Angela Steel

That conviction became the foundation of SuperWellness in 2011 — originally focused on helping employees fulfil their potential through lifestyle changes: nutrition, movement, the building blocks of feeling well at work. But the wellbeing industry has evolved enormously since those early days. From an area most people never seriously considered, it moved into the mainstream — and then the pandemic accelerated everything — overnight becoming a vital lifeline for employees thrown into the deep end: mental health challenges, isolation, working from home, and an uncertain world. Wellbeing became business critical, and evolved from lifestyle programmes into something far more fundamental: shaping the work environment itself and creating the conditions for people to truly thrive.

It was also what drove me to understand the evidence more deeply — critical to my work as a workplace wellbeing consultant. So I undertook my Masters in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck. My research, presented at the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology Conference in 2024, focused on workplace wellbeing leads — and what it revealed was striking: theirs is one of the most challenging and misunderstood roles in any organisation. Wellbeing as a function is frequently undervalued, career pathways are unclear, and without greater influence at board level, even the most capable wellbeing leads struggle to drive the impact their organisations need.

These findings became the impetus behind the launch of our Level 5 Diploma in Leading Strategic Wellbeing, led by our Head of Wellbeing Strategy, Elliot Foster. It went on to become the first Level 5 Diploma aimed at wellbeing leads to be recognised by the Society of Occupational Medicine.

But given the decisive role senior leaders play in setting the direction of wellbeing in their organisations, a crucial question remained unanswered: what is their take on it? What does success look like to them, and what drives their decisions? Two years on, in collaboration with Professor Gail Kinman, I undertook further research to find out.

Sitting at my desk transcribing those interviews, the same themes emerged again and again: leaders genuinely wanted to do right by their people, but they were caught between care and commercial reality — facing increasing pressure, unclear boundaries, managers afraid to challenge performance, and an industry narrative that told them they were never doing enough. They didn’t need more guilt. They needed clarity, recognition for the progress they were making, and solutions that reflected the realities they actually face. One of the key messages to emerge was that wellbeing and performance must be two sides of the same coin — and yet the way wellbeing has been approached has too often failed to reflect that reality.

That’s exactly what we’re setting out to change — and it has set us on an exciting new path. We’re developing a brand new approach that we believe could fundamentally change the way organisations and the people within them think about — and experience — what good work can make possible. It’s built on the evidence, designed for the realities senior leaders face, and connects wellbeing to business performance in a way nothing else currently does.

Watch this space.

Ultimately, I want to see a world where workplace wellbeing means creating the conditions for people to fulfil their potential — where good work is celebrated as a force for good, not just for preventing harm, but for enabling people and organisations to flourish. My mission is to help senior leaders responsible for people strategy build compassionate, high-performance cultures that demonstrate what work, at its best, can be.

If you’re ready to transform your approach to workplace wellbeing, I’d love to talk. Drop me a line at angela@superwellness.co.uk.

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