feeling that it is. I don't know of any businesses today that allow you to climb that vertical ladder without giving up more of those areas that are closely tied to your health.
Whether it's purely physical health, sleep quality, what's going on in your head, or how quickly you clear your mental cache in the evening of all the thoughts spinning around. But also, of course, family relationships or friendships, and your relationship with time—how often you say "I don't have time" and how frequently that appears in your vocabulary.
So, if you make those sacrifices as a leader, you automatically start looking at the whole world from that perspective, thinking, "Well, if I could do it, why can't others?" And that, to me, is the biggest trap in talking about wellbeing in organizations.
Dr. hab. Andrzej Silczuk: Exactly. Now I wanted to ask you from an organizational perspective. What does wellbeing mean for an organization? What does focusing on wellbeing actually entail for a company?
Maciej Żylewicz: It should be exactly what it is for the employee, just interpreted through action. We want our people to be healthy, both in body and mind, because then they simply work well and don't have extra problems weighing on their minds.
We want them to feel safe, because then they don't hold back their ideas; they just speak up. Even if some of them don't make much sense, one of them might turn out to be the next breakthrough.
Dr. hab. Andrzej Silczuk: Without fear of judgment.
Maciej Żylewicz: Without fear of judgment—or actually, judgment might be okay, but not judgment that leads to problems within the organization.
For example, if someone sees that something isn't working in the organization, they want the space to say, "Hey, listen, this solution isn't working," without being met with feedback like, "You're always complaining," or "You probably shouldn't say that, someone might get offended." So we have these two aspects: health and safety. And then we have what should be most important from a company's perspective: sustainable development, or "sustainability," meaning our people don't burn out in the organization.
And you know, we could just throw millions of data points at this, because there is, for example, a study that came out in April of this year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which calculated that in non-managerial positions, burnout costs about 4,000 dollars per employee who goes through it. But I have the impression that we also have an obsession in business, when we try to convince our managers and leaders in organizations, with talking about return on investment.
When it comes to well-being, I get the feeling it’s not as simple or straightforward as just presenting some numbers and having everyone say, "Okay, fair enough, let's do it."
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Even though the costs have been calculated. The cost of a single employee lacking well-being.
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: We have such studies in Poland. We know that the core group of people experiencing professional burnout falls within the 35 to 44 age range.
So, essentially the backbone of the modern workforce, or people who will be there in a moment and are at risk of burnout. However, my experience working with organizations, much like yours, is that I most often notice that pro-well-being initiatives in Polish companies are more reactive than proactive.
Meaning they usually happen as a result of specific events. What is your take on this?
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes, I agree.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: You agree with me.
Maciej Żylewicz: Well, to get into the details and build on what you said about that group—it’s very interesting because we might think other groups should be the focus of our well-being efforts, like Gen Z, who talk about it a lot and want it, or perhaps people nearing retirement age. But in reality, it’s that 35-plus group that should be our main focus, because these are people who are starting to face more and more life challenges. Family, children, mortgages, aging parents who sometimes need care—it really is a very, very difficult space. But, coming back to your point about reactivity, I completely agree. And that reactivity stems mainly from the fact that business today likes to act like a firefighter with an extinguisher, testing how far we can go without making certain investments. Because that kind of thinking is very short-term.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: What does that stem from?
Maciej Żylewicz: It stems partly from the short-term nature of business; if you are constantly in a rhythm of meeting quarterly or monthly goals—whether you're in sales, marketing, or reporting to investors—we tend to think about these initiatives in the same way, saying, "Okay, since we managed to close this quarter without any major crisis, let's see what happens in the next one. Maybe we'll act then."
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Maybe it worked again.
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes, this is absolutely not a grievance against business, because business simply lives in the rhythm of meeting its goals, and wellbeing very often falls into this category as well.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: Can't you set an objective OKR for that?
Maciej Żylewicz: You can, because we can talk about those numbers. But I always have a huge doubt whether, even if we set specific actions within some OKR goals, the question is: "Once we deliver them, will anything actually change?" For example, I know an organization that created an absolutely textbook wellbeing strategy and implemented everything, but it had no adoption at all—it didn't gain any traction—because the people in that organization had such deeply anti-wellbeing work habits that it was just a reactive band-aid on a wound.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: So it stemmed from the organizational culture, despite the implementation of those solutions. And what solutions can be implemented in a company as a model?
