Employee wellbeing program: what works, how to build it and how to measure it
An HR manager in Riyadh launches wellbeing month. There is a yoga session on Thursday, a step challenge, healthy snacks in the break room and an app licence for every employee. By December the sessions are half empty and few people open the app. The sales team that works until ten at night never joined a single activity. Their workload did not change.
The programme was well run. It was built on the wrong layer.
The short answer: an employee wellbeing program is the set of changes an employer makes so that work supports people's mental, physical and social health instead of wearing it down. Build it in layers. Fix how work is designed first: workload, schedules, control and support. Then train managers: the WHO's 2022 guidelines on mental health at work give this a strong recommendation, backed by moderate-certainty evidence. Then offer individual support such as counselling and stress management. Measure with a short validated scale such as the WHO-5.
What employee wellbeing means
There is no single legal definition of employee wellbeing. The most useful starting point is the 2022 policy brief from the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization: work can protect mental health, but it can also contribute to harm. Wellbeing at work depends on the work, not only on the person.
The WHO's fact sheet on mental health at work estimates that 12 billion working days are lost every year worldwide to depression and anxiety, at a cost of US$1 trillion a year in lost productivity.
The brief sets three goals for employers. Use them as the backbone of any programme.
- Prevent. Stop work from causing mental health conditions, by managing the risks in the job.
- Protect and promote. Build the conditions and skills that keep people well.
- Support. Help workers who already live with a mental health condition to work and to thrive.
Wellness is a set of activities: a session, a challenge, a benefit. Wellbeing is the outcome: how people feel and function. A programme can run many activities and leave wellbeing where it was.
What employers do now, and where the gap is
The best recent benchmark on employer practice is the CIPD's Health and wellbeing at work 2025 report, supported by Simplyhealth. YouGov surveyed 1,101 HR and people professionals online in March and April 2025, weighted to represent UK employers.
| Finding (CIPD, UK, 2025) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average absence per employee per year | 9.4 days, up from 7.8 in 2023 and 5.8 in 2022 |
| Organisations with a stand-alone wellbeing strategy | 57%, up from 44% in 2020 |
| Organisations taking steps to identify or reduce stress | 64%, but only 50% overall think they manage stress effectively |
| Top cause of stress-related absence | Heavy workloads, 41% of organisations with stress-related absence |
| Among organisations acting on stress: resilience training vs changes to how work is organised | 39% vs 28% |
| Organisations that train line managers to support mental health | 29% |
The top cause of stress is the amount of work. Yet more organisations train people to cope with stress than change the work that causes it.
We found no comparable published survey of employer wellbeing practice in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the UAE, so we do not guess at one. What does exist for the region is Gallup data on how employees feel. In Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026, based on three years of polling to 2025 and typically about 1,000 people per country, the share of employees thriving in their overall lives was 9% in Egypt, 51% in Saudi Arabia and 55% in the UAE. The average was 26% for the Middle East and North Africa and 34% globally. Gallup counts someone as thriving when they rate their current life at 7 or higher and their future life at 8 or higher on a 0-10 scale. Egypt also had the highest daily stress of the three, at 57%. Same region, very different starting points.
The obvious answer, and why to test it
The obvious answer is a wellness week, a meditation app or a resilience workshop. It is visible, quick to buy and easy to report. Test it three ways.
What employees think of it. In the WHO's 2022 guidelines, workers valued access to individual interventions. But they were less likely to value them when they were not offered alongside organisational or manager-level action, because individual support on its own suggests workers are to blame for their own mental health. The WHO's conclusion: these interventions are one part of self-care, but alone they are not comprehensive delivery.
What the large studies show. A UK study by William Fleming (2024), of 46,336 workers in 233 organisations, found that people who took part in resilience training, mindfulness, wellbeing apps and similar programmes appeared no better off on several wellbeing measures. Our article on employee burnout covers this study and the trial evidence in more detail.
What it leaves untouched. If heavy workload is the top cause of stress, an app does not reduce the workload. The sales team in the opening scene did not need a step challenge. It needed fewer hours.
Individual support is not useless. The WHO recommends some of it, as the next table shows. The mistake is to make it the whole programme.
Employee wellbeing initiatives, ranked by the evidence
The WHO's 2022 guidelines rate each recommendation in two ways. Strength is strong or conditional. Certainty of evidence runs from high to very low, using the GRADE method. Here is how common initiatives score for workers in general.
| Initiative | WHO recommendation | Certainty of evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Train managers to support workers' mental health | Strong | Moderate |
| Reasonable work accommodations for workers with mental health conditions | Strong | Very low |
| Organisational changes to psychosocial risks, including participatory approaches | Conditional | Very low |
| Stress management courses for everyone, for example based on mindfulness or cognitive behavioural methods | Conditional | Low |
| Leisure-time physical activity, such as walking, strength training or yoga | Conditional | Very low |
| Mental health literacy and awareness training for workers | Conditional | Very low |
| Work-directed care plus clinical care for people off work with a mental health condition | Conditional | Low |
| Screening programmes for mental health conditions | No recommendation either way; benefits versus harms unclear | Not applicable |
Read the table with care.
- Manager training is the best-supported item. It is also among the least used: only 29% of the CIPD's UK employers train line managers in mental health. Where they do, 73% agree that managers are confident to have sensitive conversations and point people to help, against 57% where they do not.
- Very low certainty is not proof that something fails. It means there are few good trials. Changes to work design are hard to test, but they target the cause. A systematic review of 33 intervention studies by Kevin Daniels and colleagues (2017) found that wellbeing and performance may improve when workers are trained to improve their own jobs, when training is combined with job redesign, and when system-wide approaches change job design together with other employment practices.
