At this year’s MAD World Summit, senior HR leaders gathered for an energising, breakfast briefing chaired by former Weber Shandwick CPO Helen Matthews. In just one hour, the group packed in a remarkable amount of practical insight – sharing candid challenges, smart interventions, and approaches that are already delivering impact in their organisations.
The session centred on a question many modern Chief People Officers face: How do you strike the balance between empathy and accountability – supporting employee health and wellbeing while still driving business outcomes?
What followed was a rapid-fire exchange of best practice, with three clear themes emerging.
1. Empathy + accountability starts with strategy, not sentiment
Participants agreed that empathy doesn’t sit outside business strategy – it must be embedded into it.
Key takeaways:
- Build wellbeing into the five-year business plan, with clear ownership, measurable outcomes, and a direct line to organisational goals.
- Connect initiatives to company DNA so they aren’t seen as add-ons or “nice-to-haves.”
- Use ROI, proof points and risk language when speaking to the board – the same way you would for commercial or health & safety risks.
- Create a clear wellbeing framework, and ensure every activity maps back to it.
- Skill up line managers – the human point of connection where empathy meets performance expectations.
- Use targeted mental health surveys to understand how people feel, not how you think they feel.
- Encourage storytelling from leadership, demonstrating empathy through authentic lived experience.
- Above all, walk the walk – employees notice alignment far more than rhetoric.
2. Positioning wellbeing as a business imperative – not a trade-off
Participants were united in pushing back against the false dichotomy of wellbeing vs business outcomes. When positioned effectively, health and wellbeing underpins engagement and performance.
What works:
- Leverage your biggest levers – line managers – by investing in meaningful, ongoing training.
- Meet your executive team where they are, dialling up clarity, empathy and evidence.
- Use a “you said / we did” feedback cycle to show a direct link between employee voice and action.
- When talking to the board, pivot the narrative from “wellbeing spend” to “risk mitigation.”
- Deep-dive into survey data to reveal what’s genuinely driving impact – and discontinue what isn’t.
- For reporting, avoid the word ‘wellbeing’ if it derails the conversation; framing it within operational risk dashboards often increases traction.
3. Joining the dots between engagement, wellbeing and performance
The final theme explored how organisations can knit together the experience of work – ensuring that wellbeing, engagement and performance are mutually reinforcing rather than siloed efforts.
Practical ideas shared:
- Embed wellbeing and benefits into onboarding so people know what support exists from day one — because “a benefit is only a benefit if people know about it.”
- Use storytelling to bring benefits, cultural expectations and success stories to life.
- Deliver what employees actually want, and if something can’t be introduced, be transparent about why.
- Maximise partnerships – external providers often have untapped assets and insights.
- For shift workers, use simple, relevant communication – one example was using QR codes on everyday items like flasks to aid signposting.
- Bake wellbeing knowledge into team manager training so managers know how and when to guide employees towards available support.
- Distil measurement into simple, business-relevant metrics such as sickness absence, turnover triggers, and utilisation of support services.
Punchy, practical, and people-focused
The clear message from the session: CPOs can’t choose between empathy and business outcomes – the organisations leading the way are combining both.
By grounding wellbeing in strategy, communicating in the language of risk and results, and empowering managers as the critical bridge between humans and performance, leaders can create cultures where people thrive and organisations succeed.
And, as this briefing showed, sometimes the most impactful ideas are the simplest.
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