Making wellbeing a board-level priority

Organ­i­sa­tions are still only spend­ing on aver­age £150 per employ­ee a year on health and well­be­ing, accord­ing to a recent report by West­field Health. While some progress has been made in recent years, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the past 12 months, my chal­lenge to busi­ness lead­ers now is to be far bold­er and more ambi­tious, build­ing back with health at the heart of your board-lev­el strat­e­gy. 

Invest­ment in IT and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture pre-pan­dem­ic was between 8 and 10 per cent of total rev­enues and over the past year has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly. It’s impor­tance is now accept­ed as a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty. 

Major invest­ment over the past 12 months to ensure a com­pa­ny is fit to deal with the chal­lenges from the pan­dem­ic has been essen­tial to ensure pro­duc­tiv­i­ty remains high and busi­ness­es are set up to work seam­less­ly. Like­wise, invest­ment in oth­er crit­i­cal areas of a busi­ness, such as mar­ket­ing, sales, oper­a­tions and finance, is high on the agen­da for chief exec­u­tives and ensures busi­ness suc­cess.

Accord­ing to Deloitte research in 2020, poor men­tal health is cost­ing UK employ­ers up to £45 bil­lion a year, a rise of 16 per cent, or £6 bil­lion, since 2016. And these are pre-coro­n­avirus fig­ures. 

Busi­ness lead­ers at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum meet­ing in Davos this Jan­u­ary warned of the ris­ing cost of men­tal ill health, reveal­ing that the glob­al cost of lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, absences and staff turnover was an esti­mat­ed $2.5 tril­lion annu­al­ly.

If these num­bers were seen in any oth­er busi­ness depart­ment, there would be sig­nif­i­cant action and invest­ment. Now is the time to tru­ly make health a strate­gic board­room pri­or­i­ty and not just a tick-box exer­cise. 

A hand­ful of men­tal health-focused work­shops or an offer of yoga class­es once a week will not cut it. Would busi­ness­es cut cor­ners and find cheap, quick fix­es to their IT infra­struc­ture when it is such a crit­i­cal ele­ment of per­for­mance and suc­cess? 

It is time to go beyond a short-term plas­ter and be bold, holis­tic and inclu­sive. As investors focus more on an organisation’s envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance per­for­mance, annu­al reports should include infor­ma­tion on the health of their peo­ple. If it says on a company’s web­site and in its com­mu­ni­ca­tions that peo­ple are the most impor­tant asset, they must live and breathe that state­ment. 

In the sev­en years since I launched our glob­al Well­be­ing @ Work Sum­mit Series, there has been sig­nif­i­cant progress from busi­ness lead­ers and organ­i­sa­tions across the world in devel­op­ing tru­ly holis­tic well­be­ing and men­tal health strate­gies and pro­grammes. 

I gen­uine­ly believe we are at a tip­ping point now and there are some game-chang­ing tech­nolo­gies com­ing to mar­ket that will real­ly make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence. This means it is time to chal­lenge our­selves even fur­ther and be more ambi­tious.

The evi­dence clear­ly demon­strates that effec­tive well­be­ing at work strate­gies encour­age peo­ple to flour­ish and busi­ness­es to pros­per. While the focus has right­ly been on men­tal health in recent years, and par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing COVID-19 lock­down, we need to take it to the next lev­el. My call to action for busi­ness lead­ers is to build back with health at the cen­tre of your strat­e­gy. 

Nev­er before has the health of us all been in such sharp focus as in the past 12 months. As we bounce back from a chal­leng­ing peri­od, it is the health and well­be­ing of our col­leagues that will ensure suc­cess. Here’s to a healthy, pro­duc­tive and pur­pose-dri­ven work­place for every­one.