Well-being masterclass: How to avoid the pitfalls of company “carewashing”
- Genuine corporate caregiving has become a critical component of effective leadership.
- If caregiving is not authentic, it can easily become “carewashing.”
- Two case studies — involving RSM International and Hilton — illustrate how caregiving is done right.
More than ever, genuine caregiving has become a critical component of effective leadership. Fostering a culture of trust and loyalty among employees is the hallmark of a strong retention and belonging strategy. However, if it’s not authentic, it can easily become “carewashing,” a term describing superficial or insincere displays of concern meant to manipulate public perception rather than effect real change.
Understanding the difference between these two practices is essential for leaders who aim to create meaningful and lasting impacts within their organizations. Two of the world’s leading companies provide examples of authentic caregiving.
RSM International is the fifth largest public accounting firm in the United States by revenue, behind only the Big Four firms (Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG, in that order). In just under three years, the company grew by a staggering 41 percent. Needless to say, this level of growth is amazing for the company and their stakeholders. It can also have an impact on employee well-being.
RSM has always been committed to sustaining a positive culture based on their Five Cs model of caring. These five pillars they aim for are to be caring, curious, collaborative, courageous, and critical thinkers. But in a time of global uncertainty and significant growth, they were concerned that burnout could put their culture of caring at risk. To mitigate the potential impact, RSM Canada enrolled my team in a pilot project to measure employee well-being and burnout. One of the main discoveries was that specific processes had increased workload and subsequent burnout.
Their leadership team took the learning and made it a priority to be easier to do business with. Joanna Matsoukas, senior director of human resources at RSM Canada, told me that some processes were easy to change, like the tax team automating filing processes or the audit team adopting digital tools to make capturing data for a file easier. She admitted that other processes have not been so easy to change, but they’re still working on solutions.
Our research findings were later shared with their Total Rewards leader, who was able to garner more investment in well-being tools. This included building out their well-being platform, which aims to encourage community and health—physical, mental, and financial—and connects RSM employees across the enterprise. They’ve now built up a small team to better support well-being as a commitment to their investment.
RSM’s focus on courageous conversations helped them land on an enhanced hybrid model that does not mandate particular days in office, but Matsoukas says it “lets each individual or team choose based on four factors: team and firm needs, personal needs, client needs and performance, and development needs.”
Measuring, planning, and tweaking processes has proven to be the right approach. The company made the 2024 Best Workplaces in Canada list, which is based on employee feedback, weighted according to “their relevance in describing the most important aspects of an equitable workplace.”
Matsoukas told me that the employee feedback related to safety and inclusiveness helped them get named to the list. “This is important to us, as the culture we are building and foster very carefully is one where we all feel safe to be our most authentic selves and to ask for help from each other when we need it. It is one of our Five Cs—caring—and it is a critical part of our talent experience.”
In my strategy work, I see companies fail at carrying out their DEI plans far too often. Organizations don’t fully invest in the process piece—the planning and preparing—which is fundamental to a successful belonging strategy. Without it, good intentions fail and lead to carewashing—essentially checking the DEI and well-being boxes rather than making the systemic changes required for positive, long-lasting change.
The hotel brand Hilton is also making every effort to avoid just checking boxes when it comes to enhancing belonging and improving well-being. Laura Fuentes, Hilton’s executive vice president and chief human resources officer, believes we’re in a crisis of caregiving. Fuentes told me that increasing polarization is a result of people suffering from loneliness, challenges around mental wellness, a financial crisis, and a social justice crisis.
Hilton’s leadership team had been championing inclusion and mental wellness support for years, but during the Covid crisis, Fuentes felt it was time to prioritize well-being and “level up our courage, our vulnerability, because we were all experiencing something very different and new for the first time.”
To better address those needs, Hilton launched a mental well-being platform that included resources to help de-stigmatize conversations related to the issues of mental health, bias, and stress. They encouraged senior executive leaders to be openly vulnerable, which Fuentes says is critical to giving people a sense of permission to share their stories too.
But the ultimate linchpin to a successful strategy is asking, “Can we measure impact, and do we have the right inventory of resources?” says Fuentes. Before initiating any programming, she and her team looked for what’s missing. “We’re constantly inventorying,” she says, “and looking for new ways to build a for-all culture, which helps our team members better support our guests.”
Fuentes continued, “We know that if we just launch the programs and our leaders don’t (a) create space to use the programs, (b) drive awareness, and (c) role model in these behaviors, then it’s all for nothing.”
The ultimate linchpin to a successful strategy is asking, “Can we measure impact, and do we have the right inventory of resources?”
To show their employees that their efforts are meaningful, Hilton has set its sights on creating a fully human experience at work for its nearly 500,000 team members around the world, using a data-driven approach to build its culture around a strategic framework of inclusion, wellness, growth, and purpose.
It’s a model that’s obviously working. In 2023, Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work named Hilton the number 1 World’s Best Workplace. Hilton was also ranked number one on Fair360’s 2021 Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, marking its appearance on the list for the seventh year in a row. They were named a top company on a record twelve specialty lists, including: Latino executives (number 2), Native American/Pacific Islander executives (number 3), executive diversity councils (number 5), people with disabilities (number 6), employee resource groups (number 8), veterans (number 10), and Asian American executives (number 12). The Human Rights Campaign scored the company a rating of 100 percent for the eighth year in a row.
As these two case studies show, it is essential to prepare for the outcomes and make sure you’re ready to deploy what you’ve learned. Gathering insights and then lacking transparency about how you’re going to move forward with the knowledge—or just shelving the information—are major flaws in a DEI strategy. Don’t bother asking if you’re not planning on answering.
Today, an increasingly polarized world has made it harder for all of us to feel like we belong. We need to slowly and incrementally work toward erasing the lines between all groups. As Fuentes says, “The need for a human connection, the need for mattering, the need for learning, that is what transcends times and crises.”
