What if we've been investing in wellbeing when we should have been investing in relationships?

We spend an enormous amount of time talking about wellbeing. Employers invest in wellbeing programmes, we encourage people to practise self-care, and there's a whole industry dedicated to helping us feel happier, healthier and less stressed.

Much of this is useful. But we've become so focused on helping people manage their own wellbeing that we've overlooked something quite fundamental about being human.

We need each other to be well.

Our relationships are where we experience care, belonging, understanding and emotional safety. They're where we turn when things are difficult, where we share our successes and where we find reassurance that we don't have to manage everything alone.

And importantly, wellbeing comes from being able to offer that support to others, as well as receiving it ourselves.

This is something we need to pay much more attention to, particularly when we're thinking about wellbeing at work.

The quality of our relationships is the biggest predictor of wellbeing... So why aren't we investing more into it?

We're social beings, and our health depends on it

One of the most interesting things about the research into human relationships is just how much our social connections influence our health.

A major meta-analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, published in 2010, brought together 148 studies involving more than 300,000 people. It found that people with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival over the periods studied compared with those with weaker social relationships.

That's a remarkable finding, and it tells us something important about how closely our relationships and physical health are connected.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed people over many decades, has also consistently drawn attention to the importance of close relationships for health and happiness throughout life.

We know that supportive relationships can help us manage stress, and that feeling isolated or disconnected can have consequences for both our mental and physical health.

There's a physiological explanation for some of this, too.

When we feel threatened or overwhelmed, our bodies respond to help us deal with the situation. Our heart rate changes, stress hormones are released and our attention becomes more focused on managing the immediate challenge.

Having someone we trust nearby, someone who listens, understands or offers reassurance, can help us feel safer and recover from difficult experiences.

Researchers sometimes describe this as social buffering: the way supportive relationships can moderate our responses to stress.

We experience this throughout our lives, beginning with the relationships we have as children.

Connection is one of the ways we learn to feel safe

As a Play Therapist, I've spent years working with children and families, and much of what we understand about children's emotional development comes back to the quality of their relationships.

Young children aren't born knowing how to manage difficult feelings on their own. They learn through repeated experiences of being supported by the adults who care for them. They learn to regulate their nervous systems by 'borrowing' from ours, by experiencing safety before they even have words to understand what's going on.

When a child is frightened, overwhelmed or upset, a calm and responsive adult can help them make sense of what's happening and begin to feel safe again.

Over time, these experiences contribute to a child's developing ability to regulate their emotions and manage challenges more independently.

We call this co-regulation, and although it's particularly important in childhood, the need for support from other people doesn't disappear when we become adults.

We still turn to the people closest to us when we're having a difficult day. We still feel better when someone understands what we're going through. And we still need relationships where we can be vulnerable without worrying about how we'll be judged.

In many ways, our relationships continue to help us regulate our emotions throughout our lives.

That's why I think it's limiting to approach wellbeing as though it's entirely an individual responsibility.

We can learn strategies to manage stress, but the relationships and environments around us also influence how much stress we experience and how well we're able to recover from it.

What happens at home affects how we feel at work

We're often encouraged to keep our personal and professional lives separate, but the reality is that they influence one another all the time.

A difficult morning with your child can affect your concentration at work. Worrying about a family member can make it harder to focus. Equally, a supportive conversation with someone you love can help you feel more able to manage a demanding day.

There's an established area of research called work-family enrichment, which looks at how positive experiences in one part of our lives can improve our experiences in another.

For example, Carlson and colleagues developed a widely used measure of work-family enrichment in 2006, recognising that skills, positive emotions and other resources gained through family life can benefit people at work, and vice versa.

This matters because discussions about working parents tend to focus heavily on the conflict between work and family responsibilities. And of course, that conflict is real.

But family relationships can also be an important source of strength, emotional support and satisfaction. The people we love can help us recover from stress, gain perspective and feel more confident in ourselves.

For working parents, this is particularly relevant because their relationship with their child is often one of the most emotionally significant parts of their lives.

When a child is struggling, a parent can carry that worry throughout their working day. When they feel more confident and connected in their relationship, some of that emotional pressure may ease.

I think there's an enormous opportunity for employers to recognise the importance of these relationships when considering how best to support their people.

What if our approach to employee wellbeing included relationships?

When organisations think about employee wellbeing, they often start with what they can offer individuals.

That might be access to counselling, wellbeing apps, mindfulness sessions, gym memberships or resilience training.

These can all be useful, particularly when they're part of a wider approach to creating healthy working conditions.

But if we know that relationships have such a significant influence on wellbeing, shouldn't we also be thinking about how we help people maintain and strengthen them?

We already recognise the importance of relationships within organisations.

Research into workplace social support has found meaningful associations with lower burnout. A 2006 meta-analysis by Halbesleben examined how different sources of social support relate to the different dimensions of burnout, showing that supportive relationships at work matter.

And research by Owens and colleagues in 2016 explored how positive interpersonal interactions at work contribute to engagement and performance.

So we're beginning to understand the value of connection between colleagues, managers and teams.

But what about the relationships people go home to?

For working parents, support might include having a manager who understands the pressures of parenting, the flexibility to meet family responsibilities, and opportunities to develop confidence in their relationship with their children.

These things are connected.

An employer can create conditions that make it easier for someone to be present for their family. And support for family relationships can help parents feel more confident in an important part of their lives.

Neither removes the need for reasonable workloads, fair pay or supportive management. All of these things contribute to wellbeing.

But family relationships deserve to be part of the conversation.

Why we created Treasure Time

When we developed Treasure Time, we wanted to make some of the principles we use in therapeutic work with children accessible to parents in everyday family life.

We know that children benefit from having regular experiences of connection with the adults who care for them.

And we know that parents want those relationships to be strong.

But family life is busy. It's easy for the time we spend together to become dominated by practical things: getting ready for school, making dinner, doing homework, sorting out bedtime.

Parents can spend hours caring for their children without having much opportunity to simply enjoy being together.

Treasure Time gives parents a regular opportunity to do that through 30 minutes of guided, child-led play each week.

The programme helps parents understand their children's emotional needs and develop practical skills in listening, responding to behaviour and supporting their child's independence.

One of the things I love about child-led play is that it gives children an experience of being listened to and understood without an adult needing to teach them something or direct what happens.

For parents, it can also be an opportunity to see their child differently, understand what's important to them and enjoy the relationship.

And as those experiences become more familiar, the skills parents learn can influence their everyday interactions with their children.

We want to help parents feel more connected and confident in their relationships, because those relationships matter enormously to the wellbeing of both parent and child.

Investing in connection

I think the next development in employee wellbeing should involve paying much more attention to the relationships that sustain people.

That includes relationships at work, but also the people who matter most to us outside it.

For employers, supporting working parents is an opportunity to put this thinking into practice. It means recognising that people bring their family concerns, responsibilities and relationships into their experience of work, even when those things aren't visible.

And it means understanding that helping someone feel supported in their family life can be a meaningful part of supporting them as an employee.

At Treasure Time, we're working with employers who want to make that kind of support available to their people.

Because when we invest in relationships, we're investing in something that contributes to our wellbeing throughout our lives.

And I think it's time we gave connection the attention it deserves.

Treasure Time works with employers to support working parents through therapist-informed programmes that strengthen parent-child relationships.

Explore Treasure Time for employers.

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