Maciej Żylewicz: The first and most important thing—the one you have to start with, and without which you shouldn't even leave the house—is looking at what is happening with our leadership. If our leaders, starting from the very top, have a disagreement or a silent "Okay, let's just do it" attitude, then those wellbeing programs have no chance of working.
So, the level of education and work with top leadership is key. This is probably the hardest task HR has. That’s because it very often requires a shift in thinking about the path they themselves have taken. They sacrificed a lot of things and very often were not wellbeing-oriented. Of course, everyone has those percentages set differently, but there were a lot of sacrifices.
So, if there isn't a shift in thinking among these people toward wanting our people to be healthy and wanting their trajectory in the organization to be either at the same level or even rising, then there is really no point in introducing other measures. If you start from the top and work through many topics with managers, then you start moving into the tools and avoid things that have already gained many negative associations today—all those wellbeing stunts that are mocked on the internet—and instead move toward deep, genuine actions.
A one-day stress management training session will not change your employees' stress levels. It might be the beginning of a journey for them, but we must present wellbeing as something all-encompassing, something you have access to every day in a way that you choose for yourself.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: Because I was just thinking—a catchy topic immediately popped into my head—you won't solve this with a single webinar that you can watch every now and then. It really resonates strongly with the part of the question I had for you earlier, about this reactivity. That something happens which throws the organization out of its previously harmonious functioning, it becomes a major event, and it sort of forces action to be taken. However, based on what I heard from you, if you don't start from the very top—that is, from building a mindset among the highest leadership—then perhaps that will be the only event. Why are we so prone to taking such actions and focusing on single-event solutions?
Maciej Żylewicz: You know, we’re human, we love celebrations. If we’re going to celebrate something, we do it once a year. If we’re going to, I don’t know, nurture our relationship, we do it on our anniversary. If we’re going to honor those who have passed, we do it on All Saints' Day. We love these festivals that give us something to take photos of and post on LinkedIn. I don’t want to sound cynical, but it’s much harder to do things quietly and consistently than it is to put on these festivals—you know, these wellbeing events.
In fact, when I work on strategies, I strongly recommend that, first of all, we stop using the word "wellbeing." We should be more like a submarine that doesn't surface at all.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: What word should we use instead?
Maciej Żylewicz: Health.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: OK.
Maciej Żylewicz: Caring for others. Simplify the vocabulary and get back to the absolute basics.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: De-psychologize it?
Maciej Żylewicz: De-psychologize it, too. Look, if you go into a factory and say, "We’re going to give you some wellbeing now," you’ll most likely be met with laughter. But if you say, "Listen, we want you to have better working conditions. We want you to leave work more relaxed, with less physical strain. We want to reduce the risk of injuries," then you’re speaking the language of the people who actually benefit from these solutions. But that often doesn't happen, because then you have to admit there’s a problem you’re trying to solve.
If you say, "We’re giving you wellbeing," it’s so vague that you don’t have to acknowledge that a problem existed in the first place. And so it just goes round and round. We often have this magical thinking in organizations that if a manager has driven their team to high levels of stress, they can all just go to a stress management workshop together, and after one day, everything will suddenly disappear. But we love that kind of magical thinking because it’s more pleasant, easier, and more exciting.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Aren't we also trapped in a vision of our own knowledge, where our intuition always tells us the best solution, only for it to turn out later that it didn't actually work?
Maciej Żylewicz: Mhm. So, what’s the deal with intentions, paving, and hell?
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: I'm listening.
Maciej Żylewicz: Well, you know the saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And it’s a bit like that. Again, I often see initiatives in organizations that truly come from the heart, from a place of high empathy. After all, these solutions are usually introduced by HR departments, where you have people with a high level of emotional intelligence, people with psychology backgrounds.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: People-focused.
Maciej Żylewicz: People-focused, and they do a lot of things that stem from a pure, human need.
At the same time, these actions can have the exact opposite effect. For example, there’s a lot of talk about how if you start running one-off, hour-long resilience training sessions, the result can be counterproductive because people start wondering: why is this even happening? Is the company preparing for something?
