Plenty of organisations have a wellbeing strategy now. Fewer can say what it changed.
On paper, UK workplace wellbeing has never looked better. In the CIPD’s 2025 survey, 57% of organisations had a standalone wellbeing strategy, up from 44% in 2020. Three quarters said wellbeing was on senior leaders’ agendas.
On the ground, the picture is cloudier.
The gap between strategy and experience.
Employers aren’t sure it works. Nearly two thirds of organisations are taking steps to tackle workplace stress, but only half think their efforts are effective (CIPD, 2025).
Most are still firefighting. 37% describe their approach as much more reactive than proactive: acting once people have gone off sick rather than keeping them well.
Employees can tell. In Mental Health UK’s Burnout Report 2026, 18% of workers described their employer’s wellbeing efforts as a tick-box exercise.
The return is where it breaks. 27% of people who took time off for stress-related poor mental health got no support at all when they came back.
That last figure is the clearest test of whether a strategy is real. A return to work is the moment a person is most fragile and the organisation knows exactly who they are. If nothing happens then, the strategy is mostly a document.
Signs you might be ticking boxes.
The strategy is measured by activity (sessions run, apps licensed) rather than outcomes.
Nobody can name what has changed in how work is done.
Managers haven’t been trained. Across the UK, only 29% have had mental health training.
The main data source is absence and EAP usage, which miss most of the cost.
Wellbeing week happens, and then the old calendar comes back.
There’s no plan for someone returning after stress-related absence.
None of these means the intent is bad. They usually mean the strategy was written to show something is being done, and nobody has been given time to make it bite.
Making it real.
Pick outcomes, not activities. Decide what you want to move: leave patterns, return-to-work experience, team stress levels, turnover in a hotspot. Then choose activities that plausibly move it.
Start with the work. Heavy workloads are the top cause of stress-related absence. A strategy that never touches workload is decoration.
Equip managers. They decide what a Tuesday feels like. Train them, and look after their own state as well.
Get the return right. A phased return, a real conversation, adjusted workload and a named person to check in. This alone separates real strategies from paper ones.
Build in a shared practice. Something a team does together in work time that changes state, rather than another resource to look up. Short, slow breathing at the start of meetings is the simplest example we know.
Review it honestly. Once a year, ask staff whether it feels like a tick-box exercise. If enough say yes, believe them.
This is part of a series on where wellbeing spend leaks. Start with wellbeing apps.
The Working Well assessment shows you where your organisation sits and what dysregulation is likely costing you. Your Working Well briefing, with the full cost model, follows by email.
Take the Working Well assessment today. workerbe.co.uk/working-well
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