Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters for Senior Leaders
As a senior leader, you’re responsible not only for business performance but also for the long-term health and sustainability of your organisation. Increasingly, employee wellbeing is at the heart of both.

Research led by Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and colleagues at the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre (2024) shows that companies with higher employee wellbeing enjoy significantly better financial outcomes – including higher profits, stronger return on assets, and superior stock market performance. In fact, portfolios of “high wellbeing” firms consistently outperformed the S&P 500 and other major indices over a three-year period.
The Leadership Challenge
Senior leaders face a unique set of challenges:
Confronting the engagement challenge: Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 shows that only 21% of employees are engaged, and manager engagement has fallen sharply – a warning sign for productivity and retention.
Balancing strategic priorities: digital transformation, ESG, financial performance – with growing expectations around wellbeing.
Meeting regulatory and investor pressures: from HSE’s legal duty on work-related stress to the CCLA Corporate Mental Health Benchmark, which tracks board-level accountability and disclosure.
As a senior leader, you likely recognise that wellbeing matters – Deloitte’s 2024 Leading Workplace Wellbeing study found that 82% of executives believe prioritising it enhances profitability. The challenge is not whether it’s important, but how to shape a wellbeing approach that truly fits your organisation and delivers meaningful results.
Making Wellbeing Work
Wellbeing done well is not about perks or one-off initiatives. It is about:

Strategic alignment: embedding wellbeing into the core mission, values, and performance priorities of the business.
Evidence and metrics: measuring not just inputs (programmes offered) but outcomes (how employees feel at and about work). De Neve & Ward’s (2023) validated Workplace Subjective Wellbeing (WSWB) measure – covering job satisfaction, affect, and purpose – offers a robust framework.
Leadership accountability: ensuring boards and executives track wellbeing metrics alongside financial ones, and are transparent about outcomes.
Long-term culture change: creating workplaces where wellbeing is integral to innovation, productivity, and reputation.
The Opportunity for Leaders
Approached in the right way, workplace wellbeing is both a business enabler and a leadership responsibility. It strengthens resilience, attracts and retains talent, supports inclusion, and mitigates risk. It also enhances corporate reputation, with employees, regulators and investors increasingly scrutinising how seriously organisations take wellbeing.
As a leader, your role is pivotal. The decisions you make about wellbeing – how you define it, measure it, and act on it – will shape not only employee experience but also business outcomes.
A Workplace Wellbeing Audit is often a great place to start:
A Workplace Wellbeing Audit is often a great place to start: A clear picture of where you are today is the foundation of an effective strategy. Our Workplace Wellbeing Audit offers a comprehensive review of your organisation’s current practices, policies, and culture. It provides the insights you need to identify strengths, uncover gaps, and create a roadmap for measurable improvement.

You might also be interested in our new programme:
Leading Through Uncertainty
Resilience, wellbeing, and real-world leadership impact — in just one hour a week.
Ideal for senior leaders and people managers who want to:
- Lead with confidence during economic turbulence
- Support themselves and their teams with emotional agility
- Take action on wellbeing, realistically and sustainably

Contact us
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your employees, and how to get started.
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