What do senior leaders really think about workplace wellbeing? The 5 findings that surprised us most

Global employee engagement has fallen to just 21% — matching pandemic-era lows — at a cost of billions in lost productivity. And that’s despite years of increased focus and investment in workplace wellbeing.

All of this is happening against a backdrop where organisations are already stretched — dealing with constant change, economic pressure, and the kind of uncertainty that doesn’t seem to let up. In that context, wellbeing is shifting from something nice to have to something organisations are increasingly seeing as a way to gain or maintain a competitive edge. 

The pace and effectiveness of that shift depend heavily on senior leaders, particularly how they make sense of wellbeing in practice, how it fits alongside other priorities, and what “good” actually looks like in their organisation.

And yet there’s still surprisingly little insight into how leaders are actually working through those questions day to day.

That’s what led us to this research.

So, over the past few months, we’ve been talking to senior leaders across sectors — trying to understand how they define wellbeing, how they judge whether what they are doing is working, and how it shapes their decisions, especially when it rubs up against commercial reality. What came back didn’t always fit with what we thought we already knew. It was something more nuanced and more honest than that, and therefore much more valuable. Leaders are balancing competing pressures, making difficult trade-offs, and trying to figure out what wellbeing genuinely means inside their organisation.

We’re not sharing everything just yet. But here are five of the findings that surprised us most.

1. Wellbeing has been redefined — but is not yet stabilised

There’s no question that what leaders consider wellbeing means and encompasses has evolved. 

The old model — perks, initiatives, something separate from the day job — has largely been left behind. Leaders now talk about something broader and more meaningful.

“It’s moved probably away from thinking it’s little perks… to actually thinking it’s more about creating an environment that people can thrive really.” 

That shift is important. It aligns with a wider move in research towards understanding wellbeing as how people feel at and about work — including purpose, growth and day-to-day experience. It’s no longer just about ‘not being off sick’.

But while the language has evolved, the concept itself hasn’t fully settled.

Leaders consistently described wellbeing as something that’s still open to interpretation — and this comes with a few challenges.

“Wellbeing is one of those undefined areas… everyone thinks they can do wellbeing right.” 

Without a shared understanding, different parts of the organisation pull in different directions. One team focuses on mental health support, another on engagement, another on benefits. All valid — but not always joined up.

2. There’s growing resistance to a “soft” version of wellbeing

This one surprised us. Not the finding itself, but how clearly it came through.

Leaders are broadly supportive of wellbeing — but they’re also pushing back on how it’s sometimes being interpreted and enacted.

The concern — and it came up repeatedly — was that wellbeing is being framed as making work easier. Removing pressure. Softening difficult conversations. Making people happy and contented. And that doesn’t sit comfortably with many of the people we spoke to.

“People need to be challenged and stretched… when that’s not the case, people get stagnant.” 

For these leaders, wellbeing isn’t about comfort. It’s about giving people the conditions to do good work — and that includes growth, accountability, and at times, challenge. What they were describing, in effect, was a high challenge, high support model — setting clear expectations and stretching people, while also providing the support, trust and psychological safety needed to sustain performance.

There’s also a noticeable shift away from focusing purely on mental ill-health.

“For a vast majority of people… they’ll just feel a bit disengaged… so it’s focusing on that optimisation.” 

That idea of “optimisation” — helping people function well, not just preventing crisis — is coming through more and more.

And it raises the bar for leaders. It’s not just about supporting people when they’re struggling — it’s about keeping people in that zone where they’re stretched but not breaking. That’s a harder thing to manage, and most leaders are working it out as they go along.

3. The expectations placed on leaders have increased — significantly

One of the clearest themes in the research is just how much the role of leaders has expanded.

They’re no longer just responsible for performance. They’re expected to think about wellbeing, engagement, inclusion — and often aspects of people’s lives outside of work as well.

“There’s a limit to what we can do as an employer… we’re not experts in social care.” 

At the same time, the commercial pressures haven’t gone anywhere. If anything, they’ve intensified.