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Where did it come from, right?
Maciej Żylewicz: Where it came from.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Are we in for any trouble?
Maciej Żylewicz: Are we in for any trouble? That’s why, if you integrate wellbeing into the absolute fabric of everyday life—where it’s just there, and we know it’s there—and I know a few organizations like that, then we don’t need to slap labels on everything, hold grand celebrations, or host "wellbeing weeks." Instead, we are well-equipped with great tools that support us, whether for prevention or intervention. We have managers who are excellently prepared, and most importantly, we have leadership teams that understand this isn't just a whim.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: That they are aware.
Maciej Żylewicz: That they are aware. I get the impression that we are in a slightly worse place for wellbeing than we were a few years ago.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: We’ll come back to that in a moment, because as I understand it, wellbeing—which we don’t want to call wellbeing—should become a quiet companion in the background of an organization, woven into its DNA. Because then I know it’s so deeply rooted in the organizational culture that you don’t need to talk about it; you just live it without having to label it. That’s what I took from your point. I have a tough question for you.
Maciej Żylewicz: Thank you.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: What should we not start with, then? Let’s say I’m an organization that is gaining awareness. We are in a leadership position where we’ve recognized the need. We’ve always been focused on our employees, but until now, we didn’t know how to go about it. We’d like to start. What should we avoid doing at the beginning?
Maciej Żylewicz: Don’t start by over-communicating slogans. It’s often said that communication is crucial for any strategy. However, in this case, I feel that the quieter these actions are, the better it is for the project as a whole. Why? Because if you announce, "We’re going to start focusing on wellbeing," you immediately get pushback from people who ask, "Why haven’t you been doing this before?" or "Okay, but do you really think this will do anything for me?"
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: I have another question: "When?". We already have so many responsibilities.
Maciej Żylewicz: And that’s another thing, right? We start getting caught in a vicious cycle where they say, "We have too many responsibilities to attend these things." Then, the first-quarter data goes to the board, and they say, "Look, the engagement rate for these initiatives is only 3%... So, the project is over." That’s the first issue. It’s a communication problem.
The second thing is moving away from this obsession with calculating how every single action translates into a dollar. Because in the area of well-being, there are many actions that we simply cannot quantify. I don’t want this to sound too grim, but how do you calculate it when, even without knowing it happened, these actions might have saved someone’s life?
How do you calculate the ripple effect that would have spread through the organization among close colleagues and beyond if that hadn't happened? How do you calculate, to put it bluntly, the drops in productivity, not to mention the human emotions and the burnout we’re getting closer to if these things happen? So, let’s move away from this obsession with reporting well-being metrics every single week.
Let’s start looking at this from a longer-term perspective. It’s a bit like, I don’t know, wanting to lose a few kilos and stepping on the scale every half hour, saying, "Oh, success! I’m down 100 grams."
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: Don’t drink any water then, right?
Maciej Żylewicz: Exactly, you immediately start gaming the system. You also see how to manipulate the results—I won’t drink water now, big success, because the number went down a bit. So, let’s move away from that. It goes against the intuition of organizations that love to measure everything and want to be "data-driven." But I encourage measuring things very thoughtfully. Measure slowly, and definitely don’t measure in short intervals.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: So, I understand that an organization, knowing itself best, can adapt scalable tools to its own needs? That it’s an individualized process?
Maciej Żylewicz: If it knows itself.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: If it knows itself. And if it doesn’t, what should it do?
Maciej Żylewicz: If it doesn’t, it needs to first ask the people who will be the primary beneficiaries. Look at the trap here. If you design well-being initiatives at the HR level—which is much more aware of how humans function due to their psychological expertise—and you design it for the decision-makers who will ultimately pay for it, it often turns out that you’ve created a project that isn't actually for 90% of the organization.
The first thing that needs to happen is a solid understanding of what people actually need. As in the examples mentioned earlier, if you determine that people need more support in the area of physical health, great, let’s do something there. If stress levels are stemming from management culture, let’s not even call it wellbeing; let’s focus on examining what’s actually happening within that management culture and how people are being led.
