When we asked Health and Wellbeing Leaders about their priorities for 2026, the answers centred on prevention, data and early intervention. While there is some overlap, the lens is quite different for Chief People Officers.
CPOs focus on the system. Whereas Health and Wellbeing Leaders tended to ask how to protect health, CPOs tended to ask: what kind of workplace are we actually designing?
Across sectors, one word came up again and again: culture. But CPOs are no longer talking about culture as an abstract aspiration. In 2026, it’s being treated as a design project, a performance lever and a leadership accountability.
Here are the key themes shaping their thinking.
1. Culture as the operating system
Almost every CPO we interviewed cited “culture” as their defining priority for 2026.
Bola Ogundeji, former CPO at Moorfields Eye Hospital and London Legacy Development Corporation, describes a deliberate shift “from responding to individual strain toward designing a system in which people can thrive.”
Tracey Lowe Sheppard, Head of People at Swim England, says that “embedding values” will be the foundation of the year ahead, with line manager training, performance reviews, recruitment and recognition all being aligned so that culture becomes “second nature, not just buzzwords.”
Others talk about using behaviour-based KPIs to shift culture meaning line managers are assessed on not only what they deliver, but how they deliver it.
This echoes Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keep Britain Working review, which identifies toxic fear cultures as a major barrier to workforce health and economic participation. But where the report names the problem, CPOs are now focused on the infrastructure needed to fix it.
2. Leaders as the primary drivers of change
Leadership is the interface of the cultural operating system. Without confident, capable managers, culture change buffers.
One CPO explains why leadership capability is a priority:
“We recognise that wellbeing is an evolving area and we don’t just expect our leaders to know what to do in this space.”
CPOs agree that leaders need practical, often scenario-based capability that builds confidence in difficult conversations. Their concern is not just spotting risk, but whether leaders have the authority, skill and psychological literacy to act on it.
As Ogundeji puts it, leaders are no longer just people managers. They are becoming “health-conscious, change-ready enablers of performance, who need supported to “use technology intelligently and lead with agility through constant change”.
3. Reframing ‘Health and Wellbeing’ as ‘Performance’ – not a trade-off
CPOs are also deliberately reframing Health and Wellbeing through the language of high performance.
Several describe moving away from presenting wellbeing as something separate from business outcomes. Some even mention dropping the language entirely — reflecting the debate highlighted in our previous Health & Wellbeing Leaders piece.
But CPOs agree that leaders need to be supported explicitly to understand that looking after people is not at odds with delivering results — it creates better results.
One CPO explains:
“Our leadership training now focuses on understanding the link between wellbeing and business impact. If you only talk about wellbeing, leaders can assume you don’t understand the pressure they’re under to deliver. So we focus on how leader behaviour impacts wellbeing and how actions that support wellbeing also protect performance.”
4. Designing work that works: from organisational risk to personalised support
This was one of the most strategically important shifts we heard.
Rather than asking individuals to become more resilient, CPOs are asking what is structurally harming wellbeing. Workload, utilisation targets, line management quality, fairness, job design and role clarity are now being treated as organisational health and safety hazards, not personal weaknesses.
Ogundeji says:
“In a climate of high external pressures, employers are working to provide clarity, belonging and stability so people can perform with confidence and feel respected and valued.”
Many CPOs are now applying health and safety thinking to mental health, identifying “risks and hazards” in exactly the same way organisations do for physical safety.
At the same time, support is becoming more personalised. CPOs describe moving away from one-size-fits-all wellbeing programmes towards bespoke, inclusive approaches that reflect different roles, health needs, cultures and geographies.
5. Elevating ‘soft’ skills and human connection
Fabiola Williams, CPO, Brunswick Group, caveats this priority by saying “of course in the wellbeing space we’re clearly doing a lot of practical things, and working on policies that work for our people” but what she believes helps policy work and behaviour change happen, are the deeper relational skills:
“Calling them ‘soft’ skills reduces their importance. They are the hardest skills to get right and they are at the heart of collaboration, team work and psychological safety. And all these things are directly linked to wellbeing.”
Helen Matthews, former CPO at Weber Shandwick, speaks about the need for “intentional connection” at work, urging CPOs to ask:
“How do we create meaningful connection and community for personal and professional growth?”
Collaboration is also a key theme in the Health & Wellbeing Leaders piece. But CPOs see it more as a human capability that must be developed deliberately.
7. Mental health and financial wellbeing: persistent pressure points
Despite years of investment, mental health remains a top concern.
As Tracy Leghorn, Chief Business Services Officer at SUEZ, puts it:
“Mental health is a priority. Despite doing a lot in this space over the last five years, it’s still an area our people continually say they need support with.”
CPOs speak openly about the need to strengthen crisis support, suicide awareness and everyday mental-health literacy. Financial wellbeing is now firmly part of this picture too. With sustained cost-of-living pressure, SUEZ has introduced auto-enrolment savings in the same way pensions once transformed retirement behaviour.
This mirrors what Health & Wellbeing Leaders told us: mental and financial strain remain overlapping drivers of employee stress.
8. AI, ethics and the future of human work
AI surfaces as both an opportunity and a risk.
On one hand, some experts like Catherine Muirden, a seasoned CPO, and now Chair at the National Galleries of Scotland, see AI as a way to remove “the markers of a bad working environment” — especially repetitive, dehumanising tasks — freeing people for more purposeful work and greater autonomy.
On the other, she warns about creating negative cultures through surveillance, ethical drift and the danger of “infantilising” workers through over-tracking their behaviour in the name of productivity.
Matthews believes a core CPO priority should be:
“Encouraging clarity about where AI fits within the organisation and taking people on that journey through co-creation, leadership accountability and open communication.”
