Workplace wellbeing has never had more attention, investment or visibility. Over the last decade, organisations have rolled out mental health first aiders, wellbeing apps, training programmes, webinars, awareness days and policy updates – often with the best of intentions.
And yet, despite all this effort, the workforce is not getting healthier.
According to recent UK data:
- More people are too sick to work than ever before, with around 2.8 million people economically inactive due to long-term illness – nearly 800,000 more than before the pandemic.
- Sickness absence has risen sharply, with 149 million days lost in 2024, structurally higher than pre-COVID levels.
- Work-related stress, anxiety and depression now account for around half of all work-related ill health in the UK and more than half of associated lost working days.
- Among people out of work due to long-term sickness, six in ten report moderate to severe depressive symptoms.
So, what’s going wrong?
To understand the gap between investment and impact, Teresa Dier from Barbour EHS sat down with Heather Beach, wellbeing specialist, founder of the Healthy Work Company, and a respected voice on psychological safety and workplace mental health.
Her message was clear: It’s not that organisations don’t care. It’s that they have been focusing on the wrong things – and ignoring the bigger system around wellbeing.
“You cannot ask people to be resilient in a system that’s breaking them.”
The workforce is more overwhelmed than ever – and the reasons go far beyond work
Heather explained that the last 10 years have brought huge societal shifts that are impacting everyone, not just “vulnerable groups”.
1. We are always on and never fully resting
Work used to stop at the office door.
“You couldn’t take your microfiche or your filing cabinet home,” Heather said. “At 5pm, work ended. Holidays were holidays. Weekends were weekends. Now, because of our phones, there’s no separation at all.”
This erosion of boundaries is driving chronic overwhelm and burnout, especially for people who are “addicted to activity” and rarely allow themselves true recovery time.
2. Modern life is overloaded and uncertain
Political instability, economic pressure, climate anxiety, global conflict and the aftermath of COVID have created a constant backdrop of tension.
“There’s an underlying lack of hope,” Heather noted. “People just don’t feel good, and this impacts everyone, including those who would never classify themselves as having a mental health condition.”
3. Social media is amplifying anxiety
Heather referenced Jonathan Haidt’s ’The Anxious Generation’, which explains how smartphones and social platforms have reshaped behaviour, increased comparison and fuelled polarisation.
News is no longer the daily 10pm bulletin; it’s a stream of highly curated, often emotionally charged content created to provoke reaction.
“It’s clickbait designed to shock, divide and keep us engaged,” she said. “We haven’t realised how toxic that environment is.”
4. Workplaces have unintentionally created conditions that accelerate burnout
Back-to-back hybrid meetings, blurred home–working boundaries, reduced in-person support for early-career staff and unmanageable workloads have become normal.
“We’ve sleepwalked into environments where people simply can’t switch off. We’re not designing how we work – we’re letting the environment design us.”
Why wellbeing initiatives haven’t made the dent organisations hoped for
“You can’t yoga your way out of a toxic workload.”
With all this happening externally and impacting the workplace, organisations understandably invested in wellbeing. But Heather explained that the approach many took failed to address the root causes.
1. Wellbeing efforts weren’t rooted in evidence
Companies copied what others were doing. Meditation apps, Mental Health First Aid and yoga sessions infiltrated many workplaces. But organisations were doing this without asking two crucial questions:
- What problem are we actually trying to solve?
- Is this intervention proven to help?
“Lots of these interventions were bought into because everyone was doing it. For instance, people bought meditation apps because another organisation bought them,” she said. “But the people who generally use these apps are the ones who like meditation anyway.”
2. Too much focus on mental illness, not enough on everyday resilience
The early wave of workplace wellbeing focused heavily on destigmatising mental illness and rolling out mental health first aid.
“That work started the conversation, but it doesn’t build resilience or skills for the everyday stress most people experience.”
3. Managers haven’t been set up to succeed
Managers are often promoted because they were strong technical performers, not because they have the training or bandwidth to lead people well.
“They’re drowning in tasks and haven’t been trained in some basic management competencies – like how to have difficult conversations,” Heather said. “And when you’re overwhelmed yourself, it’s almost impossible to support your team properly.”
4. Organisations tackled symptoms instead of systems
Many employers skipped over the difficult questions – workload, culture, policies, work design – and jumped straight to courses or awareness weeks.
“But wellbeing doesn’t improve unless the system improves. You can’t yoga your way out of a toxic workload.”
So what should workplaces do instead?
“These are the things with the biggest impact, and they are entirely within the organisation’s control.”
Most organisations focus their efforts on supporting people when they are unwell and promoting good health and wellbeing. This is helpful, but it doesn’t really support your organisational responsibilities, which are to create the conditions for people to thrive at work.
1. Prevention of poor wellbeing – fix the foundations: Policies, workload and work design
Wellbeing must start with understanding the specific stress risks in your organisation, then designing those out or mitigating them. That includes:
- realistic and manageable workloads
- reducing back-to-back meetings and protecting recovery time between them
- clear role expectations and change management
- psychologically safe leadership and communication
- thoughtful hybrid, flexible or home-working arrangements
- consistent return-to-work and sickness policies
“These are the things with the biggest impact,” Heather said. “And they are entirely within the organisation’s control – unlike whether I chose to drink enough water, or go to the gym or not!”
2. Invest in managers – properly
“Wellbeing has to start with leadership. If leaders don’t model good behaviour, it undermines everything.”
Managers need both training and time to lead well. That means:
- self awareness and self-regulation techniques
- coaching training
- confidence to challenge unreasonable workloads for themselves
- licence to set boundaries and role-model healthy behaviours
- support to have difficult conversations
- recognition that managing people is part of their job, not something squeezed in around tasks
Without good leadership and management, Heather warned, “anything else you do on wellbeing falls apart.”
3. Lead from the top visibly
“Wellbeing has to start with leadership,” Heather stressed. “If leaders don’t model good behaviour, it undermines everything.”
Leaders should demonstrate:
- self-awareness
- openness to difficult conversations
- transparency around priorities and workloads
- behaviours they expect from others
- boundaries that support recovery
When leadership shifts culture, everything else follows.
Promoting good wellbeing: Where resilience training and wellbeing education fit in
Once the system is in a healthier place, organisations can layer individual-level support:
- resilience training
- emotional literacy
- self-management skills
- clarity around recovery and rest
- training to understand how stress works
But these interventions only “stick” when the organisational environment supports them.
“You can’t ask people to be resilient in a system that’s breaking them,” Heather said. “Fix the system first.”
And when it comes to supporting people when they are unwell – employee assistance programmes, occupational health, mental health first aid are all invaluable support for people to stay in work and return to work when they are better.
The takeaway: wellbeing isn’t failing because people don’t care. It’s failing because the system is broken.
Heather’s message is not that organisations have done everything wrong – in fact, it’s far from it. It’s that workplaces now have an opportunity to shift from sticking plasters to systemic change.
At a time when:
- long-term sickness is at record levels
- burnout is widespread
- stress and anxiety dominate the HSE’s ill-health statistics
- subjective wellbeing is declining across the population
…workplaces can have a genuinely transformative impact; but only if they focus on the right levers.
- Start with leadership.
- Fix the system.
- Support your managers.
- Then give people the tools and skills to look after themselves.
That’s where wellbeing will finally begin to work.
With thanks to Heather Beach for her insights, and Teresa Dier for facilitating the conversation.
• Find out more about Healthy Work Company and the important work they do
• See how Barbour EHS can support your organisation with its mental health and wellbeing responsibilities
