Wellbeing Governance: Why Boards Need a Strategy

The pattern is common enough to state plainly. An organisation runs multiple wellbeing initiatives—mental health first aiders, an employee assistance program, regular wellness communications. All looked great on paper. But absence rates kept climbing. Turnover stayed high. And the board? They got quarterly updates from HR that everything was fine.

That is not governing wellbeing. It is receiving reports about it, and the distinction is the subject of this piece.

Craig Fearn has seventeen years in wellbeing and leadership, has advised at board level since 2021, and is an FRSPH Fellow. The pattern recurs: organisations treat wellbeing as an HR program to manage rather than a strategic imperative to govern. Boards get reassuring dashboards while missing the underlying organisational health issues that’ll eventually show up as operational risk, talent crises, or worse.

The CIPD’s 2025 Health and Wellbeing report shows 74% of respondents say wellbeing is on senior leaders’ agendas. But being on the agenda isn’t the same as being governed properly. Most boards haven’t figured out what effective wellbeing governance actually looks like.

Why Wellbeing Governance Matters Now

Here’s what’s changed. Wellbeing used to be about compliance—health and safety regulations, duty of care basics. Nice-to-have initiatives if you had budget left over.

Not anymore.

Wellbeing is now a material governance issue for several reasons. First, the financial impact is enormous. Deloitte’s research puts poor mental health alone at £51 billion annually to UK employers. That’s not an HR issue. That’s a risk management issue.

Second, regulatory attention is increasing. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires employers to ensure employee health, safety and welfare, and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to health and safety. Neither names mental health: the statutory words are “health” and “welfare”, and it is HSE guidance that reads them as covering work-related stress. That distinction matters. The duty is real, and it is the overstatement of it — not the duty — that gets the subject dismissed in the boardroom.

Third, ESG expectations now include workforce wellbeing. Investors, customers, and other stakeholders assess how organisations treat their people. Your wellbeing governance—or lack of it—affects your social impact credentials, your ability to attract talent, your reputation.

Fourth, organisational performance depends on workforce wellbeing. Healthy, engaged employees deliver better results. Burned out, stressed, disengaged workforces don’t. This isn’t soft stuff. It’s operational reality.

What Wellbeing Governance Actually Means

So what does it mean to govern wellbeing strategically rather than just managing programs?

Governing wellbeing means the board treats it like any other material risk or strategic priority. You wouldn’t delegate financial oversight entirely to the finance team without board review. You wouldn’t handle cyber risk purely as an IT matter without board-level attention. Why would wellbeing be different?

Effective wellbeing governance includes several elements.

Board-level oversight and accountability. Someone at board level needs clear responsibility for wellbeing governance. Often this sits with a board committee—audit and risk, or increasingly, a dedicated people or wellbeing committee. But wherever accountability sits, it needs to be explicit.

Integration with strategy and risk management. Wellbeing isn’t separate from business strategy. It’s integral to executing strategy successfully. Your growth plans assume you can attract and retain talent. Your innovation goals depend on people having mental space for creative thinking. Your efficiency targets require engaged, productive teams. Wellbeing governance means explicitly connecting workforce health to strategic objectives.

The risk framework needs to include wellbeing risks—high absence, turnover, burnout, poor mental health. These aren’t just HR metrics. They’re operational risks that affect delivery, succession planning, organisational resilience.

Regular, meaningful reporting. Not quarterly dashboards showing how many people used the wellness app. Reporting that tells the board about organisational health, emerging risks, the effectiveness of interventions. Metrics that actually matter—absence trends, turnover in critical roles, engagement data, stress-related issues, early warning indicators.

Evidence-based interventions. Research from CIPD’s 2025 Health and Wellbeing Report shows that 74% of organisations now have health and wellbeing on senior leaders’ agendas, emphasizing the need for systematic approaches informed by what actually works, not just copying what other organisations do.

Cultural leadership from the top. The board sets organisational culture, whether intentionally or not. If board members and senior executives model overwork, always-on availability, and burnout culture, wellbeing initiatives won’t land. If the board genuinely prioritizes sustainable performance, that permission flows through the organisation.

Where Most Boards Go Wrong

Several mistakes recur in wellbeing governance.

Mistake 1: Treating it purely as HR’s job. Yes, HR implements wellbeing programs. But boards govern risk, strategy, and organisational health. Wellbeing touches all three. Delegating completely to HR means the board isn’t exercising its governance role.

Mistake 2: Focusing on programs instead of culture. Offering mental health training is great. But if your culture drives people to exhaustion, training won’t fix that. Effective wellbeing governance addresses root causes—workload, management practices, organisational culture—not just symptoms.

Mistake 3: Measuring activity instead of outcomes. Boards get reports showing participation in wellbeing programs. What they need is data on organisational health and whether interventions improve it. Are absence rates declining? Is retention improving? Are stress-related issues decreasing? Those are the measures that matter.

Mistake 4: Treating wellbeing as an add-on. Wellbeing gets discussed separately from strategy, separate from risk, separate from operational performance. Effective governance integrates wellbeing into all these discussions because it affects all of them.

Mistake 5: Not challenging management appropriately. When management reports that wellbeing programs are working fine but organisational metrics suggest otherwise, effective boards ask hard questions. Are we addressing real issues or just running programs? What evidence shows our approach is working? What are we missing?

