Modern organisations are investing more than ever in wellbeing. Yet for many CEOs, boards and senior safety leaders, the return on that investment feels unclear. The benefits are in place. The helplines exist. The posters are up. The initiatives run throughout the year. But performance issues persist. Absence remains high. Leaders still hear quiet frustration from teams. And turnover often comes as a surprise.
As Rachael Haynes, Director of Wellbeing Consultancy at the British Safety Council, explains in The Art of Safety Leadership podcast: most organisations are building their wellbeing strategy on assumptions rather than insight. They focus on the visible symptoms rather than the hidden causes. They jump to solutions before understanding the problem. And as a result, they repeatedly fall into the same trap he hears from senior leaders:
“We don’t do wellbeing to people.”
It’s a powerful distinction and the starting point for a fundamentally different approach. A truly strategic wellbeing strategy begins with building the picture: understanding what is really happening for your people, how they experience work, and what enables or inhibits performance. Without that context, organisations simply cannot design effective psychosocial risk management.
This article explores the critical elements that Rachael highlights throughout his experience in conversation with Safe365 co-founder Nathan Hight: data, consultation, collaboration and leadership capability. Together, these make up the missing foundation of every effective wellbeing strategy.
Why leaders must rethink how wellbeing strategies start
Across industries, wellbeing is still widely interpreted through a tertiary lens: reactive, benefits-driven, and downstream. Rachael describes the early 2000s as a time where wellbeing was “optimising treatment pathways,” integrating employee assistance programmes, disability insurance or medical insurance. These services still matter — but only as part of a far broader picture.
Today, organisations face a very different landscape. Psychosocial risk management, ISO 45003, hybrid working, cultural expectations and workforce attrition all reshape what wellbeing means inside a business. Yet many organisations continue to focus their efforts where they feel comfortable.
Rachael sees it all the time:
- Leaders who respond to wellbeing by adding more benefits
- Organisations that rely on EAP utilisation as their main indicator
- Teams that pursue a “tick-box” mentality because the alternative feels complex
- Managers who try to solve issues once the harm has already occurred
- Departments that attempt to “own” wellbeing in isolation
This reactive mindset isn’t malicious. As Rachael puts it, it’s because these activities are safer, more familiar, and easier to control.
But the reality is that people don’t talk about wellbeing this way.
“We’re not going home and saying we love our company because of the helplines. We’re talking about autonomy, voice, empowerment and making a meaningful difference.”
When leaders misunderstand what wellbeing means to their people, they misdiagnose the problem. And when you misdiagnose the problem, your solutions, no matter how well-funded, don’t land.
This is the core issue: without building the picture, few organisations truly understand the real people risks affecting performance.
Why building the picture must come first
Rachael repeatedly returns to the same principle:
“Build your picture. Look at what you know. Look at how robust what you know actually is.”
A strategic wellbeing strategy starts by answering a fundamental question: What is actually happening for our people?
Surface-level indicators rarely reveal the truth. For example:
- EAP usage only shows a fraction of those who are struggling.
- Absence data is often incomplete or inconsistently managed.
- Turnover statistics reveal what happened, not why.
- Pulse surveys offer sentiment but not context.
- Exit interviews capture only those willing to speak openly.
Rachael describes these sources as “pieces of the puzzle.” Each is useful, but none are enough alone. Organisations need to triangulate them to form a complete picture.
What a complete picture includes
A high-quality wellbeing strategy incorporates:
1. Quantitative data: the operational reality
- Absence patterns
- Turnover and retention
- Exit interview themes
- EAP or OH referral patterns
- Workload distribution
- Overtime and role conflict
- Survey results
2. Qualitative insight: the lived experience
- Focus groups
- Listening sessions
- Workshops
- On-the-ground site visits
- Shadowing teams
- Observing workflows and interpersonal dynamics
Rachael calls this early-stage picture building — and it is one of the most illuminating phases for leaders.
3. Cultural indicators: what people say when you’re not in the room
One of Rachael’s favourite questions is simple:
“What do your people say about work at the Sunday barbecue?”
Not to managers, not on a survey, but to their trusted friends.
Common answers fall into the “two Ps”:
- People — “I stay because of my team.”
- Pay — “The money’s good, so I deal with it.”
When that’s all people mention, something is missing. Employees should be able to talk about purpose, autonomy, growth, support and leadership- the things that truly drive engagement and performance.
This social honesty reveals far more about your culture than a poster ever will.
4. Understanding inhibitors and enablers
One of Rachael’s strongest insights is that:
“The things that create stress are the same things that create thriving, if they work well.”
Workload, autonomy, communication, relationships and demands are not inherently harmful. When well-designed, they drive creativity, innovation and satisfaction. When poorly designed, they become inhibitors.
A wellbeing strategy must understand both sides of this coin.
Consultation: the non-negotiable ingredient
ISO 45003 emphasises consultation as a core requirement and Rachael argues that most failures occur when organisations skip this step.
“We don’t do wellbeing to people.”
Too many organisations:
- Create processes without involving managers
- Change workflows without speaking to frontline teams
- Roll out policies without checking feasibility
- Design interventions without asking whether they solve the real problem
Rachael describes working with a construction company where teams repeatedly said:
“Nobody listens to us.”
