Guest blog by Angela Steel and Professor Gail Kinman
Workplace wellbeing is receiving more attention and investment than ever before, yet many organisations still struggle to embed it in a meaningful and sustainable way. Occupational health (OH) professionals often sit at the intersection between employee needs, operational reality, and organisational strategy - and are acutely aware of how difficult this can be in practice.
We set out to answer that question directly, interviewing twelve senior leaders with budget responsibility for wellbeing - including roles such as Group SHE Director, Managing Director and Chief People Officer - from SMEs to global multinationals, and across sectors.
What emerged was a nuanced and sometimes challenging picture of how leaders think about workplace wellbeing. Senior leaders welcomed the opportunity to talk openly about this issue and share their experiences. Wellbeing is increasingly seen as strategically important and linked to sustainable performance. However, leaders are also grappling with tensions around commercial realities, operational risk, accountability, and the practicalities of implementing meaningful change. For OH professionals, the findings offer several important lessons:
1. Ground the business case in operational reality - Leaders see wellbeing and business performance as intricately connected. However, leaders were more engaged by wellbeing approaches that felt operationally relevant than by generic wellbeing messaging.
For OH professionals, this means connecting wellbeing to the real pressures organisations are facing. In transport and logistics, fatigue and sleep health are linked to safety, concentration, and operational reliability. In manufacturing and construction, musculoskeletal health, heat stress, and safe staffing levels can directly affect injury rates and productivity. In healthcare, reducing burnout and strengthening psychological safety may improve retention, reduce sickness absence and presenteeism, and ultimately support safer patient care.
The findings also reinforced the importance of robust data. Leaders consistently emphasised the value of metrics, even while acknowledging that measuring wellbeing can feel complex and difficult to interpret. OH teams are often uniquely positioned to connect wellbeing activity with operational and clinical realities. By interpreting hard data - such as sickness absence trends, OH referrals, incident rates, and return-to-work outcomes - alongside softer indicators like employee feedback, confidence in speaking up and manager confidence, they can help organisations identify patterns and underlying risks rather than responding only to isolated cases. As one leader explained: “We have to recognise what some of the work factors are that people are exposed to that might adversely impact their health and wellbeing… the job, the control you’ve got, the relationships you have with people, the amount of change and how we manage that change.”
The most persuasive wellbeing strategies are those grounded in the realities of work rather than disconnected from them.
2. Influence the conditions for flourishing, not just crisis management - Another important theme was leaders’ focus on “flourishing for the majority". While mental health support remains essential, many leaders expressed concern that workplace wellbeing can become overly focused on crisis response and high-risk cases rather than the everyday conditions that help most employees stay engaged and well. For OH professionals, this is an important shift in perspective. OH teams are often involved once issues have escalated and may not always have direct control over wider organisational factors such as workload, staffing, or job design. However, they can play a powerful influencing role. A multidisciplinary approach is often needed, where OH professionals, line managers, HR teams and employees work together to identify practical and sustainable solutions. OH teams’ input may include:
- highlighting the cumulative risks associated with excessive overtime or poorly designed shift patterns
- identifying higher-risk groups such as lone workers, night workers or drivers
- advising on the psychosocial impact of organisational change
- supporting healthier and more sustainable approaches to rehabilitation and return to work
The research also challenged assumptions around wellbeing. One leader reflected that: “People need to be challenged and stretched… when that’s not the case, people get stagnant, they get dissatisfied.” Healthy work is not pressure-free work. The goal is not to remove challenge altogether, but to create environments where demands are manageable, recovery is possible and support is available when needed.
3. Managers need support too - Managers and senior leaders are themselves under considerable pressure. Line managers are increasingly expected to support mental health, navigate hybrid working, manage conflict, maintain performance, and respond compassionately to complex personal issues, while also acting as role models for self-care. In many sectors, they are doing this alongside workforce shortages, operational pressures and increasing regulatory expectations. This has important implications for OH practice. Managers are often expected to deliver wellbeing strategies without necessarily feeling confident or supported to do so.
OH teams can also help organisations recognise that managers need support too, whether through practical guidance, psychologically informed training, or more realistic expectations around what managers can reasonably hold. As one leader observed, supporting wellbeing is “much harder than just being nice to people” and requires managers to balance empathy, accountability, and honest conversations.
Practical support may include helping managers reduce stigma around mental health, understand reasonable adjustments, recognise early signs of burnout, manage sensitive conversations or support employees returning after periods of ill health. Importantly, managers also need psychological safety themselves. If leaders feel fearful of saying the wrong thing, escalating concerns or making imperfect decisions, this can create avoidance and paralysis rather than supportive leadership.
4. Sustainable wellbeing depends on shared responsibility - The research also explored the boundaries of employer responsibility. Leaders strongly supported compassionate workplaces, but some also raised concerns about wellbeing becoming misunderstood if accountability becomes unclear. For OH professionals, this reinforces the importance of framing wellbeing as a shared responsibility between organisations, managers, and employees.
Employers have responsibilities to provide safe systems of work, psychologically safe cultures, and appropriate support. Managers play a key role in creating healthy team environments. Employees also have responsibilities - including communicating when they are struggling, engaging with support offered and helping others understand what support or adjustments they may need.
One leader described wellbeing as becoming “part of the fabric” of everyday management and organisational life, rather than something employees engage with only occasionally through isolated wellbeing activities.
This is particularly important in operational and safety-critical environments, where wellbeing challenges are rarely experienced in isolation. One person’s fatigue, absence or disengagement can quickly affect team workload, morale, and operational safety.
This does not reduce the organisation’s duty of care. Rather, it highlights the importance of openness, communication, and shared accountability in the real world, where organisations must constantly balance competing operational pressures and finite resources.
5. Focus on fundamentals and think long term - A key message from senior leaders was that meaningful wellbeing maturity takes time. Many described moving away from ad-hoc wellbeing initiatives towards stronger foundations:
- psychological safety
- effective employee voice and feedback processes
- effective change management
- consistent compassionate leadership behaviours
- strategic alignment
Leaders repeatedly emphasised the importance of trust and employee voice. One participant described the need for “a genuine listening culture - listening and responding". For OH professionals, this is a valuable reminder that sustainable wellbeing rarely comes from isolated campaigns or one-off interventions. Often, the most impactful work is slower and less visible: improving manager capability, embedding psychosocial risk assessment, strengthening employee voice mechanisms, or ensuring deskless and blue-collar workers are included in wellbeing strategies.
Several leaders also emphasised the importance of consistency and reach, particularly in organisations with dispersed workforces, shift workers or operational teams who may not engage easily with office-based wellbeing initiatives.
As one participant put it: “If you genuinely want reach and impact, then your pace is slow… it’s about slowing down, doing less but doing it better.”
Perhaps the most important message from the research is that sustainable wellbeing is not something organisations implement once, and complete. It is shaped continuously through leadership decisions, organisational culture, working conditions and the quality of everyday interactions at work. In practice, embedding wellbeing is often less about launching something new and more about improving the everyday experience of work - how people are managed, how change is handled, whether workloads are realistic and whether employees feel safe speaking up.
Angela Steel, Founder & CEO, SuperWellness. Angela gained an MSc in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck in 2023. She is the founder of SuperWellness, that empowers organisations, leaders, teams, and individuals to create lasting impact for wellbeing and performance. A copy of research findings when published will be here.
Professor Gail Kinman CPsychol FBPsS FAcSS FHEA. An occupational health psychologist with extensive experience in research and practice. Gail’s interests primarily focus on improving the working conditions and wellbeing of people in emotionally demanding roles, particularly in the health and social care, education, and security sectors.