A Framework for Strategic Wellbeing Governance

Based on both research and practical experience, here’s what effective wellbeing governance looks like at board level.

Start with clarity about responsibility. Which board member or committee owns wellbeing governance? Make it explicit. Ensure they have appropriate expertise or access to expert input. Organisational wellbeing isn’t something you can govern effectively without understanding the evidence base and best practice.

Define what good looks like. What does organisational wellbeing mean for your specific context? What outcomes are you aiming for? Not vague aspirations—specific, measurable indicators of organisational health. These become your governance targets.

Build it into risk management. Include wellbeing risks in your risk register. Assess them regularly. Understand the potential impact of high absence, turnover, burnout. Monitor leading indicators that signal emerging problems before they become crises.

Demand proper reporting. Work with management to develop reporting that gives the board what it needs to govern effectively. This typically includes:

• Workforce health metrics (absence, turnover, retention in critical roles)
• Engagement and culture data
• Stress and mental health indicators
• Early warning signs of problems
• Evaluation of intervention effectiveness
• Progress against wellbeing strategy objectives

Challenge the narrative. When you hear “our wellbeing programs are great,” ask how you know they’re working. What’s the evidence? What are people actually experiencing? Where are the gaps between what we say and what we do?

Connect it to everything else. Don’t discuss wellbeing in isolation. When you’re reviewing growth plans, ask about workforce capacity and wellbeing implications. When assessing operational risks, include wellbeing factors. When evaluating organisational performance, factor in engagement and retention data.

Model it. As board members, demonstrate that sustainable performance matters. Challenge always-on culture. Question unrealistic timelines. Show that you value quality over just speed. Culture flows from the top. What the board reinforces becomes organisational norm.

Review and adapt. Wellbeing governance isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. Regular review of approach, metrics, and effectiveness needs to be built into board rhythms. The British Safety Council’s Five Star Wellbeing Audit model and similar frameworks can provide external validation of whether your approach matches best practice.

The Business Case Boards Actually Care About

Here’s the reality boards need to hear. Strategic wellbeing governance delivers measurable business benefits.

Business in the Community research suggests financial returns from wellbeing investment could reach significant levels. Organisations with good wellbeing governance see reduced absence, lower turnover, better performance, stronger ability to attract talent, enhanced reputation, and improved resilience during uncertainty or change.

This isn’t about being a nice employer. It’s about organisational effectiveness and risk management.

Without effective wellbeing governance, you’re accepting preventable financial losses, operational risks from workforce issues, talent acquisition and retention challenges, regulatory and reputational exposure, and reduced organisational performance and adaptability.

Moving from Theory to Practice

If you’re a board member reading this thinking “we need to improve our wellbeing governance,” here’s where to start.

First, assess current state honestly. Do we actually govern wellbeing, or do we just receive reports? Can we clearly articulate our wellbeing strategy and objectives? Do we know what evidence our wellbeing approaches are based on? Can we see the links between wellbeing and organisational performance in our data?

Second, establish clear board-level accountability. Who owns this? What does their role involve? What expertise do they need?

Third, work with management to develop proper governance processes. Define objectives, establish meaningful metrics, create appropriate reporting, integrate with risk management, build into strategic planning.

Fourth, get external input if needed. An organisational wellbeing audit can provide baseline assessment, identify gaps, benchmark against best practice, and create evidence-based improvement plans. This gives boards the assurance that approach is sound and the data to govern effectively.

The Governance Advantage

Organisations that govern wellbeing strategically rather than just managing programs have a genuine competitive advantage. They attract better talent. They keep their best people. They perform better. They’re more resilient. They make better strategic decisions because their leadership teams aren’t running on empty.

The boards that figure this out early—before wellbeing is a crisis requiring urgent intervention—position their organisations for sustained success. Those that wait until forced to act by circumstance find themselves playing expensive catch-up while competitors pull ahead.

Wellbeing governance isn’t complicated. But it requires boards to recognise that workforce wellbeing is a governance issue, not just an HR program. Get that right, and everything else becomes more straightforward.

If you’re working through how to establish effective wellbeing governance or would like to understand where your organisation currently stands, a conversation about your specific situation can help clarify the path forward. This work shapes organisational capability and performance for years to come. Worth getting right.

References

• British Safety Council (2024). Five Star Wellbeing Audit. British Safety Council. Available at: https://www.britsafe.org/audit-and-consultancy/all-audits/five-star-wellbeing-audit

• Business in the Community (2023). Financial Return on Investing in Wellbeing Could Be Up to £370 Billion, New Research Shows. BITC News. Available at: https://www.bitc.org.uk/news/financial-return-on-investing-in-wellbeing-could-be-up-to-370-billion-new-research-shows/

• Deloitte (2024). Poor Mental Health Costs UK Employers £51 Billion a Year for Employees. Deloitte UK Press Room. Available at: https://www.deloitte.com/uk/en/about/press-room/poor-mental-health-costs-uk-employers-51-billion-a-year-for-employees.html

• Health and Safety Executive (2024). Mental Health at Work. HSE. Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/mental-health.htm

• CIPD (2025). Health and Wellbeing at Work 2025. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Available at: https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/reports/health-well-being-work/