What Do I Do When the Expensive Wellness Retreat for Leaders Didn’t Work?What Actually Moves the Needle for Teams
Wellness isn’t a side project anymore, it’s a business strategy. According to WebMD Health Services, 90% of companies are reporting measurable ROI on their wellness initiatives. Wellhub says 95% of organizations are seeing at least $2 back for every $1 spent. And 91%? They’re watching their healthcare costs drop.
So on paper, it’s working. The data’s there. Leaders are convinced. Budgets are growing. Retreats are booked.
But here’s what’s not working: your team doesn’t feel any of it.
If the Retreat Was So Great, Why Is Everything Still So Heavy?
A lot of executives aren’t booking wellness retreats because it sounds good — they’re doing it because they’re running on fumes. They’re not thriving. They’re barely holding it together.
So they go. They finally rest. They breathe, maybe for the first time in months. And when they come back, they feel… better. But “better” is a moving target when the baseline is burnout. And often, that’s exactly where it stays: personal relief. Not cultural change.
Because here’s the hard truth: if that retreat was focused on restoring you individually — but not reconnecting you to how your leadership actually affects your team — then it may have helped you recover… but it didn’t move the needle on trust. It didn’t shift the system. It didn’t flow down.
A Wellness Program Is Not a Wellness Culture
Here’s a difference between funding wellness and practicing it. Between creating a program and embodying a culture. You can roll out a branded initiative, send out the mindfulness links, launch an internal campaign, but if your team still feels like they can’t take a real break or say “I’m not okay” without it costing them? The culture isn’t safe yet.
And when the environment doesn’t feel safe, people stop participating. Engagement drops. Eyes roll. Trust quietly erodes. And the wellness program you invested in becomes one more thing your people feel like they have to perform for.
The Trust Gap Is the Real ROI Problem
MetLife found that 88% of employers believe they care deeply about employee well-being. But only 58% of employees agree. That’s not a perception gap. That’s a trust gap. And it’s growing every time wellness is positioned as something for “them” to use — without being something you model.
Because people don’t take emotional risks with leaders they don’t trust. And they don’t trust leaders who disappear to rest but return unchanged.
Burnout Recovery Isn’t Leadership Repair
This is where so many retreats miss the mark. They’re built to help you restore, not necessarily to help you re-enter differently. But if you’re still carrying the same urgency, still running the same pace, still delegating culture instead of modeling it — then nothing actually changed.
And your team knows it.
Wellness isn’t something you practice off-site and hope trickles down. It’s something you embed into how you respond when things get hard. It shows up in how you regulate stress, how you own mistakes, how you create safety — not just space.
What Actually Moves the Needle? Modeling It.
Your people don’t need one more wellness tool. They need to see you live the message. They need to see you say no. To breathe before reacting. To tell the truth about your capacity. And when they do? That’s when the culture starts to shift, not because the program is new, but because the leadership is aligned.
So if your team is ignoring the program, ghosting your EAP, or quietly rolling their eyes at your “take care of yourself” emails, it’s not because they don’t care. It’s because they don’t believe you do. That’s the part you can change.
Tina Power Business and Communication Coaching helps leaders turn recovery into real cultural repair with emotionally intelligent communication systems that don’t just check boxes, but actually support people in real time.
If you’re ready to lead in a way that lands? Let’s talk.