🧠📈Where Organisational Performance Actually Begins 🧠📈

Over the past decade, organisations have invested some $$$ in employee wellbeing. From mindfulness apps and resilience workshops to wellbeing challenges and yoga classes, many companies have tried to somewhat support the health and wellbeing of their people.

The intention is almost always positive. Leaders recognise that wellbeing matters and that supporting employees is the right thing to do. Yet despite this investment, many organisations are still struggling to translate wellbeing initiatives into meaningful improvements in performance.

This raises an important question. What actually drives organisational wellbeing and performance?

A comprehensive piece of research released in 2025 — the WorkWell Leaders Impact Measure by WorkWell Leaders and the National University of Singapore (https://www.workwellleaders.org/programmes/workwell-leaders-impact-measure/) offers one of the clearest answers we have seen so far.  

Looking Beyond Individual Wellbeing 🌱

Much of the conversation around workplace wellbeing has historically focused on the individual employee. Organisations have asked how they can help employees manage stress, build resilience, or maintain better work–life balance.

The 2025 paper approached the problem differently. Instead of focusing only on employees, the research examined organisational wellbeing as a system, recognising that workplaces are made up of interconnected layers including individuals, teams and leaders.  

To explore what truly shapes wellbeing and performance, researchers analysed more than 200 potential drivers, ranging from leadership behaviour and leader wellbeing to work design, organisational culture, employee benefits and external pressures.

The data came from a large national survey of 2,481 respondents across industries, job types and organisational sizes, providing a broad snapshot of how wellbeing is experienced across modern workplaces.  

The result was one of the most detailed analyses to date of what actually moves the needle inside organisations.

Wellbeing Is a Performance Multiplier 🚀

One of the clearest findings from the research is that organisational wellbeing is not simply a cultural aspiration…it is a major driver of performance. Among the many factors analysed, organisational wellbeing emerged as the single most influential driver of organisational performance.  

This means that when people experience better wellbeing across the organisation, outcomes such as productivity, innovation, engagement and retention tend to improve as well. In other words, wellbeing is not separate from performance…it is deeply intertwined with it.

But perhaps the most striking insight from the research relates to where that wellbeing actually begins.

The Power of Leader Wellbeing 👥

Across more than 200 factors analysed in the study, the personal wellbeing of leaders emerged as the most powerful driver of organisational wellbeing.  

In fact, the impact was dramatically larger than many of the interventions organisations traditionally rely on.

Leader wellbeing was found to be:

• 56 x more influential than stress management or resilience programmes

• 50 x more influential than wellbeing apps

• 11 x more influential in shaping organisational performance than employee participation in resilience programmes  

These findings highlight something that many leaders intuitively understand but is rarely measured so clearly. The emotional, mental and physical state of leaders shapes the climate of the entire organisation. When leaders are energised, balanced and psychologically healthy, they create environments where others can perform at their best…but when they are exhausted, overwhelmed or disconnected, that state often cascades through the organisation as well.

Leadership Behaviour Matters More Than Leadership Values 🧭

The research also reinforces another important insight about leadership.  It is not enough for leaders to talk about values such as compassion, purpose or empathy. What matters most is whether those values are consistently expressed through everyday behaviour.

The report found that practising compassion through daily actions has 6x more impact on organisational wellbeing than simply expressing compassion verbally.  Employees observe how leaders behave under pressure, how they communicate, how they treat people and how they make decisions.

Those behaviours shape culture far more powerfully than any statement or policy.

Why Many Wellbeing Programmes Miss the Mark 📱

Another revealing insight from the report is that many popular wellbeing initiatives have relatively limited organisational impact.

Programmes such as resilience training, mindfulness classes or wellbeing apps can still provide individual benefits, but they appear to play a much smaller role in shaping overall organisational wellbeing.

One reason is that these programmes often place the responsibility for wellbeing on employees themselves, rather than addressing the systemic conditions that create stress inside organisations.

Another is that participation can sometimes feel like yet another task added to already demanding workloads. Ultimately, programmes alone cannot compensate for deeper issues related to leadership, work design or organisational culture.

Belonging, Fairness and the Whole Person 🤝

Several other themes emerged strongly from the research. Employees perform better when they feel they can be themselves at work, with authenticity and psychological safety playing a significant role in organisational wellbeing.

Perceptions of fairness, particularly around pay and promotion opportunities, also strongly influence trust and engagement within organisations.

And importantly, supporting employees beyond the workplace matters more than many organisations realise. Providing support for caregiving, personal development or life challenges was found to be far more impactful than traditional stress management programmes or wellbeing apps.  

These findings reinforce a simple but powerful idea. People bring their whole lives to work, not just their job titles.

A Different Way to Think About Organisational Wellbeing 💡

Taken together, the findings from the report challenge some long-held assumptions about workplace wellbeing. It suggest that leader wellbeing sits at the centre of the system.  When leaders are healthy, grounded and psychologically supported, they create the conditions for teams and organisations to thrive.

Because organisational performance does not begin with strategy, technology or even talent, more often than not, it begins with the wellbeing of the people leading the organisation. 🌱