If there are specific points in the organization that are generating a lot of tension, maybe we should take a closer look at those. There is no single universal solution. And there is no single universal blueprint that we can just apply and say, "Here you go."
PhD, DSc. Andrzej Silczuk: In a way, you’ve added another component to how to do this—or, by not doing it, how to do it wrong. If we introduce wellbeing as a secret participant in our organizational culture and we do it right, we must simultaneously monitor how our employee population is changing. How they are functioning with it, how they feel about it, and how they react to different things—meaning the implementation of this project is subject to constant iteration and observation.
Maciej Żylewicz: We take a very agile approach to this.
PhD, DSc. Andrzej Silczuk: I think that’s a good approach. It shows that we are familiar with these methods from implementing other processes in our organizations.
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes. To do that, you obviously need the right tools—you need the ability to check the pulse. If your organization only does a "How are you?" survey once a year, what you do in December 2025 tells you absolutely nothing about what happened in January 2025.
So, if you have the ability to measure this—and it can be done in a very intelligent, non-intrusive way, even on a bi-weekly basis…
PhD, DSc. Andrzej Silczuk: Pulse checks, you mean?
Maciej Żylewicz: Pulse checks like these give you a bit more insight and a clearer picture. The thing is, we often feel like we don't have the time or we're too busy to have real, deep conversations about how you're actually doing in the organization. How are you feeling? What's going on?
What do they require? Trust, obviously, because wellbeing data is essentially medical or quasi-medical. Without that trust, it’s just too intimate. The paradox here is that the organizations that need wellbeing initiatives the least are the ones that will benefit from them the most, because they provide the most fertile ground for things to happen. Organizations that need these initiatives the most will see the highest rate of failed projects.
Andrzej Silczuk, PhD, DSc: Why is that?
Maciej Żylewicz: Because if you’re sowing seeds in completely barren soil, where there are no conditions for anything to grow, nothing will come of it.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: I have a hypothesis. Wellbeing initiatives fall into a fairly broad margin of interpretation as psychological interventions. Psychology can trigger anxiety, partly because it’s meant to raise awareness, and awareness can be the primary catalyst for change. In organizations, we might fear that these changes won't go the way we want, and we are all, in some way, goal-oriented. So the question is, won't introducing these solutions eventually be interpreted as a threat?
Maciej Żylewicz: It will, because it might get in the way of business as it was understood in the 80s and 90s. I’ve heard it many times: "Okay, fine. Go ahead and survey us, just don't dig too deep."
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: Because we want the numbers.
Maciej Żylewicz: Because we want the numbers, but not so much that you start touching on topics that might be problematic.
Because if we tell our people that there are high levels of stress in our organization, then we’ve lost. It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. Pretending that people don't know what's going on. But again, we’re talking about magical thinking here. In magical thinking, very often, when you name something, it becomes real.
So, as long as we don't name the fact that, for example, we have a poor management culture or an environment that generates high levels of stress, then there’s no problem—we just sweep it under the rug.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: Right, but that’s happening underneath the surface.
Maciej Żylewicz: It’s a bit like that old-school mentality where people say, "I don't go to the doctor, because you know, if you go, they’ll always find something, and then you’ll have to get treated."
And it’s similar in organizations. We avoid touching the core of wellbeing. We stick to band-aid solutions. We don't let the people who truly understand this and can give us a blueprint get too deep, because if they do, it might turn out we aren't as great as we thought. People might fall apart, stop working, and we’ll have to shut the company down.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: Incredible, isn't it? We’re afraid of these things. You’ve redefined wellbeing again, as I heard that this wellbeing diagnosis is focused on prevention. The fact that you find out—that someone tells you, "Hey, listen, people are stressed"—doesn't change the situation. They didn't become stressed because of that; it was just finally noticed. However, your organization might avoid the massive turnover looming in the next six months.
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes. The question is, is everyone in business able to draw a straight line from one event to another? Because I feel that this cadence-based thinking in business often avoids connecting the dots that are several quarters apart. It requires a great deal of awareness and maturity.
I know businesses like that. Maybe not many, but I know some that can see a dot in some month of 2025 and say, "Okay, let's start doing something about this," because we’re back to prevention versus reactivity—because in 2027, it’s going to cost us. It’s human nature to feel that 2027 is so far away that you don't want to do anything about it yet, because you still have 2026 to get through. And that’s why these actions are so often just band-aids.
