Mental Health and More: Small, Low-Wage Businesses' Workplace Wellness Needs After the COVID-19 Pandemic

As businesses continue to adapt post-COVID-19 pandemic, there is increased interest among employers in their employees' mental health and work-life balance. However, few studies have looked at how the pandemic may have impacted employer perceptions of workplace health promotion (WHP), despite its role in addressing mental health and work-life balance. Small low-wage businesses have unique characteristics, including thin profit margins, limited financial reserves, and few employees, so the impact of the pandemic hit them particularly hard. Using a framework guided by social marketing principles, 25 small-business employers from across the United States were interviewed. Questions included what they thought was most needed in post-pandemic WHP, how the pandemic changed WHP, how comfortable they would be providing support to their employees around physical health, mental health, and work-life balance, and what avenues they would use to promote those benefits and resources. Interviews were coded and analyzed via thematic analysis. Small low-wage business employers value the importance of WHP programs and recognize how the pandemic highlighted the need to support employee mental health. These employers are interested in providing support in the domains of mental health, physical health, and work-life balance; they would use similar avenues to promote resources in these domains; and they agree that the source of these supports should be trustworthy. Small-business employers now find WHP programs incomplete if they do not support employee mental health; health promotion practitioners should collaborate with employers to identify resources suitable for small businesses and determine how best to integrate them into existing offerings.