- Screening is not on the list. The WHO made no recommendation for or against screening programmes during employment. A wellbeing programme should not quietly turn into one.
How to build an employee wellbeing program in layers
Build from the bottom up.
Layer 1: work design. Start with the risks in the job. The WHO guidelines say an assessment of work-related psychosocial risks should come before organisational interventions and should be part of regular health risk assessment. The UK Health and Safety Executive's Management Standards give a practical frame of six areas: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change. Involve the people who do the work in deciding what to change.
Layer 2: managers. Train managers to recognise distress, talk about it and point people to help. The WHO recommends training that improves managers' knowledge, attitudes and behaviours and workers' help-seeking. Managers also control much of layer 1: who gets which task, and when.
Layer 3: access to support. Offer counselling or an employee assistance programme, reasonable adjustments and a planned return to work after mental health absence. Stress management and physical activity belong here, as options people choose, not as the programme itself.
Layer 4: measurement. Measure outcomes and causes before you start and again after six months, by team. Without this, you cannot tell which layer worked.
Communication runs through all four: what changed in the work, what support exists and how to reach it in private. For that part, see how GK runs wellness programs.
How to measure employee wellbeing
Measure three things: how people feel, what in the work causes it, and what it costs.
| What to measure | A tool | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| How people feel | WHO-5 Well-Being Index, five items | Anonymous survey, reported by team above a minimum group size |
| What causes it | Questions on the six HSE areas: demands, control, support, relationships, role, change | Add to your regular employee survey; follow low scores with conversations |
| What it costs | Absence rate, turnover, overtime by team | Track monthly from HR data you already hold |
The WHO-5. It has five positively worded statements. People rate each one for the last 14 days, from 5 (all of the time) to 0 (none of the time). Multiply the raw score of 0-25 by 4 to get a score from 0 to 100. A systematic review by Christian Topp and colleagues (2015) covered 213 articles and found the WHO-5 valid across a very wide range of fields. An Arabic version was validated in 2025 among 3,247 young adults aged 18-35 in six Arab countries, including Egypt. That sample was not a workforce, so treat it as a good sign, not a workplace benchmark.
Do not use it to screen individuals. The same review recommends a cut-off of 50 or below when screening for clinical depression. That is a clinical use, and the WHO made no recommendation on screening at work. At work, report the average and the share of low scores by team. Never show any individual's result.
Watch the cost signals. Our absenteeism rate calculator turns your absence data into a rate you can track by team. For a quick personal read of the conditions around a job, try the work environment check.
Your next step
This week, list every wellbeing activity you ran this year and put each one in a layer: work design, managers, support or measurement. If almost everything sits in support, pick one team with high absence and ask its manager what work could stop next month. That conversation is the start of layer 1.
Frequently asked questions
What is an employee wellbeing program?
It is a planned set of changes and services that help work support people's health instead of harming it. A good programme works in layers: work design, manager training, access to support, and measurement. Wellness days belong in the support layer, not at the centre.
What does employee wellbeing mean?
Employee wellbeing is how people feel and function at work, mentally, physically and socially, and how the job affects that. The WHO and ILO note that work can protect mental health but can also harm it.
What are examples of employee wellbeing initiatives?
Examples include manager training in mental health, workload and schedule changes, flexible working, reasonable adjustments, counselling or an employee assistance programme, stress management courses and physical activity. In the WHO's 2022 guidelines, manager training has the strongest recommendation. Individual courses and physical activity have conditional recommendations based on low or very low certainty evidence.
How do you measure employee wellbeing?
Use a short validated scale such as the WHO-5, which has five items and gives a score from 0 to 100. Add questions on causes in the work, such as demands, control and support, and track absence by team. Report results only for groups above a minimum size.
What is a workplace wellbeing strategy?
It is the plan that links wellbeing to how the organisation runs: which risks you will reduce, what managers will do, what support you will offer and how you will measure progress. In the CIPD's 2025 UK survey, 57% of organisations had a stand-alone wellbeing strategy, up from 44% in 2020.
Sources
- World Health Organization (2022), Guidelines on mental health at work. Geneva: WHO. ISBN 9789240053052. who.int
- World Health Organization and International Labour Organization (2022), Mental health at work: policy brief. Geneva: WHO and ILO. who.int
- World Health Organization (2026), "Mental health at work", fact sheet, 15 September 2026. who.int
- CIPD (2025), Health and wellbeing at work 2025, survey report supported by Simplyhealth. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. cipd.org
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: 2026 report". gallup.com
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: Egypt country-level data". gallup.com
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: Saudi Arabia country-level data". gallup.com
- Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: United Arab Emirates country-level data". gallup.com
- Fleming, W. J. (2024), "Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom", Industrial Relations Journal 55(2), 162-182. doi.org/10.1111/irj.12418
- Daniels, K., Gedikli, C., Watson, D., Semkina, A. and Vaughn, O. (2017), "Job design, employment practices and well-being: a systematic review of intervention studies", Ergonomics 60(9), 1177-1196. doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2017.1303085
- Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S. and Bech, P. (2015), "The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: a systematic review of the literature", Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 84(3), 167-176. doi.org/10.1159/000376585
- Fekih-Romdhane, F., Cherif, W., Alhuwailah, A., Fawaz, M., Shuwiekh, H. A. M., Helmy, M. and others (2025), "Cross-country validation of the Arabic version of the WHO-5 Well-Being Index in non-clinical young adults from six Arab countries", Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health 12, e95. doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2025.10051
- Health and Safety Executive (n.d.), "What are the Management Standards?". hse.gov.uk
Know someone who should read this?
Share it on LinkedIn with a post that is already written. You can change it before you publish.
Follow GoldinKollar on LinkedIn