What is Wellbeing Anyway?
Wellbeing is a word that gets thrown around a lot.
It’s often used as a catch-all for anything from a fruit bowl in the office to breath-work on a building site, but that’s not what it means to us.
At its core, wellbeing is about how we feel and how we function. It’s about having the mental and physical resources to meet the demands of our lives.
In a work context, it’s about creating an environment where people can do their best work without it costing them their health.
When we get it wrong, the costs are staggering.
If wellbeing at work is being treated like a side project, the business is probably paying for that already.
Risk, Performance and Economics
This is not a ‘nice-to-have’. In Great Britain alone, 964,000 workers were suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2024/25, and 22.1 million working days were lost to those issues. The total cost of workplace injury and ill health in 2023/24 was £22.9 billion. That is not a side issue, that is a business issue with a receipt attached.
It doesn’t stop at absence. CIPD’s 2025 Health and Wellbeing at Work report found average sickness absence had risen to 9.4 days per employee per year, with mental ill health the top cause of long-term absence. Its 2024 evidence review on psychological safety also found positive links with speaking up, learning and error reporting, and negative links with burnout.
Add menopause into the mix and the case gets even stronger: the UK Government’s 2024 review found credible evidence that early and severe menopause can reduce productivity, increase sick leave and push some people towards reducing hours or leaving work earlier than planned.
The Impact
Why Wellbeing Matters
Those figures aren’t really about wellbeing in the abstract. They’re about work, how it’s designed, how it’s managed, and what happens when pressure builds up with nowhere to go.
Most organisations only find out where that pressure sits after it’s caused a problem, a resignation, a grievance, a spike in sick leave. The Wellbeing Risk Radar is built to catch it earlier by looking across the Nine Stress Risk Areas, from workload and manager backing to role clarity and change confidence, so you can see what’s driving pressure before it shows up on a balance sheet.
Our Approach to Wellbeing
The same three steps run through everything we do. We work out what is driving pressure, turn that into a plan, then check it is working.
We start with the Wellbeing Risk Radar, looking across the Nine Stress Risk Areas to see where avoidable pressure is building before recommending anything.
From there we build a practical plan, not a programme of generic wellbeing activity that does not address what is actually causing the pressure.
We track what changes so you can see the impact and adjust the plan as the picture shifts.
A UK-based consultancy specialising in workplace wellbeing diagnostics, strategy, and practical support to improve organisational health and employee resilience.
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