.svg "Great Place To Work Wellbeing at Work Report 2026")
Wellbeing is under strain in UK workplaces
In the UK, businesses are up against a challenging reality. Poor mental health is costing the UK economy £150 billion annually, largely driven by absenteeism, presenteeism and economic inactivity. For the last decade, mental ill health has been the single biggest cause of long-term workplace absence.2
Underestimating the impact of wellbeing does not simply risk unhappy employees, but a loss of productivity, adaptability and retention – because people do not have the emotional and cognitive capacity to perform at their best.
These figures may seem overwhelmingly out of an employer’s control; where they do have significant power to shape outcomes, however, is in their leadership and management behaviours. Nearly 70% of UK employees claim that their manager has as much impact on their mental health as their partner3, highlighting the sheer importance of people management in shaping wellbeing outcomes and organisational performance.
Trust enables wellbeing
Trust is the critical foundation upon which wellbeing depends.
In high-trust workplaces, employees feel seen, supported and safe to speak up. They are more likely to ask for help, manage pressure effectively, and sustain performance over time. Where trust is low, wellbeing becomes inconsistent and overly reliant on surface-level initiatives.
This is the Great Place To Work Effect in action: wellbeing is a culture outcome of high-trust leadership. When it is present, it underpins employees' capacity to perform effectively, creates the conditions for productivity, resilience and agility, and ultimately fuels performance.
Leadership determines whether people cope or thrive
As our research in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University shows, employee wellbeing has declined from its pandemic peak, with the sharpest drops among under‑35s and frontline managers. This signals a growing gap between the demands of work and the support people experience day to day.
In high-performing organisations, wellbeing is not driven by programmes or policies alone. It is shaped by how leaders show up every day – in how they listen, respond, and make decisions.
Caring leadership sits at the centre of this. It is one of the nine core trust-building behaviours identified in the Great Place To Work Effect, shaping whether employees feel supported, respected, and able to do their best work.
When leaders take time to understand people’s experiences – both inside and outside of work – they create the conditions for psychological safety and reduce the strain that undermines performance. This is where many organisations fall short. Wellbeing initiatives are added on, but everyday leadership behaviours remain unchanged. The result is inconsistency: support exists in theory, but not always in experience.
Where leaders lead with care, the difference is tangible: employees are more likely to feel valued, treated fairly, and listened to. Trust strengthens – and with it, the foundations of wellbeing, fuelling human capacity and organisational performance.
Belonging sustains performance
Belonging is an accumulation of day-to-day experiences that enables a person to feel safe to bring their full, unique self to work.
A sense of belonging is a core dimension of employee wellbeing: without feeling like they truly belong, employees' wellbeing levels suffer, and without high levels of wellbeing, they are unlikely to feel as though they belong. Many of the same high-trust leadership behaviours that shape wellbeing – things like listening, fairness and genuine care – also drive belonging.
Yet fewer than two-thirds of UK employees feel a strong sense of belonging, exposing a critical gap in many wellbeing strategies.
If employees don’t feel they belong, they are more likely to feel insecure about their place in the organisation and feel less freedom to be their authentic selves. And that insecurity, that fear, undermines their performance, their creativity and their ability and willingness to collaborate.
.png?width=400&height=400&name=Employees%20with%20life%20admin%20support%20are%203x%20more%20likely%20to%20report%20good%20work%E2%80%93life%20balance.%20(17).png "Employees with life admin support are 3x more likely to report good work–life balance. (17)")
2X higher agility
High‑trust workplaces are more agile and better at adapting to change.
Why? Because development:
•Builds transferable skills •Enables internal mobility •Encourages learning in response to change rather than resistance •Employees who are used to learning and stretching can move with the work instead of clinging to static roles.
Employees with better access to development opportunities are over twice as likely to report market resilience and agility.
2X higher innovation
GPTW research shows that employees in high‑trust cultures are far more likely to:
•Go above and beyond •Experiment and improve processes •Contribute ideas rather than hold them back
Development reinforces this by:
•Increasing confidence •Signalling permission to learn by doing •Normalising experimentation and skill‑building
Employees in high‑development environments are 2.5x more likely to innovate, and when it comes to increased access to development opportunities are 2x more likely to be willing to give extra effort.
.png?width=150&height=39&name=Learning%20%26%20Development%20Report%20(10).png "Learning & Development Report (10)"){kind=small}
.png "Learning & Development Report (9)")