Despite strong purpose, good products and a positive culture, this lack of listening was a major inhibitor to performance. The fix wasn’t a wellbeing benefit, it was consultation. Authentic, meaningful, structured consultation that shaped solutions with the people who used them.
What good consultation looks like
- Involving employees in designing stress risk assessments
- Co-creating manager expectations with managers
- Checking feasibility before launching new processes
- Using workshops and focus groups, not just surveys
- Running regular touchpoints, not annual check-ins
- Empowering ERGs with clarity, purpose and training
- Building feedback loops between frontline teams and leadership
Consultation is not a “soft” activity. It is a critical mechanism for identifying root causes and designing solutions that work.
Collaboration: why HR and Safety must align
One of the most repeated challenges in Rachael’s experience:
“We still see a misalignment between HR and health and safety… around 70–80% of organisations still work in silos.”
This misalignment creates several problems:
- Unclear ownership of psychosocial risk
- Duplication of effort
- Conflicting language
- Inconsistent decision-making
- Gaps in support
- Slow or ineffective implementation
Rachael’s most successful clients have one thing in common: HR and Safety come to the table together. Not as competing functions. Not as separate owners. But as collaborators with shared accountability for people risk.
This alignment is especially important when implementing ISO 45003. Organisations with 45001 often find the transition easier because they already have a functioning management system that integrates multiple stakeholders.
But whether you have 45001 or not, the principle remains: wellbeing cannot sit in one department. It must be shared across leadership, people managers, Safety and HR.
The role of leadership and line management
Even with good data, strong consultation and aligned stakeholders, success ultimately rests with leadership capability. Stephen describes managers as:
“The greatest stressor for a team, but also the greatest enabler.”
Many of today’s managers are accidental managers, promoted for technical expertise, not people leadership. As organisations shifted to hybrid work, the expectations of managers increased dramatically.
Managers now need:
- Emotional intelligence
- Self-awareness
- Skills for identifying early stressors
- The ability to spot when people are thriving
- Confidence to have difficult conversations
- Understanding of their own impact
Rachael highlights the UK HSE’s Line Manager Competency Indicator Tool as a simple self-assessment resource. It asks managers to reflect on whether their behaviours reduce or create stress.
But tools only go so far. The deeper need is cultural:
Lead from the top. Make self-awareness safe. Build capability intentionally.
When leadership demonstrates vulnerability, curiosity and accountability, line managers follow. When leadership fails to model this, manager capability varies wildly creating inconsistency, confusion and risk.
Translating ISO 45003 into your organisation
ISO 45003 is increasingly gaining traction, especially among organisations already certified to ISO 45001. Rachael is clear that the guidance is excellent, but the value lies in making it fit your context.
“45,003 is a roadmap. How do we translate that roadmap into our organisation?”
Key success factors Rachael has observed:
- Leadership alignment from the outset
- Joint ownership between HR and Safety
- Consultation with frontline teams
- Clear roles, responsibilities and governance
- Integration into existing people management processes
- Embedding psychosocial risk into everyday workflows
- Using data to identify priorities before implementation
Organisations should avoid treating 45003 as a static checklist. It is an organisational change initiative closer to culture work or OD than traditional compliance.
The commercial case: unlocking performance, not just reducing harm
Nathan highlights UK data showing that half of work-related health impacts are wellbeing related, with tens of billions lost annually through inactivity, absenteeism, presenteeism and wasted productivity.
Rachael emphasises that focusing only on the “cost of harm” misses half the picture. The real opportunity lies in enabling people to thrive, not just protecting them from harm.
When organisations build the picture and design their strategy from insight, they see:
- Higher productivity
- Improved creativity and innovation
- Better team relationships
- Stronger retention
- Reduced stress-related absence
- Faster time-to-delivery
- Lower turnover costs
- Better leadership capability
- Stronger culture
- Greater business resilience
This is why wellbeing must be framed as performance-enabling, not purely protective.
Three actions every leader can take today
Rachael ends the conversation with three critical messages for CEOs:
1. Build your picture
Look at what you know. Challenge its robustness. Triangulate your data. Seek the truth beneath the surface. Understand your enablers and inhibitors.
2. Consult meaningfully
Co-design, co-own and co-deliver. Build solutions with your people, not for them.
3. Focus on consistency in line management
Equip your managers. Build self-awareness. Ensure emotional intelligence. Reduce variability in behaviour.
And if he could add a fourth?
“Take yourself out of the equation. Be self-aware. Psychological safety is the driver of team performance.”
Conclusion: Build the picture first — everything else flows from there
A wellbeing strategy that works is not a set of benefits. It is not a one-off programme. It is not a policy document or an annual survey. It is a systematic, collaborative, insight-driven approach to understanding and improving how people experience work.
When organisations build the picture – truly, deeply and honestly – they unlock the real drivers of performance. They reveal the iceberg. They discover what their people need to thrive. And they create the conditions for safe, sustainable and high-performing workplaces.
For safety leaders, HR professionals and executives navigating increasingly complex people risks, this approach isn’t optional. It is the foundation.