Dr. Andrzej Silczuk: We introduced wellbeing in our organization. Let’s say it’s not even working in the shadows. We did it "old school." We told everyone, "We have what you asked for because we managed to identify what the employees need."
We introduced great solutions. We try to ensure they are comprehensive, but it turns out that employee engagement metrics are minimal. It’s disappointing because we were counting on at least half of them using it, but only a few percent do. Is that bad from your perspective?
Maciej Żylewicz: It’s not bad, because when you implement these actions—building this entire wellbeing ecosystem, securing people by strengthening the culture and giving them access to tools that help them take care of their physical and mental health—the fact that they don't use them directly is often a sign that their sense of security is already high. We shouldn't look for false correlations here. You have to approach this data very carefully.
I often see that wellbeing data is a bit like reading tea leaves—you lay out five cards and say, "Okay, what story does this tell about us?" And actually, several stories could fit at once. So, I encourage everyone to keep it a "data-driven experience," but make sure the data isn't just telling us the story we want to hear, rather than the one that is actually happening.
What’s more, let’s not compare wellbeing data to other parts of our business. Or to other organizations. Well, maybe other organizations too, although here, working with good experts, benchmarks can be helpful. Because if you’re in the financial sector and it turns out your metrics are the lowest among all banks, and you start connecting that to, for example, staff turnover, you have a bit of an answer as to what happened.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: You might have an organization where, for example, the structure has a much higher representation of manual workers than office staff, and their time—even just for accessing digital solutions—might be limited. I understand that you need to reach them too and offer solutions that are appropriate for their needs and time constraints.
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes, what you’re saying—let’s break this down into two levels. First, the channels. It’s not like we’ll create a channel and people will just come to it—a wellbeing channel where we’ll communicate and do things, and people will show up. No. We have to take wellbeing to the channels where people already are.
So if, for example, the break room in a factory is the place where people spend the most time not directly burdened by work, that’s where we should be with our activities, not on a Teams channel that, say, the office staff would use. That is, in my opinion, a very, very significant difference in approach.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: We are individualizing again, for our own organization.
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes, we are individualizing very strongly and telling the story of what worked, rather than presenting a catalog of solutions.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: You’ve actually just provided the method that should be used for implementation, which is communication.
Maciej Żylewicz: Communication. And here, success stories really help. Organizational stories in general are also very helpful because we need to build a sense of trust that these are genuine actions, coming from good intentions. And that these are not actions that are also monitoring what is happening with people.
This is a common experience for many organizations using various wellbeing platforms and similar tools. So, how do we alleviate the anxiety that the employer is monitoring the state of my health?
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: I work in HR. Here’s the case: We introduced these solutions last year, but leadership isn't impressed. Engagement statistics are poor. We try to explain that "It's OK, we provided access, we provided opportunities." But the specter of it being interpreted as a failure—an implementation failure—is looming. Is this a signal to withdraw from this strategy? Is it a signal to stop?
Maciej Żylewicz: That’s a good question. My first response is to take a step back and ask ourselves if we sold the story of what we’re doing to leadership effectively. Stakeholder management is absolutely key here, just as it is in any transformation. Now, should we shut it down or not? There’s no single right answer. Sometimes closing it, resetting, and drawing conclusions—not in the sense of "we failed," but by conducting a full retrospective, looking at where we fell short, and so on—is the way to go. And then even telling people, "Listen, we’re coming back to you with a new approach." Just like shops often put up a sign during renovations.
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: "We’ve listened to you."
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes, "we’ve listened to you." And admitting that, again, is a huge element of psychological safety. My organization is capable of saying that something didn't work out and drawing conclusions from it, because we, as people, had an influence on it. So sometimes that’s a very good solution. But sometimes you need to continue and push forward, because perhaps a small course correction or changing a few parameters will yield better results.
All of this requires a very objective analysis of what happened, how it happened, and conducting a full retrospective. And not allowing narratives to form that are sometimes easy to fall back on, like "It didn't work because we were busy with other transformations." And that’s why it didn't work this time.
