‘Sometimes work environments don't reflect the humanity of people, but more so the machine-like factors that we have within us,’ says Zha Dadson
The gap between offering employee benefits and employees using them is one of the most persistent and well-known problems in the workplace.
For Zha Dadson, a Nike Well Collective trainer, Pilates instructor, and wellness brand founder, this gap has everything to do with how employers think about – let alone fail to think about – self-care and self-love as distinct forces in a worker's life.
“I would absolutely define self-care as a form of maintenance. And I would describe self-love as an unapologetic promise to yourself," she said.
To make that distinction stick, she uses a car analogy.
“Self-care is making sure you have gas every single night so when you wake up in the morning and go to work, you don't have to stop. And then self-love is making sure that inside of your car, you feel the most comfortable, you have a clear space, the environment around you is full of just clarity and an essence for you to be able to thrive in,” she said.
Dadson sees self-care and self-love as essential to doing well at work. She underscores that employees are more likely to perform at a high level when they are able to support themselves properly, rather than run on empty. While she acknowledged that depends in part on the individual, it also depends on the workplace itself.
Dadson links self-care closely to flexibility, choice, and the ability to set boundaries. Her point is that people are better able to care for themselves when they have real control over how they spend their time and energy, rather than being locked into rigid expectations. That freedom allows employees to make decisions that fit their needs and engage more fully in what supports them.
She separates that from self-love, which she frames more as a matter of clarity and confidence. For her, self-love depends on not having to second-guess the structures around you or your ability to act in your own interest. When taken together, workplaces function better when employees are given options instead of being forced into one model that assumes the employer knows best, she said, adding flexibility helps people show up better because it gives them room to make choices, while clarity gives them the certainty to use that freedom well.
After all, a person needs an environment that actively supports their well-being and gives them room not just to work, but to feel settled, motivated, and able to grow. In her view, people do their best work when they are in a setting that allows them to sustain themselves and improve over time.
"One of the things that employers can do is create an environment and a structure, especially with work-life balance and to give their employees a little bit more time to show up for themselves so that they can again show up, you know, fully within the workspace,” she said. “I think it's really easy for these types of situations to take place when sometimes work environments don't reflect the humanity of people, but more so the machine-like factors that we have within us.”
She knows the machine-like cycle first-hand. Early in her corporate career, she burned herself out believing that overperformance would buy her job security. But in reality, it only did the opposite. She argues that employers who allow 40, 60 or even 80-hour weeks without structural guardrails are often - but without meaning to - stripping workers of the capacity to care for themselves at all.
According to Dadson, self-care benefits are most effective when they address employees’ needs in a broad, practical way. She points to support for both mental and physical health, including access to therapy, wellness coaching, gym memberships, and strong health insurance coverage that goes beyond routine medical and dental care.
She believes employers play a major role in shaping how much support workers actually have, because the depth and usefulness of those benefits depend on how willing a company is to invest in employees’ well-being.
She acknowledged how several employers already supply discounts for therapists, gym memberships, and health insurance that extends beyond traditional doctor's visits so it’s not that the offerings don’t exist. Rather, the problem is access and awareness.
To that end, meaningful health support has to be woven into everyday workplace culture, not left as a passive offering on a benefits portal, Dadson suggests, highlighting a comparison to summer Fridays, a perk many companies actively build into their schedules. She suggests employers should apply that same structural thinking to mental health.
Additionally, regular town halls, reminders from HR, utilization trackers, and brief monthly check-ins could all help normalize these resources and remove the guilt employees often feel about using them.
"If more employers could enforce some type of HR standard, where mental health was a necessity and not an added experience, it would definitely significantly change the way in which we show up at work," she noted.
The other issue, Dadson highlights, is HR’s visibility in most workplaces is concentrated at two distinct points: when employees onboard and when they exit. What happens in between gets far less attention, she said. And while workers may have occasional check-ins with managers or cross-functional colleagues about project progress, structured HR contact focused on well-being is rare.
For Dadson, this represents a missed opportunity because companies invest heavily in hiring talent but often lack a deliberate strategy for making sure those people remain happy, supported, and aware of the resources available to them.
A dedicated people and culture function tasked with regular maintenance-style check-ins could help employers identify problems earlier, whether that means spotting early signs of burnout or learning about personal crises before they lead to turnover, she said.
Ultimately, Dadson frames wellness as a shared responsibility rather than an individual one, arguing that accountability and support from the employer side are both necessary for workers to reach their goals.
“Self-care and self-love are at the forefront of everything that you do,” she said. “Because when we operate from a cup that is full, when we operate from a cup that feels supported, when we operate from a cup full of love, the way we show up in the workplace significantly changes. Don't deplete yourself in the name of having to show up in the workplace and parenthood, and friendship, and in family because we will all be better and this world would be better if we could all operate from an overflow and not from a place of depletion or stress.”