So, leaders are managing competing demands that can clash in practice.

This shows up in very real ways. Leaders talked about managing situations where one person’s wellbeing needs impinge on the rest of the team or the leader themselves. Where flexibility for one individual creates pressure for others.

“My wellbeing is more important than your wellbeing… when you manage 7 or 10 people, there’s a real issue around how we navigate that balance.” 

That’s a genuinely difficult thing to navigate, and most frameworks for wellbeing don’t acknowledge it.

Wider data shows declining engagement at manager level, which is a risk not just for wellbeing, but for organisational performance overall. The conversation about supporting employees is well underway. The one about supporting leaders still has a long way to go.

4. The business case is accepted — but the reality is still quite fuzzy

On the link between wellbeing and performance, there’s near-consensus. Leaders don’t need convincing of it.

The evidence base backs them up — the links between wellbeing, productivity and financial outcomes are well documented and compelling.

“If you want a productive workforce, then you have to have well employees… performance is good when people are in a good place.” 

Where it gets harder is the “how”.

How does wellbeing actually translate into performance? How do you measure it in a way that means something? And how do you make the case for it when the returns are long-term and the pressure to hit this quarter’s numbers is very much right now?

Leaders were refreshingly honest that they don’t have a good answer.

“I’ve not seen one (metric) that makes me think that’s the one… it all adds up to an implicit kind of fog.” 

So instead, many rely on instinct.

“You can feel the energy in the room… you know if your team are happy.” 

That instinct has value. But it’s hard to translate into something more consistent or measurable.

Wellbeing is valued. It’s just not yet positioned in a way that makes it easy to defend when the hard decisions come. Leaders are bombarded with information, some with less evidence than others, and without being experts in wellbeing, how do they choose what works?

5. Wellbeing is becoming a shared responsibility — but change is slow

When it comes to implementing wellbeing, two realities came through very clearly – around responsibility and pace of change.

Leaders are moving away from the idea that wellbeing sits with HR or a central team. Instead, it’s increasingly seen as something that runs through the whole organisation like the writing in a stick of rock — from senior leadership through to line managers and employees themselves.

“Good looks like it’s everyone’s job… part of the fabric versus something we go to once a year.” 

Organisations acknowledge that they have a clear duty of care to support the wellbeing of their employees but there is also a growing recognition that accountability has to go both ways.

It requires managers to have different kinds of conversations. It requires employees to take more responsibility for communicating what they need. And it requires organisations to be clearer about what they will — and won’t — take ownership for.

“Sometimes there’s an expectation that the company is there to provide everything. But when you challenge that, people often realise — actually, there are things I could do myself.”

Alongside this, leaders were very clear about the pace of change.

Building wellbeing into the culture isn’t something that happens quickly. It takes time to build trust, to create consistency, and to shift behaviours across different parts of the organisation.

“If you genuinely want reach and impact… your pace is slow… do less but do it better.” 

There’s also a recognition that things don’t always improve in a straight line. There is also a risk of veering from one initiative to another without giving it time to bed in.

“There is a period where it gets worse before it gets better… you need a good amount of belief to pull you through that.” 

So, what does this mean?

What this research highlights is a more grounded, and at times more challenging, picture of workplace wellbeing than we often see.

Senior leaders are not disengaged from this agenda. Quite the opposite.

They care about it, they see the value in it, and they’re trying to make it work.

But they’re doing it in conditions that are genuinely difficult — ambiguity about what good looks like, pressures pulling in opposite directions, and expectations that keep expanding.

If wellbeing is going to be truly embedded, we need to understand where leaders are coming from — that’s what will move it forward. Not the ideal version, the real one.

Join us on 28th April

We’ll be sharing a preview of our findings — and what they mean in practice — in our upcoming webinar.

If you are interested in how workplace wellbeing is evolving at a senior level, and what this means in practice, we would be delighted if you could join us.

Visit our events page to reserve your place here.

About the authors

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