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: Maciej, I have a question for you. Looking at the typical employee, they are given access to various support tools, including psychological support. What might cause an employee to feel uncomfortable and not want to use these services?
Maciej Żylewicz: They won't see the value, they won't have trust, and they won't have the time. A lack of perceived value is very often due to not communicating why we are actually doing this and what it will give us. Leaving things at a very abstract level, especially in areas like psychology. The second thing is not having the time—meaning, on one hand, we introduce a solution, but then you’re constantly fighting with managers to carve out time to use it.
I’ve run many workshops, both online and in person, and I see how people struggle to get away for them. Besides, managers very often say, "Sure, okay, we’ll buy this workshop," and then, during the workshop, they try to actively pull people out because there’s a client waiting.
And what does that do? It shows: "You know what? Business comes first. Far, far, far away... and then there’s wellbeing." And that’s the problem. And the third thing, which we’ve already talked about a lot, is trust. A lack of trust. Again, you have to take a few steps back and ask why there is no trust in the organization. Why do we, even when outsourcing these activities to external partners who hold our data and so on, still have the fear that my employer, for example, knows that I spoke to a psychologist—ergo, something is wrong in my life, something needs a course correction? There are also a lot of myths. We are still, Andrzej, in a culture—it’s getting better, but that might just be the perspective of big cities—where a visit to a psychologist, and heaven forbid a visit to a psychiatrist, is something very stigmatizing.
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: I started thinking that the webinar title itself might be stigmatizing. I remember an experience where an organization announced a meeting on the prevention of psychoactive substance use, and it caused some discomfort: if I attend as an employee, does that mean I have a problem? Or that someone close to me does? Why else would I be interested?
Maciej Żylewicz: But that is exactly the game we were talking about—if you are constantly thinking, "Will my actions be misinterpreted?", that is a lack of psychological safety. I completely agree, and I have seen cases where a poorly titled webinar meant people didn't want to be seen attending it.
Dr hab. Andrzej Silczuk: How do you do it right?
Maciej Żylewicz: How do you do it right? Again, before you title a webinar, you should set some expectations with your people about how to use these resources. Explain why they exist, but also normalize things. Move away from jargon that no one understands. My favorite buzzword is "resilience." Sure, it’s trendy, but what does it actually mean? To the average employee, it sounds like a medical diagnosis. Why would they sign up for that? If you frame it in more human terms and title it closer to the work they actually do, I think you’ll get more sign-ups and less anxiety about attending.
Dr hab. Andrzej Silczuk: So, what? Something more like "How to handle change?" or "How to bounce back from a crisis?"
Maciej Żylewicz: I would go even further toward being specific—actually naming the change. I wouldn't even frame it as a question, because you see, webinars often have questions in the title. We should be making statements or presenting a thesis, like "Handling [specific change] better." These are micro-details, and people are very sensitive to wording. But we have to think about how things might be interpreted.
Dr hab. Andrzej Silczuk: So we always need to consider the recipient profile—the employee—who might be interested, but could also get scared off and avoid participating. I understand that by clarifying what the meeting is about and anchoring it to specific events, we also prevent the fear that if we start talking about "change," we are signaling major organizational shifts and preparing the workforce for the worst. Because that little hamster in the back of their mind starts running on the wheel, worrying that something big is about to go down.
Maciej Żylewicz: I had a case just yesterday where I was talking to a team manager who said, "Let's prepare our people because there's going to be an acquisition. There will be a change in management, and someone else will be stepping into the shoes of the current manager. Let's do this as part of a training session on how to prepare for change."
I said, "Okay, but you're sending a signal that basically says: put up all the barricades, lock the doors, cover the windows, and wait for the wave to hit." That one sentence is enough to trigger a defensive reaction, and that’s really not what we want. You said something very important: wellbeing initiatives should be designed with the end-user at the absolute center. In approaches like design thinking, when we start a conversation with the primary beneficiary of a solution, we don't think about "What?" first, but rather "Why?" and then "How?".
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: You are a business consultant who supports HR departments. You are in a company that approaches you and says, "Maciej, I want to do something about wellbeing." What are the first questions you ask them?
Maciej Żylewicz: What is that first question?
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: How do you identify those needs?
Maciej Żylewicz: The first question is: who among your employees can I talk to?
