Imagine taking your car to a car wash, expecting a thorough cleaning, only to discover that while the exterior has been superficially polished, the interior remains dirty. Just like a car wash that doesn't truly clean the car, carewashing is a corporate phenomenon that promises much but delivers little. The similarity is not coincidental: like a superficial car wash, carewashing is an attempt to make organizational reality look better without truly addressing deeper problems.
Article Contents:

What is Carewashing?
Carewashing occurs when there's a profound gap between companies' promotion of wellness initiatives and the reality of their employees' working conditions. It's a misleading form of marketing that falls under ESG-washing practices, where companies promote wellness initiatives without a genuine commitment to improving working conditions. Picture a company proudly advertising its new lunchtime meditation program while systematically ignoring employees' requests for more flexible working hours or a more sustainable workload. Carewashing manifestations can be subtle yet pervasive: from unused relaxation rooms because employees are too overworked, to wellness programs that ignore structural problems like the lack of work-life balance. These initiatives, though seemingly positive, can backfire when employees perceive the disconnect between corporate rhetoric and their daily experience.
Global Data on Carewashing
Carewashing is an increasingly relevant issue in today's workplace, and available data provides a telling snapshot of the current situation. In recent years, companies have invested more and more in employee wellbeing, with the corporate welfare market reaching approximately $69.92 billion, projected to grow to $95.78 billion by 2028. However, despite these financial efforts, workers' perception of companies' genuine commitment to their wellbeing has decreased.
A Gallup survey revealed that only 21% of employees strongly believe their company cares about their wellbeing, a significant drop from 49% recorded in 2020. This collapse in trust is emblematic of a broader phenomenon: 79% of workers report feeling neglected by their organizations. These statistics aren't just numbers; they represent growing disillusionment with corporate policies that promise wellbeing but often translate into superficial initiatives.
Moreover, 41% of employees report daily experiences of stress, suggesting that adopted measures aren't addressing workers' real needs and concerns. This stress not only affects employees' mental and physical health but can also have direct repercussions on productivity and profitability within the company.

The Roots of the Problem: Causes and Origins of Carewashing
In today's corporate landscape, carewashing shows surprising parallels with its better-known "cousin": greenwashing. Just as some companies use a veneer of environmental sustainability to mask eco-unfriendly practices, carewashing represents a similar attempt to "paint with wellness" corporate policies that fundamentally neglect employee health and happiness. Growing stakeholder pressure has created an environment where organizations feel they must demonstrate tangible commitment to wellbeing, just as with environmental sustainability. The result is often a proliferation of superficial initiatives - from corporate yoga to mindfulness sessions - that closely resemble those facade environmental certifications obtained without real changes in production processes. This top-down approach, where initiatives are imposed from above without deep analysis of real needs, produces the same skepticism that greenwashing generates in consumers: a profound distrust of any corporate initiative, even potentially valid ones. In both cases, organizations might gain short-term image benefits but are compromising their long-term credibility.
The Impact on Employees: A High Price to Pay
The consequences of carewashing on employees are profound and multifaceted. They go far beyond simple disappointment over unfulfilled promises and dig a deep divide between them and the company. When workers realize that wellness initiatives are more showcase than substance, a dangerous mechanism of disaffection is triggered. Like betrayal in a trust relationship, this discovery generates a deep sense of cynicism that contaminates every aspect of work life. Employees begin to view even potentially valuable initiatives through a lens of skepticism, creating a vicious cycle of distrust that's difficult to break. This discomfort manifests in different ways: some opt for emotional detachment, limiting themselves to doing the bare minimum, others seek escape through absenteeism, or in more serious cases, decide to leave the company. The frustration of seeing fundamental problems unresolved while resources are invested in superficial initiatives gradually erodes the organization's social fabric, undermining collaboration between colleagues and creating a work environment where wellbeing, ironically, becomes increasingly elusive.

How to Avoid Carewashing: Strategies for Real Corporate Wellbeing
Avoiding carewashing doesn't mean eliminating superficial wellness initiatives or stopping their promotion, but rather building a work environment that truly supports employees in the long term. This requires awareness: creating a healthy environment is a process that needs time, commitment, and determination. However, it's an investment that, over time, will benefit all stakeholders and significantly increase the company's profitability (revenue). To do this, it's necessary to adopt a structured approach based on three fundamental pillars: transparency, listening, and action.
1. Transparency: Sincerity as a Corporate Asset
Employee trust is a precious asset built through clear and consistent communication. Companies should share not only the successes of their wellness initiatives but also the challenges and difficulties they face in improving them. This doesn't mean generating anxiety among employees, but rather involving them in an open dialogue where critical areas are acknowledged and concrete steps taken to address them are illustrated.
A concrete example is human resource management: if a company struggles to guarantee greater work flexibility, instead of just launching a lunchtime yoga initiative, it should explain to employees what the obstacles are and how it intends to overcome them over time. This approach not only reduces skepticism but encourages active worker involvement in corporate solutions.
2. Listening: Collecting and Analyzing Data to Understand Real Problems
Companies wanting to avoid carewashing must go beyond annual wellness surveys, adopting tools that allow continuous listening and real-time data analysis. In this sense, platforms like Qomprendo represent a turning point. Through its instant feedback system, Qomprendo allows employees to report positive and negative aspects of their work experience in seconds, thus providing a constantly updated picture of their work situation.
Beyond simple monitoring, Qomprendo integrates artificial intelligence models like Lumia, a digital assistant for HR and managers that analyzes collected data and suggests concrete solutions, structured and especially tailored to individual situations, overcoming the concept of by-the-book solutions that often poorly adapt to specific cases. With this tool, companies can stop acting reactively and adopt a proactive approach, addressing problems before they translate into stress, dissatisfaction, or even resignations.
3. Action: Targeted, Structural, and Monitorable Interventions
The effectiveness of corporate wellbeing also passes through action at different levels: from more targeted and surgical ones to more structural and substantial ones, monitorable over time. Let's look at them together:
Targeted and Preventive Actions: Perceptia
The first step is prevention. Perceptia, Qomprendo's AI model, allows early identification of stress signals and resignation risk among employees. Thanks to predictive analysis, companies can intervene before problems become critical, adopting timely measures to improve the work climate and employee satisfaction.
Structural and Long-term Actions: Lumia & Initiatives
But prevention isn't enough. To build a healthy and sustainable work environment, solutions must be structured over time and, where necessary, improved. Once solutions are identified through Lumia's support, Initiatives come into play, the service through which companies can track and monitor the effectiveness of implemented policies, collecting objective data to verify which initiatives truly have a positive impact. This allows not only replicating effective strategies but also eliminating those that don't produce results, avoiding waste of resources and ensuring a data-driven approach, definitively overcoming superficiality in implementing corporate wellness initiatives.
Conclusion
Overcoming carewashing isn't just a matter of corporate ethics but also of long-term effectiveness and sustainability. Employees who perceive authenticity and real attention from their company are more motivated, productive, and loyal. Tools like Qomprendo offer organizations the opportunity to transform corporate wellbeing from a simple marketing strategy to a concrete and measurable reality, with a positive impact on both workers and overall company performance. And if wellness initiatives are authentic and structured, it's more than legitimate to promote and communicate them to attract and retain talent - in fact, this is exactly how you build a solid and credible corporate reputation!