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: So you conduct qualitative research?
Maciej Żylewicz: Qualitative, yes. I know it’s not the best time for qualitative research because we are trying to cut costs on it. But for me, qualitative research, even if it lacks scale, will always be much more informative than just selling a narrative that comes from the more centralized parts of the organization.
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: So, you want to talk to an employee?
Maciej Żylewicz: I want to talk to an employee.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: So you need to immerse yourself in the role of an employee in this organization before you move on to the demo version.
Maciej Żylewicz: Exactly. And again, you mentioned "doing something about wellbeing"—I know you're joking a bit, but that already sets off some alarm bells for me. Because usually, after a conversation like that, the suggestion comes up: "So, what? Should we do a webinar on stress management?" And that’s where the initiatives end.
If we want to approach this seriously, we should invest some time in a discovery phase. What is actually going on before we move to the tool design phase? Wellbeing shouldn't be about shopping for tools—it’s not a catalog where you say, "I'll take this, I'll take that, and I'll take that." Instead, you should be thinking about where your needs are actually coming from.
Of course, there are things that should always be in an organization, such as psychological support and access to psychologists. Those are essentials; there isn't an organization where that wouldn't be useful. That should be there. But many things are highly variable and depend on what the organization needs at a given moment.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: It might have specific needs at a given moment, which doesn't mean that new ones won't appear in six months. So, I understand we are looking for more holistic, wide-angle solutions. Do you remember any implementation that "didn't go well"? Perhaps the first one you experienced yourself? Where wellbeing solutions were implemented in an organization, but it went very, very wrong. What would you do differently? What would you propose as a better solution today, with your current knowledge?
Maciej Żylewicz: First of all, I would say that failed implementations are often the best data we have for how to do things better next time. The first thing I would definitely do, even thinking about one very specific case, is not allow for a quiet "Yes" from the management level. I would work much harder on how those people understand wellbeing and whether they are 100% on board with us. Because if they just watch from the sidelines—as with any transformation—if leadership watches from the sidelines, even without expressing disagreement, 9 out of 10 such transformations fail.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: So, does the principle of "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do something" apply here?
Maciej Żylewicz: Unfortunately not, because you could do more harm than good. And again, it comes down to perspective: do we really want to help people, or do we just have specific targets to meet? Remember that wellbeing initiatives are theoretically part of ESG. Organizations very often have to report on ESG, so if your documents show that "Okay, we did this, that, and the other," you immediately get points for ESG. It’s not like good intentions are enough to fix everything. In fact, doing something just for the sake of it can open a Pandora's box. I always suggest that such actions should be preceded by a longer conversation with the staff: "What do you want?" "What do you need?" We are afraid of that question because what if they say, "We want less work?"
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: That would be beautiful. Now the question is, can we afford it?
Maciej Żylewicz: Well, that is a serious, serious challenge. No, I wouldn't do things just because, for example, it's International Wellbeing Day or World Mental Health Day.
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: So, no one-off events?
Maciej Żylewicz: No, I would talk to smart people who can tell me what to avoid and so on. These things aren't always intuitive.
Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: From my professional perspective, when I hear the answer to the question "What do you need?" being "I'd like to have less work," I would have a series of follow-up questions. I want to dig deeper, because the answers might reveal what can actually be done, and it might turn out to be a "low-hanging fruit"—a minor reorganization that brings a significant improvement to the functioning of a large group of people.
Maciej Żylewicz: Tools, specific changes, processes—there are many things involved. A lot of wellbeing isn't just about psychology; sometimes it's about space management, architecture, or IT solutions. So, it's not like we are limited here only to the actions of a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: You mentioned the great value of "celebrating failures"—finding joy in them through the opportunity to gain knowledge, learn, and draw conclusions. But every once in a while, we want to have a small celebration of success. Let's assume a wellbeing solution has been thoughtfully implemented across the entire organization and its structure. Can we brag about it?
Maciej Żylewicz: We can brag about it. We can, and the best way is to give the microphone to the people and ask, "Do you want to share this?" If they want to share it, I think that's the best gift we can give ourselves as people implementing wellbeing. As we know, we are entering the territory of highly confidential data, so forcing these stories out makes no sense, but let's give people the microphone.
It’s interesting that cross-organizational and cross-level initiatives should be included here, because it is crucial—especially in the early stages—for managers to be the ones sharing these topics. Modeling this behavior at the level of my direct manager is key.
There is a lot of research showing that if my direct manager isn't wellbeing-oriented, comes to work tired, has a negative mindset, or has poor relationships with their loved ones, it will be very difficult for me to be wellbeing-oriented in my own work. So, if we can find those inspiring stories and show that it is possible to work in this organization—perhaps a lot, but without the sacrifices that destroy our wellbeing—that can be much more inspiring than anything else we do.
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: Does this communication carry any risks, such as "wellbeing washing"?
Maciej Żylewicz: It can, but we return to what has actually been achieved. If my success report is just that a certain number of people showed up to a webinar, or taking photos in the office to show off... These are nice activities, and I don't want to demotivate anyone. However, the question arises: "So what? What has actually changed?"
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: Whose success is it?
Maciej Żylewicz: Whose success is it? We know whose success it is, because success always has many fathers, but I feel we need to seriously consider how to avoid the moment when people say, "You only did this to brag about it on the market, to use it for employer branding," and so on.
Assoc. Prof. Andrzej Silczuk: So, are we consistent? We are. We make sure not to communicate isolated incidents, but rather to build a genuine commitment to well-being that functions—even in the background—as part of the organization's permanent DNA. Can this translate into a person's daily life outside of work?
Maciej Żylewicz: Absolutely. Today, work affects our well-being much more than anything we do outside of it. Of course, there are professions where people can leave their work at the office, clear their heads, and move on. They face different types of pressure, but for most of us, work rarely ends the moment we figuratively "log off" or walk out of the office. So, we do this primarily to ensure there isn't such a drastic divide between our work cycle and our life after work.
There is a lot of common wisdom in the idea that if you catch people in an organization saying, "Oh man, thank goodness it's Friday" or "It's Monday and I'm already living for the weekend," that is the biggest sign that something is wrong. If you're thinking about the weekend on a Monday, it means things aren't set up correctly here.
Dr. hab. Andrzej Silczuk: So, I understand that we are aiming for a state where, with a healthy perspective, people simply enjoy the fact that it's a normal workday, after which they also have good things to look forward to?
Maciej Żylewicz: Yes, so they don't end the day in such a state of exhaustion that they can't do anything afterward. And you know, going back to managers—I lead various types of management meetings, and sometimes I'm struck by the realization that you're sitting with people who have achieved a great deal externally, but when they start to open up in a trusted circle, it often turns out that they go home and have absolutely no energy left for anything.
They do the bare minimum, and then at 9:00 PM, they wonder, "What am I supposed to do with myself now? Turn on the TV or not? Sit and read or not?" Very often, they just don't know what to do with that time. I don't think any of us want that.
Dr. hab. Andrzej Silczuk: Maciej, could you suggest three things that you think help us better manage our energy?
Maciej Żylewicz: Well, certainly some form of physical activity. There’s no magic trick here. We can't talk about well-being as if it only happens in our heads. If you don't have your routines set up properly—and we're not talking about running marathons, just that some form of activity is necessary—it generates energy and helps us function better.
The second thing I would suggest is finding and understanding your own rhythm of operation. We don't all function the same way, and since the pandemic, we approach our calendars differently, which is something employers should understand too. Sometimes a person will have much higher energy if they start work at 11:00 AM and work later, rather than forcing other people's energy patterns onto them.
And that’s the second thing. The third thing is to have regular rituals for managing your relationship with work, which means the ability to set certain boundaries. There is a lot of talk about how resilience, and consequently our energy levels, depends to a large extent on how well we set those boundaries. It’s something we often struggle to do.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: If I understand correctly, these are traits and competencies that can also be acquired through properly implemented wellbeing procedures within an organization as an employee. Maciek, thank you very much. This was an incredibly nourishing conversation.
Maciej Żylewicz: Thank you.
PhD, DSc Andrzej Silczuk: This was the "Well Said" program. My name is Andrzej Silczuk, and our guest was Maciej Żylewicz, a business coach and HR support specialist.
Maciej Żylewicz: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks.
